Armchair Generalist

Casual Fridays

Well, as computer gaming companies are a bit overly optimistic in their projected schedules, I only have one of the three games projected for August (see this old Casual Fridays). Both "Stranglehold" and "Enemy Territory" have slipped to early September, but "BioShock" came in on time. I'll tell you, this game will be one that will be remembered for a long time.

It's such a pleasant surprise to find a game that 1) runs well right out of the box (even automatically checked for a patch), 2) isn't finished in 8-10 hours later, and 3) for an XBox port, works very well on the PC. But that's not all - this is a really well-designed, absolutely beautiful graphic game that has a decent plot and keeps you entertained. And this is, by the way, a first-person shooter, but better than most all I've played.

Without getting too much into the plot, the year is 1960, you're the survivor of a plane crash over the ocean, and the only thing in range is this strange small island with a tower and a door. You enter, the doors close (of course), and you take a bathysphere ride down to an underwater city that looks like it was preserved from the 1950s. It's occupied, but the occupants are quite mad. The city founder supported some genetic engineering work that comes in a hypo, but he was a little power-crazy, and politics... got complicated.

Your job is to get rid of this guy so you can take the survivors out of the city before it really starts leaking bad. At least that's what you think... The weapon selection includes the usual wrench, pistol, shotgun, machine gun, rocket launcher, and crossbow (and some exotic stuff), but the real genius is the collection and use of "plasmids" and tonics to give you varied superpowers. Some are essential - the telekinesis and electricity are musts - some are not so good ("Big Daddy" hypnosis and cyclone winds). The sheer number of options, between the superpowers and the weapons, means you have an infinite amount of ways to shoot, sneak, and steal around the complex. And it's a BIG complex.

I'm coming close to the end of the story, and it's a grim one. I'm not going to give you the plot, it's really too good, but I'll tell you, this is a mature story line. As you work through this haunted underwater house, you'll pick up tape recordings that tell the story of the doomed city. You'll have the chance to slowly live this story, and I'll just leave you with one warning. Don't piss off the little girls wandering around, sucking ADAM out of the corpses. You won't want to meet "Big Daddy" when the little girls start screaming.

There's a demo for BioShock if you want to try it out. Oh, and there's also this demo for "Medal of Honor: AIRBORNE." All I can say about the latter is, holey crap. What a fantastic game that's going to be. GORGEOUS, fast-paced, open-ended. Lots of fun coming our way.

Active Denial System Denied

In an amazing turn-about, the Active Denial System, once seen as an important non-lethal tool for controlling civilian crowds in Iraq and rushed through development and testing to get overseas, is not going to be used in Iraq. The reason? The leadership is afraid of the perception that use of the directed energy weapon will be seen as "torturing" civilians. From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

In October 2004, the commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force “enthusiastically” endorsed Natonski's request. Lt. Gen. James Amos said it was “critical” for Marines in Iraq to have the system.

Senior officers in Iraq have continued to make the case. One December 2006 request noted that as U.S. forces are drawn down, the non-lethal weapon “will provide excellent means for economy of force.”

The main reason the tool has been missing in action is public perception. With memories of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal still fresh, the Pentagon is reluctant to give troops a space-age device that could be misconstrued as a torture machine.

“We want to just make sure that all the conditions are right, so when it is able to be deployed the system performs as predicted – that there isn't any negative fallout,” said Col. Kirk Hymes, head of the Defense Department's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate.

Reviews by military lawyers concluded it is a lawful weapon under current rules governing the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a Nov. 15 document prepared by Marine Corps officials in western Iraq.

Private organizations remain concerned, however, because documentation that supports the testing and legal reviews is classified. There's no way to independently verify the Pentagon's claims, said Stephen Goose of Human Rights Watch in Washington.

“We think that any time you have an emerging technology that's based on novel physical principles, that this deserves the highest level of scrutiny,” Goose said. “And we really haven't had that.”

Yeah, ah guys, little late in the game to be worried about impressions of "torture," dontcha think? Interestingly, the article notes that one request from the field is to take a similar directed energy system and combine it with guns on a mobile platform.

Such a versatile system would let troops deal with “increasingly complex operational environments where combatants are routinely intermixed with noncombatants,” Army Brig. Gen. James Huggins said in an April 2005 memo to Pentagon officials.

Funny thing is, this was the same excuse we used to use riot control agents in Vietnam in the 1970s. Mind you, I don't see anything wrong with using burning CS powder in a military setting, but there are those that do get touchy about that. I suppose this combination system saves one operator the trouble of retargeting a disruptive crowd that didn't respond to the directed energy "suggestion." Maybe the exact concept of "non-lethal" engagement hasn't really sunk into the broader military user community's mindset yet.

It's Not A Weapon of Mass Destruction

Wow, my television crashes on me, and I have to have my wife tell me that there are Iraqi chemicals in the news. Maybe it's better that I didn't hear the news first hand - ABC News ran the headline "Chemical Weapons Scare at U.N. Headquarters!" and initially misidentified phosgene as a nerve agent. Oh, what maroons.

United Nations weapons inspectors discovered six to eight vials of a dangerous chemical warfare agent, phosgene, as they were cleaning out offices at a U.N. building in New York, federal authorities tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The federal authorities said the office, in a U.N. building near headquarters, was being evacuated and the White House had been notified at 10 a.m.

The vials were discovered at the headquarters of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), which led the inspections of possible chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. The items were recovered from a former Iraqi chemical weapons facility, Al Muthanna, back in 1996, but just noticed on an inventory list yesterday, according to UNMOVIC.

A WMD investigative team and hazmat units are responding to the incident, according to a law enforcement source.

The FBI New York Field Office will be disposing of these vials.

Okay, not only are these few vials not WMDs (a fact that many on the right seem unable to comprehend), it barely qualifies as a chemical warfare agent. Phosgene hasn't been used in, oh, nearly 90 years as a major weapon of war (to include by Iraq). It's a standard industrial chemical. People have to get over this issue of calling toxic inhalation hazards "WMDs" merely because they were used in World War I. It is a Schedule III chemical under the Chemical Weapons Convention, which means that a plant has to report its production if the annual volume is over 30 tonnes a year. What they found in the UN headquarters was in the realm of grams. GET OVER IT, news organizations, right wing bloggers.

Of course, we have to go to a reputable news source in the United Kingdom to get the full AP article, which details much more facts than the breathless analysis in the United States.

When the material was discovered in a shipping container last week, Buchanan said U.N. experts followed their established procedure in dealing with unknown material - putting the material in double zip-locked plastic bags, and securing it in a safe in a room that is double-locked.

U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said there was no danger to the public and staff continued to work in offices of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or UNMOVIC, which are in the process of being shut down. The U.N. called in U.S. authorities to remove the material, she said.

Tests conducted by U.N. personnel found no toxic vapors in the area where the material has been stored, police said. The materials have been in UNMOVIC apparently since 1996 when they were inadvertently shipped to United Nations administrative offices, instead of a chemical laboratory, police said.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the chemical agents should have been transported to an appropriately equipped lab for analysis.

``I'm sure that there are going to be a lot of red-faced people over at the U.N. trying to figure out how they got there,'' Snow said.

No, Tony Snow"job", they really aren't red-faced. They're puzzled why American media and talking heads are getting so excited about such a little insignificant thing. The vials were part of an old UNSCOM mission, they weren't leaking, but had they leaked, the volume is so small that it's more than likely that no one would have noticed much more than a faint odor of freshly mowed hay. That is, if anyone knew what mowed hay smelled like.

And, to the New York WMD Civil Support Team that probably responded to the call, it doesn't count as a "WMD" - but I bet you all got really excited - just like the lonely Maytag repairman, waiting for that repair call...

I See Nothing! I Hear Nothing!

Well, it's certainly comforting to know that no military officers were at fault in the Abu Ghraib incidents - only those bad enlisted soldiers and NCOs.

The only Army officer to face a court-martial for the notorious detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was exonerated of mistreating detainees by a military jury yesterday, ending a series of prosecutions that stretched over more than three years.

The jury of nine colonels and a one-star general concluded that Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, 51, of Fredericksburg, Va., was not responsible for training or supervising soldiers who have been convicted of abusing detainees at the prison. Jordan was also cleared of charges that he personally abused prisoners, after prosecutors tried to link him to supervising the use of forced nudity and the use of military working dogs to intimidate detainees in interrogations in late 2003.
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The verdict means that no officer will serve prison time in connection with the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib, leaving the harshest punishment for low-ranking soldiers who were shown in the infamous photographs that emerged in early 2004. The following year, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, a military intelligence officer who ran Abu Ghraib, accepted an administrative punishment and a fine for inappropriately authorizing the use of dogs, and then-Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, a military police commander, received an administrative punishment and was demoted for leadership failures not directly linked to the abuse.
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Left accountable for the abuse are 11 low-ranking soldiers who appeared in the photographs -- including images of detainees in hoods, wearing women's underwear on their heads, shackled in painful stress positions, piled naked in a pyramid, forced to simulate sexual acts, or with a leash around their necks. The images forced a reevaluation of Army interrogation and detention policies, sparked numerous military inquiries and led Congress to develop laws regarding the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.
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Prosecutors tried to paint Jordan as the officer in charge of the facility and one who should have done more to prevent abuse.

"This case is not about what the accused did at Abu Ghraib; it's about what he divorced himself from doing," Lt. Col. John P. Tracy told jurors on Monday, adding that Jordan created an atmosphere that led to abuse. "He didn't train; he didn't supervise; he didn't ensure compliance."

I'm really trying to wrestle with this in my mind. I've had so many military officers explain to me that I'm responsible for the actions and well-being of the men and women who might be serving under me. How exactly did a panel of colonels decide that, suddenly, none of that applies anymore? Where's the accountability? In today's follow-up article, Jordan says that he plans to stay in the active duty Army.

Brig. Gen. Louis Weber, the president of the jury, said his impression from the trial was that Jordan is "a superb leader and officer." Referring to the abuse-related charges, he added: "From my perspective, the evidence that was presented didn't support the allegations."

More the shame for the Army that such examples be identified as "a surperb leader and officer."

America, Fuck Yeah!

We're Number One! We're Number One!

The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said.

U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world's 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.

About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said.

"There is roughly one firearm for every seven people worldwide. Without the United States, though, this drops to about one firearm per 10 people," it said.
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On a per-capita basis, Yemen had the second most heavily armed citizenry behind the United States, with 61 guns per 100 people, followed by Finland with 56, Switzerland with 46, Iraq with 39 and Serbia with 38.

So I'm trying to figure out, why is President Bush so afraid that the Iraqis will come over here? Hell, we'll outgun them at leat two to one. Let 'em come over here. As Rick in Casablanca said, "There are certain parts of New York, major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade." 

But in seriousness, these statistics are pretty insane. Here's another movie line from Barcelona (great film):

Woman (Shootings in America): You can't say Americans are not more violent than other people.

Fred: No.

Woman (Shootings in America): All those people killed in shootings in America?

Fred: Oh, shootings, yes. But that doesn't mean Americans are more violent than other people. We're just better shots.

Whatta culture we have.

Run away! Run away!

Kris Alexander has a great find over at Wired's Danger Room - the good law enforcers in New Haven, Connecticut were terrified that terrorists were using anthrax powder to draw arrows and circles in the streets and parking lots of their fine town. Wow, what a relief that this wasn't the case.

Daniel Salchow (the runner terrorist in question) biked back to IKEA when he heard there was a problem and told officers the powder was just harmless flour, which he said he and his sister have sprinkled everywhere from New York to California without incident.

more..

Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said the city plans to seek restitution from the Salchows, who are due in court Sept. 14.

“You see powder connected by arrows and chalk, you never know,” she said. “It could be a terrorist, it could be something more serious. We’re thankful it wasn’t, but there were a lot of resources that went into figuring that out.”

That's the problem when you're living with a Sep 12th mindset . You forget the idea that you're not supposed to run around in panic, like a headless chicken. We've had nearly six years to work out homeland security processes and to get equipment to the emergency responders. Maybe, just maybe, the terrorists aren't using their weaponized anthrax to draw arrows and circles in Ikea parking lots.

Teh Stoopid! It Burns!

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is being pressured by 23 state legislators to intervene against the Army's movement of chemical wastes from the Newport Chemical Agent Disposal facility to Port Arthur. A coalition of environmental groups have convinced 2o Democrats and 3 Republicans that the firm who's made a living disposing of chemical wastes through incineration is imperiling the locals. Well, they had to try something when they couldn't disprove that the Army did everything legally and safely, above board in all accounts.

The letter to Perry noted that governors in Ohio and New Jersey had been able to block the Army's plans to use incinerators in those states to destroy the VX byproduct. The lawmakers — 20 Democrats and three Republicans — urged Perry to do the same thing here.

"The facility's location in Port Arthur, a predominantly poor, African American community, brings up questions of environmental racism," the letter said.

A coalition of environmental groups argue that the byproduct could be safely destroyed at the Indiana facility rather than be transported across several states to Texas.

Neil Carman, the clean-air director for the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club, said incineration does not completely destroy the byproduct. He said there is no monitoring at the Veolia incinerator to see if VX is being put into the air.

Veolia plant manager Mitch Osborne said smokestack tests show the plant destroys more than 99 percent of the material that is incinerated. Because there are no detectable amounts of VX in the caustic material put into the incinerator, Osborne said, it is unlikely any VX is escaping destruction.

Unfortunately for these mutton-heads, the governors of Ohio and New Jersey did NOT block the Army's use of incineration - they were blocking the neutralization technology that (ironically) would have been used on-site at Newport and will be used at Blue Grass Army Depot. That would be the neutralization technology that the environmentalists wanted to use, but not if it was dumped in a nearby river after treatment, which the CDC and the EPA both said was a safe procedure. As for the transportation of the liquid waste and incineration process, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality approved it all to be safe and legal.

And I love the argument that the Veolia plant can't monitor its airstream to see if the 20 parts per billion of VX in the hydrolysate had been successfully incinerated. One of the advantages of engineering is that you can prove a reduction of risk through neutralization of the agent to non-detectable levels, incinerating the liquid waste, and filtering the off-gassing through filters and stacks. It's amazing what simple science and engineering can do against teh stoopid emotional arguments.

Sam and Rich's Excellent Adventure

Former Sen. Sam Nunn and Sen. Rich Lugar are on tour celebrating their fifteenth anniversary of the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program. Currently their tour takes them through the Former Soviet Union states and into Russia. Let's listen in:

Lugar proposed that Russia and the United States jointly apply Nunn-Lugar methods to the situation in North Korea if agreement is reached on dismantling weapons there. He noted that the legislation has already been used outside the former Soviet Union in the cleanup of 16 tons of chemical weapons discovered in Albania in 2002.

Nunn also called for removing nuclear weapons from hair-trigger alert and deepening cuts in the arsenals. The former senator met Russian President Vladimir Putin in July with a group that included former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George P. Shultz, among others. The meeting was at Putin's request.

Nunn said he asked Putin: "Why is it in the interests of the United States for the president of Russia to have only a very few precious minutes to decide whether to launch his missiles, or lose them?" Nunn said a large number of U.S. and Russian weapons could be taken off alert relatively quickly.

Lugar and Nunn expressed concern that the Bush administration might allow a 1991 strategic arms treaty to lapse when it expires in 2009. Russia has called for a new treaty, but the Bush administration has indicated that it does not think one is necessary. Lugar said he is "inclined to feel we probably do" need to keep the treaty. Nunn said it is "absolutely essential."

Nunn said joint action is needed by both countries to deal with two thorny problems left over from the Cold War: what to do about tactical or short-range nuclear weapons, which have never been covered by any treaty, and the lack of transparency on research into biological weapons. The United States abandoned biological weapons in 1969. Both the United States and the Soviet Union signed a treaty outlawing them in 1972, but the Soviets built a large and secret bioweapons program. While Western efforts to sponsor new, civilian work in some of Russia's biological research laboratories have succeeded, other facilities have never opened their doors. Nunn said Russia and the United States need to "eliminate the suspicions" over biological programs and make the 1972 treaty verifiable.

Lugar, a moderate Republican (and therefore one I can admire), and Nunn, a conservative Democrat, have done a lot of good with this CTR program. The shame of it is that the Bush administration has been completely unwilling to admit that his nonproliferation programs have been doing a much better job than the Proliferation Security Initiative and its aggressive interdiction of shipping on international waters. We do need to address potential BW programs out there, and continuing treaties with Russia usually is in our best interest.

The Army's Generation Gap

I agree with Phil - this article by Fred Kaplan is a very interesting and good read.

General Cody looked around the auditorium, packed with men and women in uniform — most of them in their mid-20s, three decades his junior but far more war-hardened than he or his peers were at the same age — and turned Captain Wignall’s question around. “You all have just come from combat, you’re young captains,” he said, addressing the entire room. “What’s your opinion of the general officers corps?”

Over the next 90 minutes, five captains stood up, recited their names and their units and raised several of Yingling’s criticisms. One asked why the top generals failed to give political leaders full and frank advice on how many troops would be needed in Iraq. One asked whether any generals “should be held accountable” for the war’s failures. One asked if the Army should change the way it selected generals. Another said that general officers were so far removed from the fighting, they wound up “sheltered from the truth” and “don’t know what’s going on.”

Challenges like this are rare in the military, which depends on obedience and hierarchy. Yet the scene at Fort Knox reflected a brewing conflict between the Army’s junior and senior officer corps — lieutenants and captains on one hand, generals on the other, with majors and colonels (“field-grade officers”) straddling the divide and sometimes taking sides. The cause of this tension is the war in Iraq, but the consequences are broader. They revolve around the obligations of an officer, the nature of future warfare and the future of the Army itself. And these tensions are rising at a time when the war has stretched the Army’s resources to the limit, when junior officers are quitting at alarming rates and when political leaders are divided or uncertain about America’s — and its military’s — role in the world.

Colonel Yingling’s article gave these tensions voice; it spelled out the issues and the stakes; and it located their roots in the Army’s own institutional culture, specifically in the growing disconnect between this culture — which is embodied by the generals — and the complex realities that junior officers, those fighting the war, are confronting daily on the ground. The article was all the more potent because it was written by an active-duty officer still on the rise. It was a career risk, just as, on a smaller scale, standing up and asking the Army vice chief of staff about the article was a risk.

In response to the captains’ questions, General Cody acknowledged, as senior officers often do now, that the Iraq war was “mismanaged” in its first phases. The original plan, he said, did not anticipate the disbanding of the Iraqi Army, the disruption of oil production or the rise of an insurgency. Still, he rejected the broader critique. “I think we’ve got great general officers that are meeting tough demands,” he insisted. He railed instead at politicians for cutting back the military in the 1990s. “Those are the people who ought to be held accountable,” he said.

I am a bit surprised and disappointed that General Cody would blame the disintegration of the Army's quality to the Clinton years. Honestly, general... as if there was nothing the Republican Congress and the President could have done in the last five years to address the challenges in the Army manning system. We've all seen the slips in recruiting, balanced only by changing the age limits, the physical qualifications, the education qualifications, and criminal background checks. Then when all that failed, it came to offering unprecedented tens of thousands of dollars in "recruiting bonuses."

Others have had less complementary views of General Cody, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Rumsfeld has seeded his three- and four-stars into the Army leadership, and that's a disadvantage that we'll have to live with for a few more years. As a result, McMasters isn't going to get his star, and neither will Yingling. But in time, if these junior officers hang in there, there will be the opportunity to fix the Army and get some clear-headed leadership back into place.

Homeland Security Windmills

Now that Congress, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that the "specter of a nuclear bomb, hidden in a cargo container, detonating in an American port" demands that other countries need to scan all their cargo containers for radioactive sources, a few voices of sanity try to point out the problems with this lofty and irrational goal.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said "it would be wonderful" if all containers were inspected before they left foreign ports. "But it's got to be done in a way that reflects reality and also reflects the fact that we're not the only players in this pool," he said.

Industry groups that lobbied against the 100 percent screening asked whether Congress intends to cut off trade with small-volume ports that can't install the needed technology. They also warn of foreign governments retaliating by requiring U.S. ports to set up the same inspection regimen.

"You have to have the permission of all these foreign points," said James Carafano, a defense expert at the Heritage Foundation. "There are a lot of people around the world who are going to be really teed off about this."
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Homeland Security's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office also plans to award up to $1.2 billion over the next five years to develop and acquire a next generation radiation monitor for land and sea cargo known as Advanced Spectroscopic Portals.

Lawmakers have questioned whether the new technology offers much improvement over current monitors that are prone to false alarms set off by naturally occurring radioactive material in medical isotopes, ceramics or kitty litter.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairmen of the Senate and House Homeland Security committees, said preliminary tests indicate the effectiveness of the new advanced monitors "may fall well short of levels anticipated."

Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., a critic of the new provision, noted that those unhappy with current technology are among the same people calling for 100 percent scanning. "You can't have it both ways," he said, adding that "the technology is not there at this point."

Democrats, in successfully arguing for the scanning provision, said that if the United States could put a man on the moon within the same decade that John F. Kennedy challenged the nation to that goal, it can certainly come up with effective nuclear warning technology in five years.

We don't have the technology, we don't have the ability to convince other nations to adopt and sustain this system, and we don't have any idea of the cost estimate of the systems, the trade disruptions, or the added cost to shippers and consumers. But the Democrats, in a remarkable turn-around, have decided to adopt the Cheney philosophy of  "even if there is a one-percent chance of it happening, we have to do everything we can to stop it." This is lousy policy, policy that won't make one American safer from the specter of a terrorist nuke.

Saudi Appetites for Arms

I was shooting too low in trying to identify Saudi Arabia's targets for U.S. arms deals. Looks like they want the top of the line weapons technology from the United States, and there are actually U.S. officials thinking of giving the weapons to them.

“They are very interested in the Littoral Combat Ship,” said Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kohler, head of the U.S. Defense Department's arms sale agency.

The ship, designed to have a draft of no more than 20 feet, is being built by teams led by Lockheed Martin Corp. and General Dynamics Corp.

Kohler said Saudi Arabia should be sold kits from Boeing Co. for converting unguided bombs into satellite-guided weapons because they would be a strong deterrent to Iranian military action.

Saudi Arabia has requested kits for converting bombs into satellite-guided joint direct attack munitions, or JDAMs, as part of the arms package, Kohler said. He said the Saudis see an increased threat from Iran. The Saudi air force flies U.S.-made F-15 fighters.

There are serious people thinking of giving Saudi Arabia the Navy's top future ship and JDAMs. Sure, why not? I mean, it's not like the terrorists who committed 9/11 and who are killing U.S. troops in Iraq came from Saudi Arabia. Right? Right?

Educating the Media

I just noticed this post on Military.com's DefenseTech - they're reprinting a February 2007 article in Popular Mechanics. It seems that they've discovered that North Korea has an offensive chem-bio warfare program! No kidding! Not just a nuclear program (although that's all you hear about), but also the poorer cousins of the WMD world...

North Korea has been a signatory to the BTWC since March 1987. But, according to defectors, South Korean intelligence agencies and other sources, the nation's Fifth Machine Industry Bureau has led a successful effort to build one of the world's most extensive biochemical warfare programs. The weaponry is thought to have the potential to decimate North Korea's southern neighbor and the 28,000 U.S. troops stationed there, and to disrupt the regional economy. The gravest danger may be that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il could sell his weapons to terrorists.

In contrast to the global frenzy triggered by North Korea's nuclear weapons test, the threat of biochemical WMDs has prompted a muted response from the West. The reason may be what former weapons inspector Christopher Davis has dubbed "nuclear blindness," which he defines as "the tunnel vision ... brought on by the mistaken belief that it is only the size of the bang that matters."

Word, brother. I hesitate to point out a few minor issues in the research of this article, but I have to do my duty...

Daniel Pinkston, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif., says most assessments of North Korea's WMD capabilities point to a chemical weapons stockpile of some 5000 tons of agents, including large amounts of sarin, mustard gas and hydrogen cyanide. That would make it one of the largest chemical arsenals in the world. Up to 30 percent of the country's missile and artillery stocks is capable of delivering such chemicals, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an organization that monitors nuclear, biological and chemical weapons proliferation.

North Korea is the only world government that has never signed, acceded to or even responded to invitations to join the Chemical Weapons Convention. There appears to be a good reason for that: Unlike the BTW Convention, the chemical weapons treaty mandates independent inspections.

Well, it was the fourth largest CBW stockpile up to 1991... ah, well. Price of fame. I might point out that this arsenal, unlike the Middle East one imagined by the National Security Council in 2002, actually does have the capability to imperil U.S. national security interests as well as injure or kill millions of South Koreans. In defense of the nK government, it believes that it needs this arsenal in the event that the United States and its allies invade North Korea. An offensive nK CBW attack might very well ensure that Seoul fell and make getting reinforcements and supplies into Korea very difficult, but it would not - in and of itself - result in a nK success (my uninformed opinion only).

My biggest gripe is the CWC goof. A very quick examination of the OPCW website would show that North Korea has company in treaty issues - Angola, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, and Syria have also not signed nor acceded to the treaty. The Middle Eastern nations have held out because of Israel's nuclear weapons program; but it ought to be noted that Israel, although a signatory of the CWC, hasn't ratified the treaty (making it ineligible for OPCW inspections), nor has it signed onto the Biological Weapons Convention.

Turn the Lights On

I had the chance to talk to Brigadier General Michael Walsh of the Army Corps of Engineers on Friday (polished report of the blogger's roundtable here). He's been trying to get the lights and air conditioning running longer hours in Baghdad in particular. Tough job, one that was recently criticized by the NY Times.

Because of the lack of functioning dispatch centers, Mr. Wahid said, ministry officials have been trying to control the flow of electricity from huge power plants in the south, north and west by calling local officials there and ordering them to physically flip switches.

But the officials refuse to follow those orders when the armed groups threaten their lives, he said, and the often isolated stations are abandoned at night and easily manipulated by whatever group controls the area.

This kind of manipulation can cause the entire system to collapse and bring nationwide blackouts, sometimes seriously damaging the generating plants that the United States has paid millions of dollars to repair.

Such a collapse took place just last week, the State Department reported in a recent assessment, which said the provinces’ failure to share electricity resulted in a “massive loss of power” on Aug. 14 at 5 p.m.
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The electricity briefing began with Brig. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, commanding general of the Gulf Region Division of the Army Corps of Engineers, saying the United States had finished more than 80 percent of the projects it planned for rehabilitating the Iraqi grid.

He said that even though Baghdad now got no power from either the south or north, about a third of its electricity was still supplied by the national grid.

But General Walsh said he knew people in Baghdad were far from satisfied.

“I understand people’s impatience,” he said. “Certainly when you flip the light switch and nothing happens, you can get angry.”

The general noted that there are three parts to the electricity issue: generation, transmission, and distribution. While the Army has done a great deal on the generation side and transmission side (which are largely infrastructure related), the distribution's been an issue. It's hard to keep the local distribution sites secure; the Iraqi security guards have families who are threatened. In addition, the provincial governors can refuse to send extra electricity to Baghdad or other power-hungry sites. So Basra and other cities are getting 20 hours of electricity a day, but Baghdad at best gets 8-10 hours a day. He also noted that getting diesel fuel from Kuwait to power the generators has been an issue - last summer the Iraqis had good access to the diesel, this year they don't. This situation in part accounts for the minimal improvements noted in the Brooking Institution's Iraq index report.

The Iraqi goal is to have 24-hour access to electricity is 2010-2013 time frame. BG Walsh pointed out that the Iraqis have never had 24-hour access, even during Saddam's regime. He also pointed out that, even in the United States, there had been issues in the 1990s (notably, California) where neighboring states either refused to cooperate in energy distribution or hiked the costs so high that the solution had to be rolling brownouts for the state. Developing and maintaining a national energy infrastructure isn't an easy thing, not for us, not for Iraq. But there is one thing certain - until the Iraqi houses get cooler, their tempers won't cool either.

Sen. Obama Was Right

This article from ABC News suggests that President Bush has long had standing orders for the military to attack into Pakistan, with or without informing the Pakistani government.

Newly uncovered "rules of engagement" show the U.S. military gave elite units broad authority more than three years ago to pursue suspected terrorists into Pakistan, with no mention of telling the Pakistanis in advance.

The documents obtained by The Associated Press offer a detailed glimpse at what Army Rangers and other terrorist-hunting units were authorized to do earlier in the war on terror. And interviews with military officials suggest some of those same guidelines have remained in place, such as the right to "hot pursuit" across the border.
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One summary states that "Entry into PAK authorized for" the following reasons:

"Hot pursuit" of al-Qaida, Taliban and terrorist command-and-control targets "from AFG into Pakistan (must be continuous and uninterrupted)."

If the head of U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, approved direct action "against The Big 3," listed as Osama bin Laden; his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri; and Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar. The three are still believed to be hiding in the border region.

If the Defense secretary approved such an incursion.

Other grounds for incursions into Pakistan, according to this summary, were "personnel recovery," including rescuing troops after the downing of aircraft; and troops "in contact with" the enemy, meaning under fire.

As for "geographic limits," the memo states: "General rule: penetrate no deeper than 10 km," or 6.2 miles.

Well, how about that. Far from a naive point of view, Sen. Obama actually has the right national security position when he said that we ought to have the option to unilaterally strike at Taliban and al Qaeda targets within Pakistan. And more interestingly, old foreign policy analyst Zbigniew Brzezinski agrees with him. 

Obama "recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America's role in the world," said Brzezinski, who keeps an office at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Obama is clearly more effective and has the upper hand. He has a sense of what is historically relevant and what is needed from the United States in relationship to the world."

Presidential Candidate Barack Obama - not just a fresh point of view, but the smart one as well.

Casual Fridays

This article is dated from March 2007, but I just stumbled across it in the effort of looking for chemical pictures on the Army web site. The one constant in the twenty past years [of my direct experience]... the inevitable "gas confidence" chamber.

"We try to teach them to learn how to seal it properly and clear it. If you don't then any little hole that might be in the mask will let the gas inside, so we have to make sure and watch out for that," [CPT Jason] Murray said. "There's a lot of gasses out there that other countries could use against us that you really can't smell or you won't even know is there, so that's why it's important that you always have your mask sealed properly."

Pvt. Steffen Wittbrodt, from Marlette, Mich., said his drill sergeants actually helped keep them calm before they went in.

"It was kind of different, nothing like anything I've ever felt before. (It was) scary, a little bit," he said. "I was about the 10th one back and one of the kids was freaking out because his mask wasn't sealed, so I felt fortunate that my mask worked. It wasn't too bad though. I just kept calm."

Ahhhhhh... good times. I can't understand why the combat arms guys dislike us Chem Corps so much. We stick them in hot, bulky clothes, make them gag on CS gas, and teach them about using defensive equipment for a situation that hasn't occurred to U.S. troops in 90 years. But the masks do work - nothing like a sniff of burning CS to tell you that your mask isn't on right. Although the chlorine VBIEDs seem to have stopped coming, I guess it's "better safe than sorry" to keep a mask within arm's reach.

Rob's Trip in Iraq - Day 3

How do the U.S. troops view the Iraqi parliment's taking August off?

Bush On Vietnam

I tried to resist, I really did, but I just have to say this about President Bush's comparison of the conflict in Iraq to the Vietnam conflict. What kind of fool wrote his script, and what kind of senseless idiot would actually read that aloud to a group of veterans?

President Bush defended his ongoing military commitment in Iraq by linking the conflict there to the Vietnam War, arguing Wednesday that withdrawing U.S. troops would lead to widespread death and suffering as it did in Southeast Asia three decades ago.

"One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 'reeducation camps' and 'killing fields,' " Bush told a receptive audience at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention.

The president's decision to draw an explicit link between Iraq and Vietnam comes as he seeks to marshal support for his war policy among Republicans and to blunt calls from Democratic members of Congress for a drawdown of U.S. forces in the coming months. Although his comments played well among the veterans here -- the speech was interrupted with repeated cheers and applause -- the references to the Vietnam conflict, which remains a divisive, emotional issue for many Americans, prompted strong criticism from Democrats.
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"Invoking the tragedy of Vietnam to defend the failed policy in Iraq is as irresponsible as it is ignorant of the realities of both of those wars," said Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), a Vietnam War veteran. "Half of the soldiers whose names are on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after the politicians knew our strategy would not work. The lesson is to change the strategy, not just to change the rhetoric."

No, wait. Let me change my mind. The sacrifice of 58,178 Americans over a twenty-plus year period of time (the majority between 1965 and 1975) wasn't too great a price to pay for the freedom of a small country whose government was untrusted and unloved by its own people. If only we had let Gen. Creighton Abrams continue his successful execution of the war by invading North Vietnam, carpet-bombing Hanoi, relocating a few dozen more hamlets, and lacing the Ho Chi Min trail with more anti-personnel mines on top of the Agent Orange defoliation, we would have won, and Saigon would still be an important U.S. ally. If only we spent another ten years in the jungle and if another 20-30 thousand U.S. military could have sacrified their lives to ensure that the first 58,000 weren't lost in vain... If only history could be changed, and that pussy Nixon should have prosecuted the war to its fullest extent.

After all, it's not as if the LBJ administration was prosecuting a war that its own top defense officials knew that there was a very small chance of success... Maybe Bush should leave Vietnam analogies alone, considering his less-than-sterling military career during that same period of time. Obviously he's learned nothing from his military "experience." Also see this good article in the NY Times on the same subject.

Gen. Batiste's Unpublished Op-Ed

It's odd how the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times shun the conservatives who don't agree with their position. That's what forced Maj. Gen. (ret) John Batiste to turn to ThinkProgress to print this op-ed.

Our all-volunteer military cannot continue the current cycle of deployments for much longer. America’s national strategy in Iraq is akin to a four legged stool with legs representing diplomacy, political reconciliation, economic recovery, and the military. The glue holding it all together must be the mobilization of the United States in support of the incredibly important effort to defeat world-wide Islamic extremism. The only leg on the stool of any consequence is the military–it is solid titanium and high performing, the best in the world. After almost six years since September 11, our country is not mobilized behind this important work and the diplomatic, political, and economic legs are not focused and lack leadership. Most Americans now appreciate that the military alone cannot solve the problem in Iraq. In this situation, the stool will surely collapse.

Our military and our treasury are not unlimited resources. The war in Iraq is breaking our fine Army and Marine Corps, and we are perilously close to doing damage that will take more than a decade to fix. Our brigades and divisions in Iraq today are at near full strength because the rest of the force has been gutted. We cannot place America in a position of weakness as it just begins its long war against world-wide Islamic extremism. The Republican administration is bleeding our national treasure in blood and dollars with little to show for it.

The high price we are paying might be worth it if Iraq’s many factions were making meaningful progress to achieve political reconciliation. But, after more than four years, Iraqis are no closer to settling their differences and the sitting Shia government is ineffective. With insufficient coalition and Iraqi security forces on the ground, the myth of Sisyphus is playing out over and over again. The Iraqi Parliament goes on vacation instead of working, and every few months, it seems, another Iraqi political faction walks out of the process. To me, continuing to expend money and American lives on a nation that shows little drive to solve its own problems is the foreign policy equivalent of a welfare queen.

It's always surprised me that Army general officers (retired and active) supporting this war seem to overlook Clausewitz's warnings about requiring a passionate public, a sound political strategy, and an enabled military force to be successful in the art of war. Some retired general officers see clearly and speak clearly about the peril our military is in. To what measure should our Army perform great acts of courage and sacrifice if the political efforts in Iraq (and the United States) fail?

Thompson Flunks National Security

As the politicians flock to the Veterans of Foreign War's National Convention, it's interesting to see the difference between Republicans and Democrats. Fred Thompson, the undeclared darling of the right, wants to blame the Clinton years for somehow weakening the military:

The U.S. must rebuild its military to fight global terrorism because leaders "took a holiday" in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War, undeclared presidential candidate Fred Thompson told war veterans Tuesday. "Some people in this country think if we can pull out of Iraq, our problems will be over," Thompson told the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "You and I know better than that." "Now we're stretched too thin, and our equipment is wearing out," said Thompson, the former Tennessee senator who is expected to announce a decision soon on whether to seek the Republican presidential nomination.

What kind of weak, pathetic excuse is this? As if somehow, we ought to ignore the six years of the Bush administration's defense acquisition strategy (which the Republicans all approved) because President Clinton could actually balance a budget and still run defense programs? Sorry, Fred, you'll have to do better than recycle tired cliches that simply don't hold up. And then there's Sen. Barack Obama.

Democrat Barack Obama, in his remarks released before he spoke to the VFW convention on Tuesday, said he would make care for vets a top issue as president. "When I am president, building a 21st century VA to serve our veterans will be an equal priority to building a 21st century military to fight our wars," Obama said in an advance copy of his speech released Tuesday to The Associated Press. "My secretary of veterans affairs will be just as important as my secretary of defense. No more shortfalls; it's time to fully fund the VA medical center. No more delays; it's time to pass on-time VA budgets each and every year. No more means testing; it's time to allow all veterans back into the VA."

Obama's looking forward to fixing this Army. Fred's still interested in shifting responsibility from this administration to someone else. Who's the better national security candidate?

Just Like Indiana in the Summer

Rob Riggle executes Operation Fluffy Bunny, interviewing soldiers from Indiana about how much Iraq is like Indiana in the summer.