Armchair Generalist

Blackwater Leaving Iraq?

The BBC reports that a State Dept commission has decided that they will not require the services of Blackwater in the immediate future. Interesting, to say the least.

Five guards have been charged with manslaughter over the shootings.

The incident triggered outrage in Iraq and led to a debate about the role there of private security companies - upon which the US relies heavily.

Earlier, the Associated Press news agency reported that the report recommended against renewing Blackwater's contract, citing an official linked to the report.

But that specific recommendation was not included in the report itself, AP said later. A recommendation would not be made until the investigation into the civilian shootings was complete, it quoted the same official as saying.

Yeah, that's a real shame. Gonna miss the cowboys. It's noted that the State Dept would rely on increased personnel in its Diplomatic Security Service to replace Blackwater. I would assume that other private military contractors might step up to fill the gap. Maybe Blackwater will go after those Somali pirates now.

Deep Thoughts

Has there ever been a more obsequious, embarrassing cabinet official than Condi Rice? I mean, other than Don Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, or Alberto Gonzales?

UPDATE: Such goddamn wankers.

Follow-up on Carson City's White Powder

I talked about the "white powder" scare at Carson City yesterday, perhaps a bit cavalierly. This follow-up to the story reveals some more details.

According to Shlomof, when she arrived on the scene late afternoon, she found several employees scattered outside the hazmat portable tent. She says some were laughing during the incident, taking the threat lightly.

Not long after her arrival, the News 4 reporter was taken into custody when officials told her she wandered to close to the contaminated area. It was an area that she says, gave no indication of a threat.

Shlomof says it wasn't until after onsite results returned with positive hits on anthrax that officials actually taped off the ‘contaminated' area. But Carson City Fire Chief, Stacey Giomi says tape is just a visual.

"A given area doesn't need tape," Giomi says. "It just needs to be isolated."

One employee quarantined along with Shlomof says she is "livid."

An anonymous mailroom employee says she was never notified when officials received word that the powder that had her isolated in the cold for more than seven hours was actually cooking flour. She says she wasn't the only one, neither were her coworkers.

If you have "white powder" scares that 99 times out of a 100 are bleached flour, crushed aspirin, whatever, and you think you have to quarantine people "just to be safe" (more from lawsuits than for their safety, I think), maybe you ought to do it right. We really, really need an easier, saner way to do these drills other than turning them into some kind of half-serious attempt at addressing one of the worst biological warfare agents out there

Army Training, Sir!

Small Wars Journal brought attention to the Army's latest Field Manual, FM 7-0, Training for Full Spectrum Operations. Most of it isn't too extraordinary, but this definition caught my eye on page 1-2.

Catastrophic threats involve the acquisition, possession, and use of nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons, also called weapons of mass destruction. Possession of these weapons gives an enemy the potential to inflict sudden and catastrophic effects. The proliferation of related technology has made this threat more likely than in the past.

DOD defines weapons of mass destruction to include nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. The definition does not include radiological devices or high-yield explosives. For some reason, people have a really hard time understanding this basic point. It bugs the shit out of me. It bothers me that the Army (and other services) has such a hard time getting simple facts straight in a topic area that is supposed to be a big concern to DOD and US govt officials.

Back in 1999, RAND consultants to the Gilmore Commission suggested that "CBRN" could be a more accurate term to discuss terrorist use of particular unconventional hazards. They thought, and the commission agreed, that the term "terrorist WMD" was technically incorrect and did not adequately describe the true capability of terrorists. That is to say, because terrorists used improvised equipment and (relatively) small amounts of common industrial materials, the term "terrorist WMD" didn't work for them. Unfortunately, the Bush administration didn't follow that logic after 9/11.

So now we're stuck with the stupid people who think "CBRN hazards" and "WMDs" are equivalent terms to use in discussions on defense issues. And I don't think many people inside of DOD really care, other than us few analysts who actually try to make sense of these things. They don't even try to care, other than to match wording with whatever the latest OSD mumbo-jumbo is. You see, you can have Army training but still lack professional education.

I didn't know William Kaufman - a nuclear defense analyst who died recently - but I think I would have liked talking with him.

Among his MIT students were Kaplan, former federal counterterrorism adviser Richard A. Clarke and Charles A. Duelfer, a retired defense and intelligence official who was the CIA's top weapons inspector in Iraq.

"The most powerful thing he instilled and promoted was the notion that analysis, rational analysis of defense policy and posture, was something that could be done and applied," Duelfer said.

"The government spends vast quantities of money to buy defense stuff," Duelfer said. "What he would do was try to tie those allocations to defined purposes."

Reflecting on his career in 1983, Dr. Kaufmann criticized the defense policy world, likening it to a deep pit. "It was easy to get caught up in the whole nuclear business," he told Kaplan. "You could eat and breathe the stuff. . . . Then you move away from it for a while, look at it from a distance and think, 'God that's a crazy world.' "

 It is a crazy world, all right.

Thanks, but No Thanks

The NY Times reports that the Bush administration is "helping" the incoming Obama administration by developing contingency plans in the event that some immediate crisis strikes after the inauguration. Really? They thought that was necessary?

The administration has invited members of the Obama agency review teams to observe some of those so-called tabletop exercises between now and the inauguration, on Jan. 20. The Bush team has also invited Obama transition officials to attend a “national level exercise” set for Jan. 12 and 13 that may play outwhat would happen if the top leadership of the nation were wiped out in a single stroke, officials said.

At the same time, senior counterterrorism officials plan to hold personal briefings for their counterparts on the biggest threats they see. And the White House has drafted as many as three dozen other long-term policy memorandums outlining various pressing issues that will confront the new team and how Mr. Bush’s aides see the status of each of these issues as his presidency comes to a close.

The White House said the flurry of briefings and memorandums was meant to be helpful to the incoming administration, not an attempt to dictate to it, and members of the Obama team said they were taking it in that light.

“It’s a good-faith effort to provide potential information on some hot spots and some ideas about what they can do,” said Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman. “We just want to provide them, especially in the first few weeks, the basis for which they can have some information to make their decisions.”

If I were in the Obama transition team and had this offer on the table, I'd take a moment to think about the past eight years and say, "Yeah, you know what? We'll pass on the opportunity."

Recent Comments are Broken

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UPDATE: All fixed now. Thank you for your patience.

Run Away, Run Away!

An envelope with a powdery white substance, left in the capitol building's mail room, scares Carson City officials.

Initial field testing had showed positive results for anthrax, but a later laboratory test with more sophisticated equipment was negative for anthrax late Friday.

Gov. Jim Gibbons' spokesman Daniel Burns said Friday night that the substance was not considered dangerous.

"We treat these matters very, very seriously and these substances very seriously," he said.

A conclusive FBI test was pending late Friday.

An estimated 15 people were kept in a cordoned-off area while testing and precautionary decontamination efforts continued. They included KRNV News 4 TV reporter Lemor Shlomof, who had been reporting on the story before the area was determined to be possibly contaminated and taped off. She was kept in the quarantine area with the others but continued reporting on live TV by using her cellular phone to detail the unfolding events to viewers during the evening newscasts on the Reno station.

I'm always amused that they call this "quarantine" when they think it's anthrax, which is not in fact contagious. They could call it an "isolation area" maybe, or just "treatment" - but quarantine has  a very particular meaning - trying to keep other people from becoming sick. You can tell me, "well, they didn't know it was anthrax - it could have been another biological organism." Tell me what biological organism comes in a powder form. Biological organisms are generally too small for unaided vision to detect, and in general, they aren't dried for dissemination if a BW threat.

I look forward to the day when common sense will infiltrate the brains of emergency responders and they don't always assume white powder is an anthrax or ricin attack. But I suppose that day is far, far away.

Guns and Butter

DOD Buzz has an interesting article about the defense industrial base - that hungry creature that Congress loves to feed so much. The question is, is the American industrial base shriveling or just evolving? I don't particularly care for Loren Thompson, who seems to get quoted quite often for saying remarkably apparent things, but he has an interesting point here.

Thompson lists some deeply troubling data on the decline of American manufacturing. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, manufacturing made up nearly 25 percent of the economy, compared to 12 percent today. Today, one third of our manufactured goods come from overseas, versus a tenth in the 1970s. In the past eight years of the Bush administration, the U.S. share of global economic output dropped from 31 percent to 27 percent, while our merchandise trade deficit doubled to $800 billion. Those trends are driven by the erosion of domestic manufacturing and the auto industry is biggest component of that sector.

Thompson, who is no liberal, chides devotees to the Republican economic model that goes something like this: “deregulate everything and then stand back so the market can work its magic.” That model has presided over decline of the U.S. shipbuilding, electronics and steel industries and it’s about to work its magic on the auto industry. “We are destroying the foundation of our economy, not to mention the arsenal of democracy. If America loses what’s left of its auto industry, or its aerospace industry, or its chemical industry, our superpower status will ebb away,” Thompson writes.

America’s aerospace industry remains a global leader because the government shovels money into it to maintain the huge U.S. arsenal. “It gets a lot more money from taxpayers in a typical year than the auto industry is going to get from any federal bailout, and much of the aerospace sector would cease to exist in the absence of government support.” Its not that foreigners are better at manufacturing than we are, they’re just better at protecting their manufacturing base, Thompson says. In 1981, Reagan cancelled subsidies to commercial shipbuilders, by the end of his second term the industry had collapsed, now U.S. trade moves on foreign built ships.

It's a common tactic for Congress to declare particular defense items "must be produced in the United States" under the guise of national security, but often it's more job security. But it is interesting to suggest that the reason so much building has gone overseas is due to Republican deregulation, international company mergers, and the global market's reaction to sending the work to where the lowest labor wages are. But is this necessarily a bad thing? In this day of ruthless, international business, are we really going to see a European or Asian nation cut off critical defense components to US manufacturers just over differences in nations' foreign policies? I don't see it happening.

Certainly we do need to monitor the industrial base and decide where it makes sense to encourage US production of particular items. But maybe it's also time to consider a new development model, where international development of defense equipment is no longer feared (the AF tanker debate comes to mind) but expected. It may be a harbinger of things to come.

Gripes About Ungratious Iraqis

Occasionally, Small Wars Journal Blog departs from the sane and analytical evaluation of military issues and sounds off with a primal scream of disgust on what they perceive as unjust things. For instance, here's an inarticulate outcry against ungrateful Iraqis who support people who throw shoes at presidents.

Ain't this just dandy and a pisser to boot - those who have strived - and died - to ensure Iraq's freedom and future place as a responsible partner on the world scene are brushed aside for the latest bash Bush melodrama and a 'real hero' is on the scene - Iraqi who threw shoes at George Bush hailed as hero via The Times. Plenty on this elsewhere, on the dailies and wires - most likely more tomorrow - meanwhile back in the real word... People care, they die or suffer serious wounds, and their contributions are tossed aside for this. A damn shame it is, indeed.

It's an interesting argument - one that buys completely into the CheneyBush argument for the Iraqi invasion and justification for continued US force presence there. It's one that ignores the five years of US occupation, failed reconstruction efforts, Abu Gharib, sanctioned US torture, Iraqi civilians killed by US collateral damage, Gitmo, and a weak central government that hasn't pulled three factions together into a nation. It's pretty clear to many of us. Fortunately we have articulate people on the left, like Matt Yglesias, who can counter this short-sighted, myopic view.

The harsh reality is that this was not a noble undertaking done for good reasons. It was a criminal enterprise launched by madmen cheered on by a chorus of fools and cowards. And it’s seen as such by virtually everyone all around the world — including but by no means limited to the Arab world. But it’s impolitic to point this out in the United States, and it’s clear that even a president-elect who had the wisdom not to be suckered in by the War Fever of 2002 has no intention of really acting to marginalize the bad actors. Which, I think, makes sense for his political objectives. But if Americans want to play a constructive role in world affairs, it’s vitally important for us to get in touch with the reality of what the past eight years of US foreign policy have been and how they’re seen and understood by people who aren’t stirred by the shibboleths of American patriotism.

But hey, at least Saddam's not around, huh? Makes it all worth while - but not to the Iraqis who still haven't seen their standard of living return to pre-war levels. Because Cheney and Bush are so busy justifying their legacies, it's important to touch base with reality and remember why it's so important to correct the stupidity that got us into Iraq in 2003. Only then can we expect to move national security forward, because we can't count on the Washington elite to do their job.

SeaWorld - Source of Terrorist Chemicals?

Our great Department of Homeland Security is assessing SeaWorld Orlando to see if that theme park needs to tighten up its security of common industrial chemicals. You see, by current guidelines, SeaWorld could be a source of WMD materials for terrorists. Or something to that effect.

The parks do not have large stockpiles of dangerous chemicals in any one location, but they do have many scattered throughout their sprawling resorts for use in everything from disinfectants to fireworks.

SeaWorld, Disney and Universal were among more than 40,000 locations throughout the country that had to submit inventories of their on-site chemicals -- dubbed "top screens" -- to Homeland Security by January of this year. The department used those reports, along with factors ranging from the type of business to existing security procedures, to identify the most vulnerable targets.
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SeaWorld is now compiling its vulnerability assessment. The federal agency could drop the theme park from further scrutiny once that review is complete.

"Our reporting process with the Department of Homeland Security is currently ongoing," Bides said. "We are aware of the regulations and in full compliance."

I know that if I were a terrorist seeking out industrial chemicals, the first place I would consider is going to SeaWorld. But I suppose this is a great opportunity for government civilians to get some taxpayer-funded entertainment in Florida along with getting a little work done. What a waste of time and energy.

Seriously, though - I am sure physical security of potential hazardous chemicals is important, but it's something that ought to be handled at the state level. DHS ought to focus on the truly large stockpiles of hazardous chemicals, measured in tons, that could conceivably cause mass casualties. Maybe future DHS Secretary Janet Nepolitano will take a look at all of DHS's warts and bring some common sense into the agency.

The Pottery Barn Rule - Long-Term Effects

You may recall Gen (ret) Colin Powell's warning to President GW "Where Are the WMDs?" Bush in 2002 about Iraq - "You break it, you bought it." A recent report on the Iraq reconstruction - such that it was - puts an assessment on the cost of that item that Bush broke.

 In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ”

Mr. Powell’s assertion that the Pentagon inflated the number of competent Iraqi security forces is backed up by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of ground troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004.

Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.

The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed.

Yes, all the good deeds that we've always been told about - the repainted schools, the rebuilt hospitals - and at the end of the day, there's no real gain for the Iraqi people due to the aimless direction of the reconstruction and the rampant corruption of both US and Iraqi contractors. No wonder they're throwing shoes at the president. And of course, it we were to follow the desires of some, we'd keep spending billions on this bottomless money pit. Only five more weeks until responsible leadership comes into the federal government.

Cholera - Not a BW Threat

Robert Mugabe and his allies have made some rather bold statements about the outbreak of cholera in his country - he's suggesting that it was a deliberate release by the United Kingdom or other western country.

Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu described the outbreak as a "genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British".

On Thursday, Mr Mugabe said the spread of cholera had been halted.

But aid workers warned that the situation was worsening and the outbreak could last for months.

In his comments to media in Harare, Mr Ndlovu likened the appearance of cholera in Zimbabwe to a "serious biological chemical weapon" used by the British.

He described it as "a calculated, racist, terrorist attack on Zimbabwe".

Mr Mugabe has already accused Western powers of plotting to use cholera as an excuse to invade and overthrow him.

Yeah, I'm thinking... not so much. I don't think either the Soviet Union or United States ever weaponized cholera, so I'm guessing that the United Kingdom didn't either. It may have been researched as a potential BW agent, but generally, it's not easily disseminated, it's not lethal enough, and it's easily countered through good sanitation methods. It's a shame that Mugabe feels the need to shut out western aid that could easily save hundreds of lives.

Keep Our Ferris Wheels Safe from Nuclear Missiles

The Council for a Livable World alerted a few bloggers about this really great piece of propaganda from The Heritage Foundation. A number of Great Patriots want to alert you to the threat of ballistic nuclear missiles and how you MUST believe that only a robust national missile defense program can save our Ferris wheels. You'll see, just watch this short intro to the video.

The long version of the video is here. It really is too much. As the CLW notes, this is truly a blatant attempt to use fear as a tool to continue this $9-10 billion per year program. But don't just listen to us - listen to LTG (ret) Robert Gard:

Robert Joseph, a committed arms racer and intellectual heir to John Bolton, says early on in the video that "my number one concern today is a terrorist with a nuclear weapon."
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The problem, of course, is that missile defense won't stop nuclear terrorism. How exactly will missile defense interceptors in Europe stop a terrorist with a small nuclear explosive device from entering the United States through Canada? Or prevent a shielded nuclear device, invisible to cargo detectors, from being smuggled into a U.S. port aboard a ship? Missile defense, obviously, is useless against these kinds of terrorist attacks.

Second, Heritage is guilty of fear-mongering without supplying the appropriate facts and context. That is the height of irresponsibility. The video begins by stating that over 20 countries have a ballistic missile capability. Yet, as arms control expert Joseph Cirincione pointed out at a congressional hearing on missile defense earlier this year, nearly all countries that possess ballistic missiles today are allies of the United States and possess only short-range missiles that threaten their neighbors, not the American homeland.
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Third, Heritage praises missile defense for things it can't yet do. The reason for this boosterism is simple: missile defense is a theology, not a technology, for many conservatives. Gen. Obering claims that missile defense technology is so advanced that "we now are able to hit a spot on the bullet with a bullet." Later in the video, however, Kim Holmes confesses that "we do not have enough capability right now to do what we need to do." Well, which is it guys? Does the system work or doesn't it?

Just shameful - not just the heavy use of theatrics but the absolutely patronizing tone of the video's participants. Surely our conservative hawks can do better than this Hollywood fiction drama.

More Recommendations on Nuclear Weapons

We seem to be drowning in think tank reports on how to develop the US nuclear weapons strategy in the next administration. Here's the Center for Strategic and International Studies with another one. It's a little more balanced than your regular hawkish or dovish approaches.

The truly pressing nuclear issues that will demand presidential attention are few in number:

• Preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to more countries, including dealing with the nuclear proliferation threats of North Korea and Iran
•  Securing and reducing global inventories of nuclear weapons and materials to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorists
•  Reversing Russia’s apparent increasing reliance on nuclear weapons in its security policy through strategic engagement in an attempt to both prevent the emergence of a new 21st-century nuclear threat and gain Russian agreement to significantly lower U.S.- Russian stockpiles”

The commitment of the president-elect to a vision of a nuclear-free world, and the continuing need to have a credible U.S. nuclear deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist, provide the basis for a 21st-century version of a dual track nuclear arms control and refurbishment/updating policy:

• The United States must re-establish its global leadership in nuclear nonproliferation, arms control and disarmament matters.

AND IN PARALLEL

• The United States must ensure a credible nuclear deterrent for as long as is needed through steps that include continuing to refurbish and update its nuclear stockpile and infrastructure as necessary without creating any new nuclear weapon capabilities.

Submitted for your review. It's not bad - at least no one is calling for eliminating the nuclear stockpile right away. It's a vision, not an immediate goal.

Silly People Generalize About Terrorist WMDs

Virginia's Roanoke Times editorial page theorizes on what might happen if one combines the Mumbai terrorists and the threat that the Graham-Talent WMD Commission say exists. Lots of imagination here.

The devastating attack on Mumbai, India, should remind the world that, despite lengthy lulls, terrorists somewhere constantly are preparing to wreak devastating violence on some new target.

Add to the Mumbai tragedy the urgency of a study, commissioned last year by Congress, that concludes the odds are better than even that terrorists will use a weapon of mass destruction somewhere in the world before 2013.

Together, events suggest that as soon as president-elect Barack Obama takes office, he should put whatever good will his election engendered in the rest of the world to press for global consensus to stop the spread of nuclear and biological weapons.
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No one can doubt that terrorists would use weapons of mass destruction if they could get them. And no country in the world should feel immune from the threat. One warning to be taken from Mumbai: If as few as 10 people armed with conventional weapons could sustain a bloody attack for three days to the heart of a major city, a few terrorists armed with tactical nuclear weapons could pose an existential threat.

Yes, no doubt, and if a few terrorists take over NORAD's headquarters in Cheyenne Mountain, the world may be in an existential threat from US ballistic missiles. Fortunately we don't live in the world that the Roanoke makes out, a world where terrorists roam freely planning acts of perfidy and nations stand helpless and terrified. Terrorist groups don't exactly have easy access or resources to obtain/build nuclear weapons. That's why they stick to simple things - small arms and explosives - that work very well (as seen in Mumbai). The only thing worse than WMD commissions are the media embellishing their stories.

We do need to work with nations to ensure that nuclear weapons remained secure, that progress on reducing the number of nuclear weapons follows as nuclear energy programs flourish. But the cure to reducing terrorist WMD incidents is to reduce the terrorists through law enforcement and intelligence work (as opposed to DOD Wars on Terror) and to control fissile material (which we aren't doing as long as Yucca Mountain's nuclear waste repository isn't open). It's not that hard, but it does take a commitment from the White House to get the executive agencies energized. Then President Obama can get back to addressing the many, many other domestic and foreign challenges that require immediate action.

US Chem Demil Timeline

Most of you may not really get excited by this post, but the US Army Chemical Materials Agency released this timeline of historical events. It's not bad, but I think it misses a few things in the interests of not resurrecting old controversies. Here's a short summary.

• 1972 - The Army forms the US Army Material Command's Program Manager for Demilitarization of Chemical Material.
• 1979 - The Army constructs and begins operating the Chemical Agent Munition Disposal System.
• 1985 - Public Law 99-145 requires the safe destruction of the US unitary chemical weapon stockpile and authorizes the production of binary chemical weapons. This law creates the Army Program Manager for Chemical Munitions (Demil and Binary).
• 1986 - The Army issues its draft Program Environmental Impact Statement, which was (to say the least) controversial in its suggestion of moving large numbers of chemical munitions across country as a cost-saving option.
• 1990 - Disposal operations begin at Johnston Atoll Chemical Disposal System. Work begins at Tooele for the second disposal plant. Congress mandates that Tooele has to be designed based on identifying what went wrong at Johnston Atoll. That and the federal lawsuits slow things up.
• 1991 - The Army formally ends its production of binary chemical munitions.
• 1992 - Congress orders the Army to investigate "alternative technologies" to incineration for the remaining four disposal facilities.
• 1993 - The Army starts its Non-Stockpile Chemical Munitions project. This addresses the chemical munitions that are discovered outside of the eight US stockpiles.
• 1996 - Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility starts destroying chemical weapons.
• 1997 - The US Government signs the Chemical Weapons Convention. Construction begins at Anniston and Umatilla for disposal plants. Congress, rattled that the Army is actually moving out on incineration against the wishes of a few extremist critics, forces the Army to start the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives (ACWA) project.
• 2000 - The Army completes disposal operations at Johnston Atoll - only six years over schedule. Well, it was the first one; lessons were learned.
• 2001 - The NYC/Pentagon attacks force Congress to consider that they're not considering the need for a more timely disposal schedule. As a result, they push the Army to move faster on Aberdeen and Newport.
• 2003 - Operation "Speedy Neut" starts at Aberdeen and Newport to quicken the disposal process - speedy being a relative term here.
• 2006 - Big year. The OPCW verifies that chemical waste from Aberdeen is destroyed at DuPont's facility in New Jersey (yes, the same one that caused so much trouble for Newport's chemical waste). The DOD asks for a five-year extension to the CWC deadline of 2007 (that's left out of the CMA brochure).

As I said, not all of you will care about this, but it is an interesting "official" history that ought not offend anyone. But there is a back story. Important thing is to note that yes, we have been doing chemical weapons disposal for some time - it's not new, and it's not scarey.

Casual Fridays

If you haven't watched the Fox television show "Fringe," let me suggest it to you. I've watched the first season through, and it has really been entertaining. The cast is solid and believable, the plots are good, and it's not unlike "X-Files" - but perhaps even better. Its numbers have been dropping, and I am at a loss to understand why.

The show is true science fiction, in the sense that it takes scientific phenomena and stretches it beyond the norm. Add some quirky characters and good writing, and you get a damn good show. One of the latter shows featured a chemical hallucinogenic gas that caused a person to imagine being killed, and then his body (believing the effect) was hurt accordingly. The icing on the cake, however, was when the show's star, FBI Agent Olivia Dunham, charged one of the conspirators with possession and use of a WMD under Title 18. As much as I hate that Title, I admire the show's research. 

New shows of "Fringe" start up again in January - help keep it on the air and let's boost the show's number of viewers. Fox has a bad habit of killing good shows very early in their development ("Firefly," "Keen Eddie," etc.). I would also highly recommend the LA detective show "Life" with Band of Brothers star Damian Lewis. It's not in trouble, I just really like that show. Good stuff.

We're Number One!

The New American Foundation has a report out called "US Weapons At War 2008: Beyond the Bush Legacy." Let's find out more:

The United States, which entered into over $23 billion in Foreign Military Sales (FMS) agreements in fiscal year (FY) 2007 and $32 billion in FY 2008 (see table 1), is the world's largest arms supplier. U.S. exports range from combat aircraft to Pakistan, Morocco, Greece, Romania, and Chile to small arms and light weapons to the Philippines, Egypt, and Georgia. In 2006 and 2007, the United States sold weapons to over 174 states and territories, a significant increase from the beginning of the Bush administration when the number of U.S. arms clients stood at 123. While many of these sales were relatively small deals licensed commercially by the State Department, a number of important new states were added or restored to the U.S. client list, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, East Timor, Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan.
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U.S. arms and military training played a role in 20 of the world's 27 major wars in 2006/07 (see table 6). The dollar value of U.S. weapons transfers and weapons orders destined for zones of conflict during that two-year period was $11.2 billion. The biggest recipients were Pakistan ($3.7 billion), Turkey ($3.0 billion), Israel ($2.1 billion), Iraq ($1.4 billion), and Colombia ($575 million). Nations receiving less than $5 million in transfers included Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Uganda, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Haiti. But since the figures in table 6 include only transfers under the Pentagon's Foreign Military Sales program, these relatively modest numbers do not represent the full scope of security assistance provided to these nations (for example, see our profile of Nigeria).

The Bush legacy, spreading democracy and freedom all over the globe - from the point of a gun.

U-$-A! U-$-A! U-$-A!

Left for Dead Review

From The Escapist blog, this review of Left for Dead will amuse both those who have played the game and those of you who have just heard about it, but haven't tried it yet. It is a great stress-reliever and lots of fun.

Note, I couldn't get the Escapist review to embed correctly for some reason, so I'm trying this youtube clip that shows a number of the specialized zombies. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Ohhhh, my. Escapist reports that spies and engineers will get upgrades in Team Fortress 2. Time to pause my GTA4 playing.

Chemical Waste Disposal in Kentucky

You may recall about a month ago, I was talking about the Army's "Operation Swift Solution" in which three leaking ton-containers containing  GB nerve agent were going to be emptied, the agent neutralized, and the waste shipped to Texas for final treatment. Well, seems as if everything is going smoothly, much to the chagrin of the Army's chem demil critics. But leave it to the Richmond Register to talk about the critics as if they were resistance fighters in WW2 France...

Approximately 8,000 gallons of GB (Sarin) neutralized waste will be sent from the Blue Grass Army Depot to Port Arthur, Texas, in late January or February following a recent federal ruling in favor of the Army.
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Through education, public protest, political action and litigation, the citizens argued that moving such materials across the country to be burned in an already pollution burdened community was not acceptable. However, a federal judge ruled in favor of the Army, and before the opposition groups could appeal the decision, the last of the shipments was sent to the Veolia facility in Port Arthur for incineration.

Now, however, special circumstances have caused these same groups to reluctantly accept a small amount of GB (Sarin) hydrolysate from the storage site at the depot. The Indiana waste totaled almost 2 million gallons, while the Kentucky liquids will be in the neighborhood of 8,000 gallons — or about 2 ISO (transport) containers, compared to almost 400 from Indiana.

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“This course of action (hydrolysate shipment to Texas) is not intended to set a precedent in any way with respect to the secondary waste generated by the Blue Grass Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant,” said Kevin Flamm, program manager for the Army’s disposal program in Kentucky.

That disposal plant will include a separate treatment capability to handle the neutralized materials from their stores of GB, VX and Mustard agent when operations begin.

There's a number of factual errors in this article, chief of which is main critic Craig Williams's assertion that disposal operations will start in 2015. That isn't going to happen, based on the current construction schedule. I believe operations are to start in 2017, if everything goes according to plan (and that hasn't been a real strong point of the chem demil program, due to interference by Congress and these frivolous lawsuits). And I don't think the decision has been made yet to include a secondary waste treatment facility at Blue Grass - although, as Mr. Flamm notes, this emergency process, while brilliantly successful, is not an indication that the Army will not put a waste treatment capability in place. After all, those Kentucky patriots deserve all the federal pork that Mitch McConnell can get to them.