Armchair Generalist

DOD's Biodefense Disaster (cont)

I need to clearly state that when I criticized David Hoffman's "Going Viral" piece in the New Yorker last week, I was not criticizing the author. Mr. Hoffman has a very well developed story here. Because of my negative vibes, Mr. Hoffman was kind enough to send me a copy of the six-page article for closer review. And mind you, I don't like the TMTI program any better, but this is an excellent article about a thoughtful and smart government leader who believed that he had to make a difference about a potential massive health crisis. 

Dr. Darrell Galloway, the director of DTRA's CB directorate in 2009, was a man with a mission. He knew that using federal funds allocated for military biodefense against the swine flu challenge was outside the mandate, but dammit, there were lives at stake (if the flu got worse). Using the funds for the swine flu might be a test case for the government's wishful effort to quickly develop medical countermeasures against "unknown" diseases. So he told his staff, we got the money, let's do this.

A day later, at a meeting in the Pentagon, Galloway ran into stiff objections. Several officials said it was a mistake for the military to get involved in the swine flu outbreak. Galloway felt that the government was reacting too slowly to the spread of the pandemic. "I finally got fed up and blew my stack," Galloway told me. "I said, 'I didn't come here to ask anybody's permission to do this. I have done it.' " He got up and left, and the meeting broke up. Afterward, no one tried to stop him. 

Now Galloway doesn't get mad easily. He's a very nice, quiet, professorial type. It takes a lot to rile him. But let me make clear, this is exactly what I found offensive. It's not that a medical doctor in charge of $600 million in research funds every year made a deliberate decision to step outside of his charter and investigate swine flu. It was because no one in OSD had the balls to stop him from using his funds that were supposed to develop capabilities to protect military personnel for a public health panic that ended up not being an emergency.

I think medical scientists live in a different world. They don't care where the money comes from or who is in charge as long as they're doing good science to save lives. That's admirable. However, it makes for lousy public policy, since they also don't consider the time and money it takes to come up with a solution. Let's get past the point that TMTI was a horrible idea, that it was so overfunded that Congress took $250 million from DOD over a three year period for lack of funds execution, that it spent more than a billion dollars before people admitted that it failed to produce a "broad-spectrum" medical countermeasure that could be quickly fielded, that DOD is going to spend another billion on it regardless of its failure.

OSD has medical laboratories at Fort Detrick that mostly do military R&D for medical treatments. When directed by Congress, they dabble in other public health issues that don't benefit the military. TMTI doesn't fund the Detrick labs, it funds pharmaceutical firms who think they have a unique, new approach, and who enjoy the opportunity to advance their science and technology program with DOD money. And then there's the fact that DHHS has the mission and a hell of a lot of funds (in excess of $80 billion a year, other than Medicare and Medicaid) to pay for research like this. 

So Galloway took a chance, he spent DOD money on a public health issue that ended up being much less than what everyone had feared it would be. Nothing wrong with his attempting this, to try to do the noble thing with money that had been diverted from chem-bio defense money and that was at risk if not spent that year. But it was lousy policy for the decision makers to not stop him, and now it's a precedent to divert more chem-bio defense funds to public health "good ideas." 

Nuclear Mondays

Pakistan's nuclear weapons arsenal continues to grow, as that country's fear of Indian dominance in the region continues. At least that's what some non-governmental experts think.

Four years ago, the Pakistani arsenal was estimated at 30 to 60 weapons.

"They have been expanding pretty rapidly," Albright said. Based on recently accelerated production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium, "they could have more than doubled in that period," with current estimates of up to 110 weapons.

Kristensen said it was "not unreasonable" to say that Pakistan has now produced at least 100 weapons. Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at Britain's University of Bradford, put the number at between 100 and 110.

Some Pakistani officials have intimated they have even more. But just as the United States has a vested interest in publicly playing down the total, Pakistan sees advantage in "playing up the number of weapons they've got," Gregory said. "They're at a disadvantage with India with conventional forces," in terms of both weaponry and personnel.

While US government officials won't talk about this in public, I'm sure that others will use this as evidence that  US forces can't leave Afghanistan until Taliban forces are completely subdued. Pakistan's nuclear weapons have been the driving factor in idealist discussions as to terrorist intentions, even as Pakistan's military continues to be firmly in charge of that arsenal.

Disappointing

I had a lot of trouble reading the Washington Post yesterday. On the front page, sharing room with the civil disorder in Egypt, was a story about how Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is going to drive the Senate agenda for the next two years, because we all know how the Democrats - as the majority party and White House occupant - can't resist the Borg's persistent attempts to destroy our country. At the bottom of the front page, there was a compelling story - about the hair length of the two Super Bowl contenders.

But hey, we're getting half the Sunday paper on Saturday now. What a deal. Our society is truly going down in flames, and the media is a mockery of its former self.

Clausewitz for Children

A work in progress: the Children's Illustrated Clausewitz. Because it's never too early to start training them to better understand the role of the military in terms of political objectives.

To share this process (read: in a cry for help), I have decided to blog my progress on the Children’s Illustrated Clausewitz. I will post text choices and sketches and layouts and eventually, hopefully, final products. I may also from time to time share some related thoughts. It is my hope that you, the audience of whoever out there decides to read this thing, will give me input on this project, participate in it to whatever degree you each might choose, whether through the comments, on Twitter, or via email. This can be on important issues such as what text or ideas should be included in the book or whether it’s better to quote or summarize, or on really important issues such as whether the artistic style should be edgy contemporary multimedia collages or Victorian-style pencil and watercolor drawings of woodland creatures or my usual bright color-blocked marker drawings of over-emotive monsters.

I think (read: hope) that some of you who are reading this are wiser, more experienced Clausewitz and/or Strategy and/or Children’s Literature and/or Twitter Art Projects wonks than I am. I would be honored and delighted to have the opportunity to publish guest posts from you on why you love Carl, or why you hate him, or why he’s important, or what strategy is, or why children need it, or why adults need it presented to them as if they were children, or why a certain idea absolutely must be included in any précis of Clausewitz, or why a particular quote is actually irrelevant, or why only anthropomorphic badgers can properly represent Clausewitz’s ideas to young children, or why over-emotive monsters are all wrong for the job.

I think it's a great idea, not necessarily because there is a huge market for young children wanting to read Clausewitz, but to ensure that those individuals attending the Benning School for Boys do in fact read the book. Because we know that it's very difficult to get any combat arms officer to read anything that doesn't have pretty pictures and diagrams. Hat tip to Starbuck.

Philip DeFranco

It's like Max Headroom had a kid. I am strangely compelled to watch.

Casual Fridays

I miss Calvin and Hobbes. Hat tip to TwS.

Book Reviews

I haven't been successful in pursuing my professional reading list - Hoffman's "The Dead Hand" and Johnson's "Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers" - because of Charli Carpenter's review of "The Hunger Games." It's a sci-fi trilogy based on this idea that a dictatorial state is hosting the ultimate reality television show, forcing kids between 12 and 18 to fight each other to the death. The heroine Katniss is forced into the role of savior as she fights for survival, not just in the ring but in the society. 

The books, which are already being taught in sci-fi courses and currently being turned into mega-films by Liongate deal not just with survival under impossible conditions (for a taste, check out this fan-made video by an actress who hopes for a chance at the coveted role of Katniss). More profoundly, they are about repression and inequality, the socio-political-military-entertainment-industrial-consumer complexes that sustain them, and the continuum of resistance mechanisms by which people along a continuum of core to periphery inch toward revolution. (There’s a lot more to work with here than Collins develops in the books; I hope the screenwriters will make the most of these subtexts.)

The series is pitched as “young adult fiction” in the genre of the Twilight series, although why this is true – whereas Orson Scott Card’s novels are generally understood as adult fiction – somewhat escapes me, as The Hunger Games seems far more sophisticated than Twilight (when my daughter was reading it this summer, the adjective she used to describe the book was “complicated.”) Like Card’s Treason, Wyrms, Ender or the Homecoming series’ the characters in The Hunger Games trilogy are young adults, of course, but they are facing very adult situations and more importantly, they are treated as adults by the adult characters and the author in every way that matters. The books are just as brutal (as Entertainment Weekly put it “let’s see the makers of the movie version try to get a PG-13 on this baby”) and – yes – just as complicated as anything cooked up by Card.

The writing has just captivated me. It's great fiction, not just kid stuff, and I can't wait for the movie. But DAMN YOU CARPENTER for diverting me away from my professional reading. I've just started the third book, so maybe I'll get back to serious book reviews in March. Really, really addictive reading. 

DOD's Biodefense Disaster

David Hoffman has written an article for the New Yorker titled "Going Viral: The Pentagon takes on a new enemy: swine flu." The article is behind a subscription wall, and I have no intent on subscribing just to get this one article, but if the tone of the article is what I think it is, it's going to make me upset. The short teaser at the link suggests that the article centers on the Defense Threat Reduction Agency's (DTRA) Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative (TMTI), in which it stumbled upon an opportunity to assist in developing a vaccine medical countermeasure for the swine flu virus - much like the proverbial blind hog finding an acorn in the forest.

In May of 2009, [Dr. Darrell] Galloway [director of DTRA's Chem-Bio directorate] asked Patrick Iversen, a scientist at AVI BioPharma who specialized in antisense technology, to help T.M.T.I. develop the drug. Animal testing showed that Iversen’s antisense compound dramatically lowered levels of swine flu in infected ferrets. By April 2010, swine-flu virus had infected between fifteen and thirty per cent of people in the U.S., but it was not as lethal as many officials had feared it would be. As a result, neither Galloway nor Callahan got the call to start mass production.

Now for a few little facts. TMTI wasn't supposed to be looking at swine flu, since as you know, there is this other federal agency called DHHS that addresses public health issues. But hey, good on DTRA, they saw an opportunity to help, and using defense dollars that were supposed to be allocated toward "broadspectrum medical countermeasures" that would protect military personnel from biological warfare agents, they took on the challenge. Ends up it wasn't really necessary, but hey, kudos for helping with the big win. But let's not overlook the dangerous flaws in this initiative.

Yet when the Obama Administration unveiled a new strategy for responding faster and more effectively to bioterrorism, in August, it called for many of the innovations and goals that Galloway had set for T.M.T.I. The Defense Department decided to make T.M.T.I. a permanent program, and the Pentagon issued a formal order that emerging infectious diseases are a proper target for military research.

Okay, point one, Galloway didn't set the TMTI goals, that was hand-crafted by a few OSD acquisition officials above his level. And they were not good goals. Congress took $250 million away from Galloway for lack of executing all his funds. Point two, TMTI became a permanent program NOT because it was successful - it wasn't - but because the current OSD acquisition officials think that medical countermeasures are Teh Coolest Rage, and it shows how proactive they are in beating DHHS to the punch in addressing public health challenges. And when said officials issued a formal memorandum saying that emerging infectious diseases are a "proper target for military research," it didn't go into detail about stripping other CB defense programs of all their cash to broaden the focus away from militarily-significant biological warfare agents to pandemic flu. But that happened anyway.

Mr. Hoffman notes:

In 2006, the Pentagon ordered an unusual five-year research initiative to counter germs being used as weapons of war or terror, and assigned Galloway to launch it. Instead of targeting pathogens one by one, the initiative would seek to invent therapeutic drugs and vaccines that could counter multiple germs. They would also develop new processes that could be used to quickly create drugs and vaccines to fight previously unknown pathogens. The effort became known as the Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative (T.M.T.I.). Galloway faced huge obstacles. Bringing a new drug or vaccine from laboratory to market in the U.S. can take ten to fifteen years and cost more than a billion dollars.

Yeah, funny thing. As Bryan Bender can tell you, TMTI has already spent a billion dollars over five years, isn't going to bring a new drug to market within fifteen years of 2006, and has already given up on making a single drug that can counter multiple germs. But that's not going to stop DOD from opening wide the budget spigot for this failed initiative. As in its "rebuilding" efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, it's as if they think that you can fix systemic failures by throwing more money at it.

So why are we hailing this initiative as some kind of wonderful government action? Let DHHS handle the public health challenges. This insane philosophy that the US government ought to treat natural infectious diseases the same way as responding to a bioterrorism incident, and that DOD ought to lead this research, is going to just burn billions of dollars without even turning the discussion toward the correct policy solutions. I blame the scientific-technical elite who are driving the discussion.

Update on Chem Demil Update

Friend of the blog Craig Williams penned in to tell me my math was sloppy, that seven sites into $30 billion is roughly $4 billion a pop. Whoops! I was, in fact, too hasty there. The total lifecycle cost for incineration program is probably around $30 billion, may even get to $35 billion before it's all over, but about $5 billion of that is CSEPP and nonstockpile munitions destruction, another $2 billion for program management and technical support, maybe $3-4 billion in assorted other costs (European retrograde, BZ disposal, CAMDS, CDTF, other R&D expenditures). No, I'm not going to tell you what all those projects are. 

There is the additional complexity that actually only five sites are incineration-based. Two of them, Newport and Aberdeen, actually used super-critical oxidation neutralization technology/hydrolysate waste and then used "thermal-based" technologies to clean up the metal dunnage. But they were special, single agent stockpiles, no explosive components. Relatively cheap at around $1 billion each site (again, compared to the $4-5 billion ACWA sites). So we're closer to the $2-3 billion per non-ACWA site for stand-up and operations, and $4-5 billion per neutralization site.

BUT. On second thought, there's the main point that I had in the back of my head, but it didn't surface until just now. The important point to remember is that the US Army spent (roughly) 75% of its chem demil funding on destroying 90 percent of the US chemical stockpile (in addition to other related projects). The US Army will spend (roughly) 25% of its chem demil funding on the remaining 10 percent of the stockpile. Of that, 2% of the stockpile is at Blue Grass Army Depot and 8 percent is at Pueblo. We're building a five billion dollar neutralization site to dispose of 2% of the stockpile, where we spent (roughly) $3 billion at Tooele to dispose of 43% of the stockpile.

But hey, I'm sure Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has a good reason for his forcing the Army to execute this national program in this fashion. It's the same kind of math involved in attempting to force US citizens to pay more for health care because the health insurance companies want to provide health care that ranks below more than a dozen other countries.

DPG on Lockdown

Flash news alert from CNN - Dugway Proving Ground is on lock-down.

A Utah military facility that tests chemical and biological weapons was locked down "to resolve a serious concern," and authorities were working to reopen the base, officials said Thursday.

The U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground has been locked down since 7:25 p.m. ET on Wednesday, a spokeswoman said. All base personnel were working, and no evacuation was needed, she said.

As of about 6:15 a.m. ET Thursday, "We have allowed personnel outside the gate to enter Dugway ... and are making preparations to begin allowing personnel to go home shortly," said Paula Thomas, spokeswoman for the proving ground.

Dugway commander Col. William E. King IV said earlier authorities were "working as quickly and as thoroughly as possible to resolve a serious concern within the Test Area" but he didn't elaborate.

"As you know measures like these (lockdown of our gates) are not taken lightly. No one is in immediate danger but these steps are required."

If anyone has any insites, please post it in the comments. Hopefully it's not news that a group of angry ex-military men have stolen chemical weapons in order to hold an American city hostage. The good news is, there's no nerve agent munitions stored at nearby Tooele Army Depot. But there are labs where small quantities of the agent can be made for tests and evaluations.

UPDATE: The Army was missing a milliliter of VX nerve agent in its inventory. The vial was mislabeled, not lost. Oops!

Today's Blogging Delays

The snow dumped on Washington DC last night knocked out power for the Sigger household. So blogging today will be delayed. Regrets as to the inability to entertain you this morning. However, if anyone wants to start gift-shopping for me, I have found a suitable selection (courtesy of colleague TwS). Now that's shiny...

Condi Rice Has No Regrets

Well, even if the US media isn't watching former SecState Condi Rice, others in the world media are. She doesn't regret supporting the preventive invasion of Iraq, but does regret the focus on WMD. You know, like when she stuck her foot in her mouth and talked about "smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud." But she also blames the intelligence community rather than the policy makers.

On being shown a video clip shot before the Iraq war in which she said that Saddam Hussein was acquiring weapons of mass destruction, Rice said: 'The fact is that what you know today can affect what you do tomorrow, but not what you did yesterday. And at that time, all of the intelligence said that he (Saddam) was acquiring weapons of mass destruction again. This is someone who had used them before. So, this wasn't a theoretical possibility.'

While saying 'Yes' on the intelligence turning out to be wrong, Rice added: 'Well, I don't dispute that he didn't have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. He certainly had enough front companies and was trying to acquire all kinds of pieces. But no, the threat was not the -- the weapons of mass destruction were not as mature in Iraq as we were led to believe, or as we believed.'

'No, I don't regret that we went to war against him (Saddam), because we could be sitting here today...having a discussion about the race for nuclear weapons between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Ahmadinejad's Iran.'

What a load of shit. The use of force didn't stop Saddam from pursuing nuclear weapons, sanctions did. Diplomacy is the answer to Iran, too, which makes it all the more amazing that the former SecState can't figure this out. I really dislike her. But here I am, pointing out her obstinate refusal to accept reality. Why am I wasting my time? The CheneyBush "Vulcans" will never admit how badly they screwed up American foreign policy.

Progress On Nuclear Nonproliferation

President Obama says we're getting it done.

American leadership can also be seen in the effort to secure the worst weapons of war. Because Republicans and Democrats approved the New START Treaty, far fewer nuclear weapons and launchers will be deployed. Because we rallied the world, nuclear materials are being locked down on every continent so they never fall into the hands of terrorists.

Because of a diplomatic effort to insist that Iran meet its obligations, the Iranian government now faces tougher and tighter sanctions than ever before. And on the Korean peninsula, we stand with our ally South Korea, and insist that North Korea keeps its commitment to abandon nuclear weapons.

This is just a part of how we are shaping a world that favors peace and prosperity. With our European allies, we revitalized NATO, and increased our cooperation on everything from counter-terrorism to missile defense. We have reset our relationship with Russia, strengthened Asian alliances, and built new partnerships with nations like India.

What he said last year.

Now, even as we prosecute two wars, we're also confronting perhaps the greatest danger to the American people -– the threat of nuclear weapons.  I've 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 44 nations together here in Washington, D.C. 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.

Now, these diplomatic efforts have also strengthened our hand in dealing with those nations that insist on violating international agreements in pursuit of nuclear weapons.  That's why North Korea now faces increased isolation, and stronger sanctions –- sanctions that are being vigorously enforced.  That's 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 a promise.  

He's setting the right tone. This is an addressable challenge, even if Iran does get a nuclear weapon. That's what really makes America exceptional, because we don't always view conflict as the way to resolve international problems.

Chem Demil Update

Via the Global Security Newswire, we get to read about how screwed up the Army's Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternative (ACWA) program really is. A few years ago, the DOD purposefully separated the traditional, incineration-based chemical weapons destruction program that is currently working at four Army chemical depots from the "alternative" technology, neutralization-based chemical destruction project being pursued at Blue Grass and Pueblo Army depots.

When the Army and DOD leadership realized that the the costs for the ACWA project were only going up due to the immature technology, they decided to split the programs to ensure the ACWA project didn't pull down all the incineration projects that were actually performing on time and on budget. The costs of the ACWA facilities had doubled from the initial baseline of two billion dollars each to cost four billion dollars each. The incineration facilities cost only two billion each to build and operate (on average). So what a surprise. Now ACWA has broken the Nunn-McCurdy rule (again), meaning it's gone 25% over the planned budget - since that project was rebaselined at eight billion. So that means it's now a $10 billion project to destroy the last 10 percent of the US chemical weapons stockpile. (for comparison's sake, the cost for operations at the other seven sites will be around $30 billion - do the math).

While chemical neutralization operations at the Pueblo Chemical Depot are expected to conclude around 2017, disposal work at the Blue Grass Army Depot appears likely to continue into 2021. The Chemical Weapons Convention requires the United States to complete elimination of banned materials by April 2012.The ACWA spokeswoman listed several sources of the cost overrun: "escalation of construction material costs; acceleration to complete destruction operations as close to 2017 as possible; design immaturity when previous estimates were developed; added risks associated with first-of-a-kind equipment testing, integration and operation; and plans for increased staffing for continuous 24/7 destruction operations."

This is why Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) got legislation passed to extend the US deadline to destroy its chemical weapons stockpile from 2012 to 2017, because he knew that the project was in trouble. In truth, it's been in trouble since its inception, but McConnell couldn't afford to change his direction after making a career in publically lambasting the Army's chemical demil program and receiving so many hundreds of millions of chem demil funds earmarked for his home state. It's kind of embarrassing, but the man has no shame. Neither does his favorite anti-Army activist group.

"We believe this will be last such breach and we advocate a continuation of the program, as established, as the safest and quickest way to dispose of these ACWA stockpiles," said a source with the Chemical Weapons Working Group, an independent watchdog. "It would not surprise me" if the Pentagon later asserts it has an improved handle on anticipated expenses, the insider added.

There's a particular individual whose name I won't mention who pussies out by getting the Defense Environmental Alert to quote him as "a source with the CWWG" when he wants to release disinformation without being saddled with the irresponsibility of his statement (it's really not that big of an organization). The last thing the CWWG wants to do is to see ACWA grilled by the OSD comptroller during this budget cycle and current financial crisis, even as that same organization has so often attacked the traditional incineration-based chemical destruction efforts for failing to meet cost and schedule goals. It's wishful thinking, at best, that the Pentagon would "assert" that it had an improved handle on expenses.

More appropriately, the DOD is going to tell Congress that it has a major problem with this ACWA effort, as the Nunn-McCurdy act directs them to. And then Congress, dominated by those responsible national security-minded, budget-cutting Republicans, will blithely ignore the warning and tell DOD to fund the two billion dollar increase anyway. They don't really care about meeting international arms control treaties or reducing the federal deficit as much as fluffing up their Senate Minority Leader's position.

Putting the Guard on the Border

I had wanted to refer to this interesting article discussing the use of National Guard troops on the southern border. It's got some problems, to say the least. George Withers suggests that militarizing our border law enforcement is more blatantly a political move than one based on a needed capability.

• The Poe bill would set a 10,000-person minimum troop strength level (which is in addition to any and all troops already deployed) and keep it in place until “operational control” of the border is achieved. “Operational control” is defined, by reference to a 2006 law, as when the Secretary of Homeland Security can certify “the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband.” This “all unlawful entries” language sets a very high standard: it is highly unlikely that the prevention of every single illegal entry into this country could ever be certifiably achieved. Thus these troops would, in effect, be deployed permanently.
• It is highly unusual, if not entirely inappropriate, for the U.S. Congress to pass a law dictating the appropriate level of troop strength in any specific mission deployment, as the Poe bill would do through its “required” 10,000 level. Such an operational decision falls under the core competency of military leadership, not politicians.
• The bill chooses to authorize the troops’ deployment under a section of the U.S. Code that allows for “training” purposes only. However, since the bill would call on the Guard to carry out extraordinarily increased police activities that the military does not have a traditional legal mandate to perform – including searching and apprehending U.S. citizens – it contemplates use that goes way beyond “training.” These duties are “operational.”
• The bill would exempt the deployment from end-strength limitations that are key to a well-balanced and militarily ready National Guard. To deploy large numbers of Guard members away from their home units, without consideration for how they would be replaced or how units might return to their designated force levels, would be disruptive to say the least.

Check it out. At the least, the article forces some additional thought beyond the initial burst of satisfaction that "something" has to be done to curb illegal trafficking on the south border. Let's go back to working the issue through normal and sustainable law enforcement practices and getting Mexico stabilized.

Deep Thoughts

If the staggering national debt is a form of slavery, doesn't that make the Republicans (who created the annual deficit of $1.6 trillion between 2000 and 2008 and refused to repeal tax cuts for millionaires) the slave trade merchants? And are our financial institutions then the slavers?

(Brought to you by the Committee to Reduce Hyperboles)

Lieberman is an Asshat

So Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) announced that he's not going to be running for another term in 2012. That's such a shame, we will only have another year of his sanctimonious preaching while the Dems desperately court him for his moderate vote. But he does certainly know how to cause controversy. While being interviewed on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," he decided to tell everyone that the enormous cost that the United States has paid in terms of thousands of soldiers' bodies and billions of dollars was worth it. Yep, it was all worth it because Saddam Hussein was making weapons of mass destruction.

My answer is, yes. My answer is yes because Saddam was threatening the stability of the entire region. He'd shown that by his actions. I believe that the evidence is very clear that he was developing weapons of mass destruction.

Obviously we don't have evidence that he had a big program. But the most official and comprehensive report show that's true. He was also, the evidence shows, beginning really tactically to support the terrorist movements that had attack us on 9/11 and today, to make a long story short, instead of a brutally repressive dictator in Iraq, we've got a government that was elected, that's self-governing and the country is self-defending.
----------
I'm basing it on the so-called Duelfer Report. Charles D-U-E-L-F-E-R conducted the most comprehensive report on behalf of our government. And it was, nobody thought it was partisan. I want to be very clear: he didn't find big caches of weapons of mass destruction. But he found, and proved I think, that Saddam had every intention, and particularly to develop nuclear weapons, was developing chemical and biological weapons, and had a structure in place including nuclear scientists that he was prepared to support if he broke out of the sanctions, which he was inclined to do. So I think that the evidence is clear that if we did not do what we did that Saddam Hussein would today have at least chemical and biological weapons and have a nuclear program probably like Iran's beginning to move toward capabilities, and that the entire world would be a much less... 

Wow. Here's a news flash for Joltin' Joe. I have read the Duelfer report, and I don't think it says what he thinks it says. In fact, I only had to get to page 6 before I found this paragraph.

Evidence. The problem of discerning WMD in Iraq is highlighted by the prewar misapprehensions of weapons, which were not there. Distant technical analysts mistakenly identified evidence and drew incorrect conclusions. There is also the potential of the obverse problem. Observers may have evidence before them and not recognize it because of unfamiliarity with the subject. Often ISG found no evidence of one thing or another. It may be that a more accurate formulation might be we recognized no evidence. This is a fundamental conundrum in assessing alien circumstances.

And then you can always talk to the intel community, whose members are really getting tired of being blamed for policy mistakes. Something important for Lieberman to remember - CheneyBush didn't invade Iraq to stop Saddam's WMD program, they went in to overthrow the regime to make a point that the US military was still awesome. How Lieberman can pretend to think otherwise nearly eight years after the fact is just unfathomable. Hey, Joe - don't let the door hit you in the ass.  

"We Had to Reduce the City"

I've largely stayed out of the growing conflagration over a story about a US battalion commander's decision to use high explosives to "reduce" a small town - empty of people but filled with Taliban-emplaced IEDs and boobytraps - in order to safeguard Afghani villagers and US coalition forces. It's easy to fixate on the photos and let one's mind flash to Vietnam statements of "it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."

The blogosphere has been lit up since the initial salvo of Joshua Foust, who is tired of watching field commanders alienate the locals with acts of random violence.

The assumption of good intentions remains of the most critical failures of American imagination in both wars. I am at a loss for why this is the case—just about everyone who understands these things continues to beg the military to stop assuming Afghans know we have good intentions for the area, but it just hasn’t sunk in yet. Actions speak louder than words, etc. It’s not a hard concept to understand, but AMERICA GOOD is just not a given amongst locals. It’s years past time people stop assuming this is the case. If you no longer think people just intuitively get the inherent goodness of America, then it becomes easier to see why they’re pissed off at the destruction of their homes—not just “mud huts” but homes and a lifetime of memories and possessions (her continued inability to get that poor people care about their “mud huts” is worse than cringe-inducing). And, just as importantly, why it’s not necessarily a good thing when they cooperate with you afterward.

He has a number of additional posts discussing the issue at his blog, if you're so inclined to read them. Spencer Ackerman joined in with a more sympathetic discussion of why the battalion commander did this action - basically, the Taliban had kicked out the villagers and so heavily mined the village that it would have been impossible to safely defuse. Paula Broadwell, working through Tom Ricks blog, nabbed a more detailed discussion from LTC Flynn, the battalion commander in question.

We have made significant gains in the District in the time we have been here. The vast majority of Taliban fighters were defeated and forced to leave the district before the change in foliage and onset of winter as is normally the case here. We now live with our [Afghanistan National Army] brothers in the sanctuaries occupied by the Taliban this past summer. The people of these villages, once terrorized by the Taliban, are beginning to return to their lands with cautious optimism of the future. The [Alternative Livelihoods Program] is part of our overall strategy to prevent the re-emergence of the Taliban in the District in the upcoming Spring. We too are cautiously optimistic that this District will return to the favorable conditions not of 2008 but of 2007 prior to the untimely death of the Alikozai tribal elder whose loss created the power vacuum for the Taliban to wreak havoc for the local population for the past 3 years.

I'm of a very spit mind on this issue. On the one hand, I don't blame LTC Flynn at all for making the decision that, as a result of the Taliban boobytraps, the village had to be destroyed. When demining is considered too dangerous, you blow it in place. That's doctrine, and it works to reduce casualties on all sides. On the other hand, our forces continue to react and fight on the Taliban's terms and conditions. If we were doing COIN right, US forces would be advising the Afghanistan National Army and local security forces on how to engage and beat back the Taliban. Let the host nation decide which villages to raze and which villages to save. As long as our forces are engaged in direct combat operations with the Taliban and the Afghanistani government refuses to engage in the post-conflict "hold and build" phase, it's a losing fight.

Situations such as this just makes people shake their heads and say "what the hell are we doing in there?" I don't think that the Bush43/Obama strategic objectives for Afghanistan really address that question. Who knows, maybe 2011 will be influential because of the 2012 presidential elections forcing a discussion on this topic. Certainly the last election cycle did a good job ignoring the whole thing.

Repubs Are Not Serious About National Security

...even if they were former military officers who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan. That's the only conclusion that I can reach after reading about Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-CA) proposing a bill in which he wants all four service chiefs to certify that the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" won't hurt military readiness or good order. You see, to him, it's not good enough if the president, secretary of defense, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs certify to this fact.

This report comes on top of a WaPo article noting that the military had to spend $200 million to replace the 3660 troops released from service because of DADT. While that cost is small in terms of the overall defense budget, the lost skills and expertise of those troops is harder to quantify. The son wants to prove that he can be just as much of a jackass as his father was.

Twenty Years Ago

A YouTube user nighthawk006phoenix has an amazing collection of 1990-91 Gulf War videos on his site. Unfortunately, he's not allowing embedding. Here's one dated January 17, 1991, featuring SecDef Dick Cheney (before he joined the Dark Side) and GEN Colin Powell (then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs). Particularly funny how Wolf Blitzer (I believe) starts the Q&A by asking Cheney when the ground war will start, now that the air war has begun. What a maroon.

And here's this nugget just after the four minute mark.

Q: Mr. Secretary, can you tell us, the president mentioned that one of the objectives was to take out chemical and and nuclear sites. Can you tell us, in a general way, if that mission was accomplished?

A: Ahhh, I can say that we have in fact gone after those targets. I do not have yet information on, ahhh, the effectiveness of those efforts.

Yes, all we could say is, we hit a lot of targets. Battle damage assessments were still incoming on that day. Good times.