Armchair Generalist

Casual Fridays

Zombie humor, hat tip to E.B. Misfit.

It's A Horrible Name

But I still wants it, my precious. (Vid - MAD TV, 2006)

The President's SOTU Speech

The president spoke on national security issues last night (this text from an earlier press release):

As we take the fight to al Qaeda, we are responsibly leaving Iraq to its people. As a candidate, I promised that I would end this war, and that is what I am doing as President. We will have all of our combat troops out of Iraq by the end of this August. We will support the Iraqi government as they hold elections, and continue to partner with the Iraqi people to promote regional peace and prosperity. But make no mistake: this war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home.

Tonight, all of our men and women in uniform -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world - must know that they have our respect, our gratitude, and our full support. And just as they must have the resources they need in war, we all have a responsibility to support them when they come home. That is why we made the largest increase in investments for veterans in decades. That is why we are building a 21st century VA. And that is why Michelle has joined with Jill Biden to forge a national commitment to support military families.

Even as we prosecute two wars, we are also confronting perhaps the greatest danger to the American people - the threat of nuclear weapons. I have embraced the vision of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan through a strategy that reverses the spread of these weapons, and seeks a world without them. To reduce our stockpiles and launchers, while ensuring our deterrent, the United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades. And at April's Nuclear Security Summit, we will bring forty-four nations together behind a clear goal: securing all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world in four years, so that they never fall into the hands of terrorists.

These diplomatic efforts have also strengthened our hand in dealing with those nations that insist on violating international agreements in pursuit of these weapons. That is why North Korea now faces increased isolation, and stronger sanctions - sanctions that are being vigorously enforced. That is why the international community is more united, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated. And as Iran's leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: they, too, will face growing consequences. 

That is the leadership that we are providing - engagement that advances the common security and prosperity of all people. We are working through the G-20 to sustain a lasting global recovery. We are working with Muslim communities around the world to promote science, education and innovation. We have gone from a bystander to a leader in the fight against climate change. We are helping developing countries to feed themselves, and continuing the fight against HIV/AIDS. And we are launching a new initiative that will give us the capacity to respond faster and more effectively to bio-terrorism or an infectious disease - a plan that will counter threats at home, and strengthen public health abroad.

Nothing really extraordinary here, other than that President Obama announced most of these goals earlier last year, and he meant it. He's making good progress on national security issues, and he's focusing on nuclear and biological weapons. But best of all, he's pulling our combat troops out of Iraq. That will be a good day - but he's mincing words. There will still be US military forces in Iraq, he just isn't calling them "combat forces." The combat goes on in Afghanistan, and it would have been nice for him to announce an end-state for that conflict. Too soon, I guess. He had better announce one at the next SOTU address.

As promised by the White House, the speechwriters snuck a line into the speech about responding to bioterrorist incidents. What does this mean? Hard to say right now, but based on past statements by the DHHS secretary, it probably means "helping" Big Pharma with tax breaks and subsidies to develop new drug manufacturing processes. I hate to say it, but this is at least partially because of the relentless grind and publicity of the Graham-Talent comedy act and their backers in the Alliance for Biosecurity. Well, you can't win them all. I just hope they don't dodge too many FDA regulations when they do it. They need to fix the FDA, build it up, not bypass it. 

Oh yeah, he also called for the end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." The camera panned to the military service chiefs then, who looked just thrilled... It was a great speech, but we already knew he was a great talker. Time to walk the walk now. 

Europe's Reinforcements to Afghanistan

 The Washington Post notes that the NATO-promised reinforcements are not coming in the numbers that its Secretary General had suggested he had as promises from European nations. 

On Tuesday, Germany said it would send 500 reinforcements to Afghanistan, disappointing U.S. officials, who had been pressing Berlin for at least three times that number. German officials, facing stiff domestic opposition to the war, said they would instead double their development aid to Afghanistan and begin withdrawing soldiers in 2011.

"We have nothing to be ashamed of," Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin. "It was not the case that the Americans asked us what we wanted to do, but rather we determined ourselves what we intend to do." 

Local politics rule. American planners were hoping for 2000 additional German forces - but only 500 troops will actually be deployed for a long term, because that tops the limit that the German government mandated. Another 350 reservists will be available for limited deployments, on a case-by-case basis. And I understand this. Germany's federal budget is tight, as are the budgets in other European nations. It's an unpopular war, and none of the European nations are increasing their defense budgets - as the United States does every year. I'm thinking this is going to be the same pattern for France, Britain, and the other nations. 

Really Disappointing

Since when did NTI's Global Security Newswire become a subsidiary of the Faux News Channel?

From GSN:

Obama Administration Gets an “F” for Bioterrorism Defense
Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2010
 
By Martin Matishak

Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON -- The United States has made little to no progress toward fully adopting an effective strategy to confront the threat of biological terrorism, a congressionally chartered panel of experts said today (see GSN, Jan. 19). ...
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Graham announced that he and Talent would soon stand up a nonprofit entity to continue their work. Tentatively dubbed the Bipartisan Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism Research Center, the organization would issue another report next year, he said.

From Faux News:

Obama Gets 'F' on Stopping Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction

By Judith Miller - FOXNews.com

In a 19-page report card being published Tuesday, the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism gives the Obama administration an "F" for failing to take key steps the commission outlined just over a year ago in its initial report. ...
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Having been extended for one more year of work in 2009, the 9-member WMD Commission is disbanding after issuing this final report card. But staff members said that its chairman and vice-chairman intend to form a non-profit organization to continue pressing the government to do more to counter WMD threats.

Really disappointing, Martin. You can do so much better than to copy headlines and format used by Judy Miller. But I have to say, I didn't notice before that the Graham-Talent comedy team is going to continue haranguing us with their inarticulate and misleading reports. I wonder who is going to be funding their non-profit...

Neocon Idealism Versus Reality

SHORTER Robert Kagan: "Obama should challenge Iran's regime just like Reagan challenged the Soviet Union. Then Iran's government will collapse and everyone will have ponies. It's really that simple."

Yeah. Sure it is. I think it's a bit more complicated than what Bob suggests.

Obama's Reaction to the G-T Report

At the Washington Post, Joby Warrick does little more than repeat former senators' Graham and Talent assessment of the US government's preparedness for a terrorist WMD incident. But he does add the reaction of the Obama administration to the assessment.

Within hours of the report's release, the Obama administration revealed plans to fill gaps in the nation's public health defenses with a series of initiatives to be announced in Wednesday's State of the Union address. The proposals, which administration officials said had been in the works well before the report's findings were known, will seek to speed up delivery of drugs in the event of a major attack, addressing one of the principal shortcomings identified by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism.

President Obama's speech will include a "call to action" to various government leaders to redesign the way medical countermeasures are mass produced, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said. "The goal is a national capability for the rapid, reliable and affordable production of an array of medical countermeasures against public health threats."

The Obama administration isn't exactly unaware of the threat of bioterrorism, and in a way, it views the threat as seriously as the Bush administration did. Whether that's appropriate or not, well, let's leave that to another day to discuss. But the Obama administration has had its NSC reviewing the former administration's efforts since its 2004 "Biodefense for the 21st Century" strategy, and it released its own intent to build upon that strategy with its own "National Strategy to Counter Biological Threats." And, as Robert Gibbs noted at the White House press brief, Obama isn't exactly new in this area.

And part of what the President will announce tomorrow, of that review that led to the executive order, is to launch an initiative aimed at responding faster and more effectively to those public health threats.  All of that -- the administration is proud of the efforts that we've undertaken to put our nation on a far firmer footing in dealing with these.

And understand this -- when it comes to dealing with weapons of mass destruction writ large, particularly nuclear capabilities, going back to the President's time in the Senate -- quite frankly, going back to a relationship that started with Senator Lugar from Indiana prior to being sworn in -- an effort to expand off of the successful Nunn-Lugar program to dispose of nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union to create a program to similarly destroy weapons on the conventional side.  And as you know, the President has outlined a plan to get all loose nuclear material contained over a four-year period of time, and in April will host 43 nations in a nuclear security summit in order to make sure that those promises are made real.

I will continue to state that our government's reaction to the threat of CBRN terrorism is way overblown as compared to many other natural disasters and other man-caused accidents and incidents resulting in death in this country. But let's understand that the Obama administration is doing more than the former administration, and certainly the United States is not at any greater risk today than it was a year ago. But I guess Warrick missed that point.

Graham and Talent Get an "F" on their Assessment

This should not come as an unexpected surprise, but former senators Bob Graham (D-FL) and Jim Talent (R-MO) have decided that the government has not done enough to prepare itself for the threat of bioterrorism, amongst other homeland security issues. They released a "report card" based on the recommendations of their 2008 report, "World at Risk." From CNN:

"Nearly a decade after September 11, 2001, one year after our original report, and one month after the Christmas Day bombing attempt, the United States is failing to address several urgent threats, especially bioterrorism," said former Sen. Bob Graham, chairman of the commission.

"Each of the last three administrations has been slow to recognize and respond to the biothreat. But we no longer have the luxury of a slow learning curve, when we know al Qaeda is interested in bioweapons," Graham said.

"The assessment is not a good one, particularly in the area of biological threats," the report by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism said.

"While the government has made progress on preventing such attacks, it is simply not paying consistent and urgent attention to the means of responding quickly and effectively so that they no longer constitute a threat of mass destruction," the report said.

Now I just have to tell you what a load of horseshit that this assessment represents, but first I'm going to have to mock the two former statesmen. It's not only that they are over exaggerating the threat of CBRN terrorism; it's that they just don't seem to know that much when they are talking candidly about the topic, especially when they're talking to a journalist who doesn't know the issues. Take this report from NPR just this past Sunday:

RAZ: Let me start with you, Senator Graham. Your prediction about the possibility of a chemical or biological weapon being unleashed by a terror group before 2013, do you believe that threat has diminished somewhat?

Mr. GRAHAM: No. We found in 2008 that the threat had been growing over the preceding years, and I believe it has grown further in 2009. Factors like the increasing sophistication of the organization of al-Qaida, the increasing access to the materials necessary for a nuclear but particularly a biological weapon, access to those persons with the skill level to convert pathogens into a weapon, have all grown in the past 12 months.

RAZ: How do we know that these organizations could easily obtain and weaponize biological agents and maybe even possibly release them inside the United States?

Mr. GRAHAM: Well, we got our source of information as to capabilities largely from our intelligence agencies who have found a pattern of laboratories and scientists under the control of terrorist organizations who are working towards achieving what has been a long stated objective of those organizations, which is to have a weapon of mass destruction.
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RAZ: What would be the one thing that the government could do fairly quickly and easily immediately to begin to address some of your concerns, Senator Talent?

Mr. TALENT: I'd love to see the president set a goal of being completely prepared for the likely bioweapons within a reasonable period of time, you know, three to five years. If you could do that in the top 25 cities, you could take bioweapons really off the list of weapons of mass destruction, and I think it's fully doable.

Okay, first of all, Mr. Graham, I would directly challenge you to show how the threat of a nuclear or biological threat has grown over the last 12 months due to increased access to weapon-grade material. I strongly doubt that there are any intel agencies who will agree on the record that there is "a pattern of laboratories and scientists under the control of terrorist organizations." That's just insane gibberish, unfounded and unsupported. No legitimate analyst in the community would state that as a fact. The usual statement is that, given the increase in technology and availability of information about how to make nuclear and biological weapons, there could be an increased risk that a terrorist group might develop such a capability. But to suggest that somehow things have gotten worse in the last year? Ridiculous.

And Mr. Talent, here's a news bulletin. Since 2004, more than 30 cities have had BioWatch sensors emplaced to provide early warning of biological warfare agents. And while I'm no fan of BioWatch, that seems to be more than 25 cities. DHS won't tell us which cities, but I'm guessing that the 30+ cities include the 25 most populated. And let's not forget the national stockpile and the national laboratory network from by DHHS and CDC. The lack of H1N1 vaccine stockpiles is NOT an indication of the nation's ability to respond to a bioterrorist incident, Mr. Talent, since we were using the vaccine as it was coming off the line. We're much better off than the condition that these Cassandras are describing.

As shameful as the Graham-Talent comedy act is, the Faux News Channel gets the Razzie award for worst news coverage of this topic by stating that the G-T report card is an assessment of the Obama administration's efforts. Even though Mr. Graham clearly stated that he was judging the past three administrations' efforts, Judy "I See WMDs" Miller decided that this was all on Obama's watch. Just really disingenuous, but should we expect any less from Ms. Miller and Faux News?

To review my assessment of the G-T report card, read below the jump.

It's Just Business

Spencer Ackerman's a little upset about the current discussions about the defense program. First he is shocked, shocked to discover that Democratic-appointed senior defense officials talk about acquisition policy the same way as Republican-appointed senior defense officials. I am much less shocked - the bureaucracy has a rhythm with Congress, it's expected that defense officials make noises like this. It's all about the game, playah - don't hate the playah, hate the game.

Then Spence finds this great CSBA report that discusses the past decade in defense spending, which hopes to inform the people who are going to be examining the Quadrennial Defense Review and trying to build the FY 2012- 2017 Program Objective Memorandum (POM). Ackerman doesn't like the combat plane procurement profile.

You see that bright green line? The one at the top? The one that’s way higher than all its colorful competitors? That represents procurement funding for combat aircraft.

Has it sunk in yet?

It’s only a slight exaggeration to say we don’t use combat aircraft in the wars we’re fighting. You have to come up with a baroque set of Michael Bey-esque geopolitical calculations by which we would use combat aircraft in any conceivable war. The U.S.’s area of combat-aircraft dominance is called Planet Earth. No Air Force is going to challenge ours. No actual U.S. adversary has an air force, and the list of real-potential U.S. adversaries that do starts with Iran and ends with North Korea, neither of which are remotely stupid enough to test us in the air. The most likely scenario for using combat aircraft in a U.S. war is an alien invasion.

What is relevant to the wars we fight are (a) remotely-piloted aircraft like drones, (b) surveillance aircraft like drones, (c) helicopters, and (d) especially airlift, to get our ground troops from Point A to Point B. And as you can see from the chart, we don’t spend nearly on that stuff what we spend on combat aircraft.

But by all means, freeze spending on school lunch programs and Head Start and shit like that.

He's absolutely correct that the Obama administration's decision to not freeze defense spending in his upcoming budget discussions i's not logical, but it's not insane. It's a normal, predictable response from a politician who knows that the Republicans would rather have a crippled, bloated defense program that they know is out of control and out of proportion to national interests than to admit that the defense acquisition program needs fixing. And it's just so entertaining for Republicans to baselessly accuse Democrats of being "weak on security" when the Dems are interested in fixing our distorted national security profile.

Misreading History

The USA Today talks to some Marines in Haiti who believe they are doing the right thing, but I suggest that they're misreading their history lessons - and that's abnormal for Marine officers.

Ado, 63, was among dozens of Haitians who watched the massive hovercraft Friday on a beachhead established by U.S. Marines who arrived off the coast last week. Since arriving, The Marines have moved tons of food and water ashore for aid groups to carry away in trucks to survivors of the Haiti earthquake Jan. 12.

It's not the Marines' first time in Haiti. Troops were here in 2004 to prevent massacres in the wake of the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Haiti is a major part of Marine Corps lore for other reasons.

The Corps governed Haiti from 1915 to 1934 after an invasion force was sent to prevent an anti-American dictator from assuming power. Young, non-commissioned officers governed Haiti with little supervision.

The Marines were reminded of that history as they prepared for the Haiti mission, said Lt. Col. Gary Keim, who commands a logistics battalion.

"We were required to reread it," he said. "We've been here before. We've been successful before." 

Okay, slow down there. The Marines were controlling Haiti for two decades to shape its government, and still we have a long history there of dictators leading up to "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Then we have the 1994 and 2004 interventions - which did include just a few Army troops, USA Today - and still there was no stable government in place, no corrective actions, no long-term guidance or aid to fix Haiti's inherent problems. Exactly how have we been "successful" here before? We're applying band-aids to a nation with a compound fracture.

I don't point this out to malign the military's disaster relief operations - certainly Haiti would be much worse off without this American aid. But here's the thing - if we haven't figured out that the DOD is not a uniform cure for every foreign policy problem by now, well, then we really have a problem here. We really need to examine how the State Department, USAID, and other non-defense agencies organize and equip to address issues such as this incident. We really need them to be in charge and to establish strong programs that actually promote long-term support for those governments looking for assistance. The military may be part of the solution, but it doesn't need to lead nation-building efforts. We've let that practice go on too long, and it's not working.

Terrorism Experts Can Be Alarmists, Too

Yesterday, I took a swipe at a couple of scientists who usually do analysis of WMD programs for states, when they decided to assess the dangers of Botox and blew the danger out of proportion. Today, I'll flip the coin and point a finger at a respected terrorism expert who wants to conflate al Qaeda's interest in CBRN hazards into a national security threat - which it isn't. Well, let's say we ought to be concerned, but the report is actually a good collection of research that (to me) actually makes the case against him. This in the Boston Globe:

A new research paper by a retired Central Intelligence Agency officer assesses years of work by Al Qaeda terrorists to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and to devise the deadliest ways to put them to use.

The study, published today, is by Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government. Mowatt-Larssen retired last year after a career including service as Director of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the U.S. Department of Energy, and before that 23 years as a CIA intelligence officer in various domestic and international posts.

He provides a detailed chronology of relentless efforts by Al Qaeda from 1988 to 2003 to get and use chemical and biological weapons including ricin and anthrax, and, most worrying, nuclear weapons. Most of the details he cites have been reported before, but Mowatt-Larssen assembles the evidence in a fashion that leaves little doubt that Al Qaeda operatives would not hesitate to launch attacks that could kill tens or even hundreds of thousands of Americans if they could pull off such an attack. 

Actually, there's a lot of doubt that al Qaeda would have the talent, opportunity, and skills to develop NBC weapons into a capability that would cause any level of mass casualties, and again, I'd say read the report - it pretty much explains itself. First of all, the foreword was written by Graham Allison, and if there's ever been someone who exaggerated the potential for nuclear terrorism, he's the one I would pick. The report covers 1988-2003, a broad spectrum of time, but certainly not reflective of what al Qaeda could do today. Still, it's illustrative by its examples.

You find the famous bin Laden 1998 quote about WMDs, references from George "slam dunk" Tenet's book on al Qaeda intentions and actions in the desert, meetings between Muslim scientists and suppliers, statements by terrorists that were obtained under "interrogations," and yes, even Jose Padilla's "dirty bomb" -  a charge which people may remember the US government dropped because it had no evidence on this point. And no discussion about AQ would be complete without the "mobtaker" device that never really emerged in any plot against the West. That is to say, we have a collection of weak evidence of intent without any feasible capability and zero WMD incidents - over a period of fifteen years, when AQ was at the top of their game, they could not develop even a crude CBRN hazard, let alone a WMD capability.

Mowatt-Larsen doesn't attempt to answer the obvious question - why didn't AQ develop this capability by now? He points to a June 2003 article where the Bush administration reported to the UN Security Council that there was a "high probability" that al Qaeda would attack with a WMD within two years. The point that the Bush administration could have been creating a facade for its invasion into Iraq must have occurred to Mowatt-Larsen, but he dodges the issue. This is an important report to read, but not for the purposes that the author intended. It demonstrates the extremely thin thread that so many terrorist experts and scientists hang on when they claim that terrorists are coming straight at the United States with WMD capabilities.

And of course, Joby Warrick at the WaPo has to give in to the alarmists - again. Come back tomorrow when we get to talk about the Graham-Talent comedy team releasing their report card today on the upcoming bioterrorist incidents and our current "vulnerabilities."

UPDATE: Once again, George Smith has my back and offers valuable discourse on the issue.

"White Powder" Incident Goes Bad

Also in yesterday's Washington Post, the story about a TSA trainer who decided to play a prank on a passenger going through airport security. Just not funny at all...

Rebecca Solomon, 22, a University of Michigan student, wrote in a column for her campus newspaper that she was having her bags screened on Jan. 5 before her flight to Detroit when the employee stopped her, reached into her laptop computer bag and pulled out the plastic bag, demanding to know where she had gotten the powder.

In the Jan. 10 column for the Michigan Daily, she recounted how she struggled to come up with an explanation, wondering if it was bomb-detonating material slipped in by a terrorist or drugs put there by a smuggler.

"He let me stutter through an explanation for the longest minute of my life," Solomon wrote. "Tears streamed down my face as I pleaded with him to understand that I'd never seen this baggie before." A short time later, she said, the worker smiled and said it was his.

The worker "waved the baggie at me and told me he was kidding, that I should've seen the look on my face," she said. 

People keep forgetting about the other "white powder" - cocaine - but really, just uncool. You know, people talk about why TSA doesn't train their employees to do profiling like the Israeli security does for its airports. I think the answer is pretty clear. They really aren't that high caliber in the execution of their duties. Not really a good idea to expect them to be all "secret agent" men.

BioThreat Alarmists Have Teh Stupidz

It's always annoying to have newspapers circulate these ridiculous alarmist articles about terrorism, and bioterrorism is the current flavor of the year. So we're just going to have to embarrass the Washington Post (if its editors and journalists can still feel shame) as to its latest "expose" on bioterrorism - notably the threat of illegal bot tox laboratories. Follow me down this rabbit hole.

Al-Qaeda is known to have sought botulinum toxin. The Lebanese Hezbollah movement, which the United States has designated a terrorist organization, and other groups have bought and sold counterfeit drugs to raise cash. Now, with the emergence of a global black market for fake Botox, terrorism experts see an opportunity for a deadly convergence.

"It is the only profit-making venture for terrorists that can also potentially yield a weapon of mass destruction," said Kenneth Coleman, a physician and biodefense expert.

Last year, Coleman and fellow researcher Raymond Zilinskas set out to test whether militant groups could easily exploit the counterfeit Botox network to obtain materials for a bioterrorism attack. In a project sponsored by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, two scientists found that a biologist with a master's degree and $2,000 worth of equipment could easily make a gram of pure toxin, an amount equal to the weight of a small paper clip but enough, in theory, to kill thousands of people.

Now here's the first indication that this is a bogus article - a physician who claims to have insight on terrorist capabilities and intent. Both Coleman and Zilinskas come from the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, though, and they ought to know better than to float this idiotic idea. Botox for cosmetics has been around for, what, five years now? And we've never seen a terrorist bot tox hit yet. These guys are used to talking about nation-state WMD programs, not WMD terrorism - but hey, it's all the same when you talk about WMD, right?

"In theory," a gram of pure toxin could kill thousands, but few terrorists are willing to parse out the micrograms per dose that is the minimum lethal dose for an adult. While botulinum toxin was developed by the United States and Russia as a biological warfare agent, it is a very poor mass casualty agent due to its inability to be effectively transmitted as an aerosol. It's best used as an assassination tool. Eventually the article gets around to telling you this. And then there's the point of the amount of bot tox in each vial - again, the article does admit that it would take some amount of work to actually get that gram of toxin.

"Each vial contains a minuscule amount of the actual toxin, a naturally occurring nerve agent secreted by a kind of bacterium called Clostridium botulinum. The amount of poison in a prescribed dose is so small that a determined terrorist would have to obtain hundreds of vials at $400 each to kill even a single person, bioterrorism experts say.

It may be that there are people out there peddling this stuff on the black market, and that terrorists could, if they really wanted to, get this toxin and eventually create enough to cause a lethal dose for a few people. But here's the call for reason - if all you're doing is getting a lethal dose so that you have to literally walk up and jab the victim with a needle to inject the toxin, why not just use a knife or a gun? Is the intent to "terrorize" others that they might die from a BW agent instead of by a violent encounter with a gun or knife? It's really ridiculous. But then again, the investigators are scientists, not terrorist experts. You can't expect them to live in the cold world of reality.

UPDATE: Cheryl Rofer agrees. George Smith lays out the real challenges of botox industry, which the WaPo journalist missed.

Reforming the DOD Budget

 Our defense budget continues to spiral out of control. While Congress debates cutting entitlements and health care, it never seems to occur to its members that there are ways to cut back on the military budget. Fortunately, we have Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives to outline the problem and suggest ways out of the morass that we're in. 

Since 1998 the Pentagon has spent more than $6.5 trillion. More than $2 trillion of this sum was above the levels set in 1998. But only half of the $2 trillion in added funds was for recent wars and military operations. Among other things, the surge in spending has allowed the Defense Department to re-inflate its workforce to Cold War levels. And almost all the expansion is contractor labor.

These are among the findings of two 18 January reports on the dynamics of recent defense spending from the Project on Defense Alternatives, a small think tank with offices in the Washington area and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

According to the reports, the boost in spending after 1998 is unmatched over a nearly 60-year period, edging out both the Reagan and the Kennedy-Johnson spending hikes. And the Obama administration, in a move likely to confound critics and supporters alike, plans to spend more on the Pentagon than any administration since 1948.

"The recent wars are only half the story," says author Carl Conetta, "And their high price tag raises as many questions as it answers." The report finds the recent wars to have cost $792,000 per deployed person per year, while the Vietnam war cost only $256,000 per person per year in today’s dollars.

Part of the reason for the relatively higher cost of current wars is that the United States today relies on an expensive professional military, rather than a conscript one. The cost-structure of today’s military is not well-suited to protracted, labor-intensive wars, concludes the report. Related to this, the proportion of private contractors used in today’s wars is five times higher than during the Vietnam war. Also adding to costs, DoD equipment purchases in the decade before the wars focused too heavily on the legacy systems favored by the services and on long-range strike weapons. So a new round of buying was needed to support counter-insurgency operations.

The reports find that DoD has been generally lax in setting priorities among contending acquisition programs. But the most serious problem cited in the studies was the adoption of ambitious new roles, missions, and strategies for a reduced military after the Cold War ended. A variety of reform and transformation efforts were supposed to make it possible for a smaller military to do more. But these efforts fell short of their promise. So costs rose with ambitions.

Since the mid-1990s, the Pentagon has turned increasingly to private contractors to help fill the gap between ambitious strategies and the available number of military personnel. The report finds that the Pentagon’s contractor workforce has probably grown by 40% since 1989, while the numbers of military personnel and civilian DoD employees have declined by more than 30%.

To avoid today’s exceptionally high budgets the reports suggest that national authorities would have to be more realistic in setting military missions and goals, more judicious in decisions about going to war, more forceful in pushing for Pentagon reform, and stricter in setting and enforcing budget priorities. There is a deeper political problem, warns Conetta: "At present, civilian leaders are politically disinclined to push the Pentagon hard or enact tighter budget constraints, and this stance undercuts reform." In reviewing the economic landscape, however, the reports do conclude that fiscal realities may soon prompt a change in attitudes.

At the least, I've always argued that we cannot afford to go full speed on all the usual major defense acquisition programs - especially now when most of them have skyrocketed in cost and slipped their schedules repeatedly - and continue such heavy combat operations in the Middle East simultaneously. It's just not good policy, when it starts bankrupting the government. We need to make tough decisions and pull the defense budget back to reality, and that means either finding an end to the ongoing conflicts and/or start showing some tough love to out-of-control acquisition programs.  

Run Away, Run Away!

 That infamous "white powder" temporarily closed down Manchester's airport in England. Don't you hate it when that happens?

Security staff called police after a man tried to carry the unidentified powder on to an aircraft, and closed the departure area of Terminal 3.

But forensic tests found no evidence it could be used as an explosive device and the check-in desk has re-opened.

The substance was found in the hand luggage of man heading from Manchester to London. Police made no arrests.
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"Public safety is our primary concern and that is why we had to take the action we did. Tests have been carried out on the substance that have concluded it could not have been used for any explosive purposes and there was absolutely no risk to anyone at the airport." 

It's unclear how long the airport was shut down because of an inert, harmless white powder. The unreasoning panic that some "white powder" might be anthrax continues to spread like a virus. Hat tip to Ray!

Clint Eastwood is Awesome

 I watched my Netflix film "Gran Torino" this past weekend. Short summary, now I know what happened to Gunney Highway when he retired. Good film, not gonna get an Oscar, but worth the rental just to watch Clint growl.

I Endorse This Message

"Much indeed to be regretted, party disputes are now carried to such a length, and truth is so enveloped in mist and false representation, that it is extremely difficult to know through what channel to seek it. This difficulty to one, who is of no party, and whose sole wish is to pursue with undeviating steps a path which would lead this country to respectability, wealth, and happiness, is exceedingly to be lamented. But such, for wise purposes, it is presumed, is the turbulence of human passions in party disputes, when victory more than truth is the palm contended for," - George Washington, in a letter to Timothy Pickering, July 27, 1795.

(Both video and quote shamelessly lifted from Andrew Sullivan's "The Daily Dish.")

Casual Fridays

Weren't the Eighties cool? Good times...

BSG Watch

 So I'm watching the pilot episode of "Human Target" on Fox last Sunday - starring Mark Valley (a.k.a., "Keen Eddie") - and in the very first episode, there's Tricia Helfer (Cylon #6) and Donnelly Rhodes (Doc Cottle). Helfer had the main guest role, Rhodes had a much shorter talking piece. Thought, hmmm, that's unusual. 

This past Weds, the second episode of "Human Target" was on, and I see Alessandro Juliani (Lt Gaeta) giving the opening pitch about the need to protect a computer hacker. Unreal. Who's next? Are we going to see Gaius Baltar or Lee Adama showing up on the show? Well, maybe not those two. Jamie  "Apollo" Bamber is starring in "Law and Order: UK" (is "Law and Order a virus? Honestly, it's replicating in every major town), James "Gaius" Callis is finishing a movie. Katee "Starbuck" Sackhoff and her Cylon boyfriend Leoben' are both on "24." Good that these guys are moving on with their careers, but this was just weird...

Oh and by the way, not a great show. I give "Human Target" one season or less before it's yanked.

Center for Biosecurity Drops from Alliance

In an interesting turn of events, I was informed that the Center for Biosecurity at UPMC has resigned its membership from the Alliance for Biosecurity. In part, this move was necessary to combat the perception that the Center was fronting for Big Pharma, in particular the accusations that Dr. Tara O'Toole (former head of the Center, now the DHS S&T Director) was a de facto lobbyist (or at the least, apologist) for Big Pharma interests. Now it seems clear that the Alliance was in fact a lobbying organization and the Center was a member of the Alliance, the Center's leadership was not registered as a lobbyists. At the least, the membership of the alliance is certainly a collection of Big Pharma interests.

I believe that this is a good thing for the Center. If it wants to be viewed as a non-partisan and unbiased research center, then it needs to stay independent of industry concerns. It may be, as the Center's letter claims, that the Alliance has made "strong analytical argument[s]" for the purpose of improving US biodefense initiatives, but let's not kid ourselves. At the end of the day, it benefitted them as well as the overall biodefense readiness. And that's okay - lobbyists are supposed to provide analytical arguments on complex policy issues with the understanding that positive legislative action could benefit their clients. Lobbyists don't just show up with a bag of money and a big smile and say, "hey Congressman, how about some love?" (okay, maybe some of them do...)

The Center has done some solid research on a particularly complex issue, and while I don't agree with everything they've developed and I still continue to harbor feelings of mistrust and skepticism about Dr. O'Toole, I do in fact view this move as a positive one (although I would have advised the current CEO to have avoided all the drama about the Alliance's "good efforts").  I hope it can put this issue behind itself and move on to critically examine and report on biosecurity initiatives, without the albatross of industry interests around its neck.

See also Dick Destiny's view of this interesting issue.