tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34530729755981043382024-03-13T14:10:35.327-04:00The BlasterComments on Politics, Foreign Policy, and DefenseChuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comBlogger295125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-6078912979934550552023-10-27T11:28:00.000-04:002023-10-27T11:28:04.851-04:00WHY Did Russia Invade Ukraine on 24 February 2022?<p><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Ray McGovern and Professor Geoffrey Roberts have collaborated to produce a deeply insightful video on origins of the Ukraine War. It takes the form of a dialogue between the esteemed historian Geoffrey Roberts and Ray McGovern (CIA retired). The video is long, but it is an informative and I think very accurate discussion of the US role in </span><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;">provoking</span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> Russia’s “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine. Roberts’ essays on this subject are powerfully and elegantly written (for example, see this <a href="https://jmss.org/article/view/76584/56335"><span style="font-kerning: none;">link</span></a>), but his speaking style can occasionally be a little distracting. I certainly recommend listening very carefully to what he has to say — he is an extremely knowledgeable and competent. McGovern’s side of the dialogue is tip top — as usual — but is one of his best (see bio <a href="https://raymcgovern.com/bio/"><span style="font-kerning: none;">here</span></a>). </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The following link will take you to the imbedded video:</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://raymcgovern.com/2023/10/06/ukraine-the-why-or-russias-invasion/">https://raymcgovern.com/2023/10/06/ukraine-the-why-or-russias-invasion/</a></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Ukraine: The Why or Russia’s Invasion</b></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">October 6, 2023</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Professor Geoffrey Roberts & Ray McGovern analyze “WHY” Russia invaded Ukraine and the question of whether Putin had any real options to the ‘Special Military Operation’, given Russia’s perception of a growing existential threat. Geoff leads off at minute 6:50 in the video.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-68118167296493525422023-10-18T12:34:00.003-04:002023-10-18T13:02:46.786-04:00The Art of Grand Strategy American Style<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdWs-sfY-goyVROTt28t2Pe0u1PRG-K67OSFNB31y2MFvjjA4HOZF5J7BgFoZXPWx6e68jPprhGeYnNeoz_RLiS6KmJ3yWfnRjeWLQnyX9NByGMf3FanhgWpDo3WIbZHAZV-20Ifya-Cb8ZdLt_W3bkSQwOLoY7FtlsviA0B0OqaDAAHmXCWnoD8ohR4sD/s1430/PastedGraphic-1.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="898" data-original-width="1430" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdWs-sfY-goyVROTt28t2Pe0u1PRG-K67OSFNB31y2MFvjjA4HOZF5J7BgFoZXPWx6e68jPprhGeYnNeoz_RLiS6KmJ3yWfnRjeWLQnyX9NByGMf3FanhgWpDo3WIbZHAZV-20Ifya-Cb8ZdLt_W3bkSQwOLoY7FtlsviA0B0OqaDAAHmXCWnoD8ohR4sD/w399-h278/PastedGraphic-1.png" width="399" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b>For analyses of </b></span></p><div><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><ul>
<li style="color: #151515; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The contemporary American predilection for perpetual war, see <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gqgOakOiFsdeH-iIONAW3e20fpXQ3ZdR/view?pli=1">"The Domestic Roots of Perpetual War"</a> (January-February 2011) and </span></li></ul>
<ul>
<li style="color: #151515; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The criteria of a sensible Grand Strategy see "<a href="https://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/criteria-of-sensible-grand-strategy.html">Why it is Time to Adopt a Sensible<span style="color: #fb0017; font-kerning: none;"> </span>Grand Strategy" (August 2015)</a> </span></li></ul></span></div><p></p>Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-4470524284450433712023-07-16T13:09:00.004-04:002023-07-17T14:55:23.047-04:00Vilnius NATO Summit: Pig's Ear into $ilk Purse.<p style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><b><span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>Billions to the Arms Merchants; Attrition to the Last Ukrainian</i></span></b></p><p style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Introduction by <a href="https://substack.com/@spoilsofwar">ANDREW COCKBURN</a></span></p><p style="color: #797979; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">JUL 15, 2023</span></p><p style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><a href="https://spoilsofwar.substack.com/p/vilnius-nato-summit-pigs-ear-into?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=773818&post_id=134943809&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email">https://spoilsofwar.substack.com/p/vilnius-nato-summit-pigs-ear-into?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=773818&post_id=134943809&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email</a></span></p><p style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>I’m proud to post this succinct summary of what the NATO summit in Vilnius was all about by my friend Chuck Spinney. Spinney knows the machine from the inside, having spent thirty years working as a Pentagon analyst. His 1980 briefing </i><a href="https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA111544.pdf"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>“Defense Facts of Life” </i></span></a><i>detailed how and why the more we spend on defense, the less defense we get. Everything he predicted in that paper has been totally confirmed over the subsequent half century of bloat, greed, and decline.</i></span></p><p style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>One Clapped out DoD Retiree's take on the Vilnius Summit</b></span></p><p style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Chuck Spinney</b></span></p><p style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Re-posted in <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/07/17/what-happened-at-the-nato-summit-in-vilnius-and-who-benefits/" target="_blank">Counterpunch</a>, 17 July 2023</p><p style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">I think the Vilnius NATO summit will be remembered as a predictable, if ridiculous, effort to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. </span></p><p style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The summit's near term goal seems to have been to squirm out of a NATO Article 5 commitment to Ukraine. But its long term goal seems to have been to rationalize a continuation of NATO's US-driven, neocon fantasy to weaken and perhaps dismember Russia by enmeshing Russia and Ukraine in a deepening, unending Russo-NATO proxy war of attrition — i.e., attrition to the last Ukrainian. Consider the hodgepodge of contradictory policy “decisions” emerging from the summit:</span></p><ul>
<li style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Ukraine, the most corrupt country in Europe (with the arguable exception of Kosovo — an earlier product of NATO’s hubris) will not be offered membership in NATO for the foreseeable future, but the NATO requirement for Ukraine to pass a <i>Membership Action Plan</i> has been waived — effectively accelerating the procedures of joining what has morphed into a Not-So-Atlantic Alliance.</span></li>
<li style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The NATO Summit established a potentially consequential <i>NATO-Ukraine Council</i> as a permanent standing institution of NATO, where the 31 NATO Allies would meet periodically with Ukraine to map out NATO's policies for dealing with emergency situations, presumably including those policies dealing with the conduct of NATO's never-ending proxy war with Russia.</span></li>
<li style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The <i>G7 economic grouping</i> would work with Ukraine to ensure the continued flow of military hardware to Ukraine — read a policy to shovel ever more money to NATO’s military industrial complex, but the G7 is an economic grouping and is not part of NATO, which is a trigger-happy military alliance, because an attack on one member is deemed to be an attack on all members under the language of Article 5 of the NATO Treaty.</span></li>
</ul><p style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"> The original purpose of the so-called Atlantic Alliance was accurately summed up by NATO’s first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, when he opined its purpose is “… to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” </span></p><p style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Well, the Soviet Union is not only OUT, it disappeared into the dustbin of history in 1991; the Americans are now IN Eastern Europe as well as Ismay’s Atlantic Europe; and Germany, the economic engine of the European Union, and once the Hope Diamond of Post WWII Atlantic Europe, is being pushed DOWN into the neo-liberal economic gutter. … And post-Vilnius NATO, led by the United States, wants to preserve and strengthen this absurd state of affairs by issuing its latest <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_217320.htm?selectedLocale=en"><span style="font-kerning: none;">90 paragraph rationalization</span></a> for what is, in effect, an effort continue to shovel money into NATO's post-cold war Sow’s Ear. </span></p><p style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">So … Cui Bono? The merchants of death in the US Military - Industrial - Congressional Complex (MICC), which feeds off the opaque, unaccountable, and corrupt defense budgeting procedures of the Pentagon and Congress. </span></p><p style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The swamp of bureaucratic procedures practiced by the Pentagon and Congress, with the help of the MICC’s army of lobbyists and influence peddlers (well-greased by the revolving employment door), routinely end up producing defense budgets that [1] shrink the size of our combat forces, [2] underfund the military’s near term readiness for combat, [3] create aging inventories of existing weapons by decreasing the production rates of the new, higher-cost, more-complex new weapons in the modernization budgets, and [4], via the assistance of the MICC's army of lobbyists and subsidiaries in the media and think tanks, market the ever-higher cost but more profitable madness with glowing promises that the new technologies will be war fighting “game changers” — i.e., that the future will be different from the past! </span></p><p style="color: #313131; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Yet since the end of World War II, the American ideology of game-changing miracle weapons seems to be more correlated with a growing political propensity to accept what can most charitably be characterized as a string of “incomplete successes” when it comes to our game-changing efforts in the real world — which is probably better than we can hope for in the ongoing Russo-NATO proxy war to the last Ukrainian.</span></p>Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-68613579300309786532022-04-11T11:46:00.002-04:002022-04-11T12:18:54.326-04:00ANNOUNCEMENT: The Pierre Sprey Award for Defense Reporting and Analysis<p> </p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Long time readers of The Blaster will recognize the name Pierre Sprey, he was a close friend and colleague of mine for over 43 years. He often contributed to the contents of the Blaster, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. Sadly, Pierre passed suddenly last August (Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/pierre-sprey-dead/2021/08/20/fe995430-ff6e-11eb-ba7e-2cf966e88e93_story.html" target="_blank">obituary</a>), profile (<a href="https://avgeekery.com/pierre-sprey-whiz-kid-rebel-with-a-cause/" target="_blank">here</a>), and design philosophy (<a href="https://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2020/11/how-to-design-war-technology-what-wins.html" target="_blank">here</a>). Several of Pierre's friends, led by Ben Cohen, a co-founder of Ben and Jerry's, have collaborated to establish an annual defense-related journalism award in Pierre's name. Attached herewith is the press release announcing the award and its guiding philosophy. Included are links to the award's web site and application procedures.</span></p><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px; text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px; text-align: center;"><b>For Immediate Release: April 5, 2022</b></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><strong><br /></strong></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><strong>Contact: </strong>Edward Erikson, <a href="mailto:Edward.Erikson@Gmail.com">Edward.Erikson@Gmail.com</a> 202-420-9947</div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px; text-align: center;"><strong style="color: #222222;">Government Watchdogs Announce New Pierre Sprey Award for Defense Reporting and Analysis </strong></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px; text-align: center;"><em style="color: #222222;">Funded by the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, the award celebrates “clear-thinking and courageous” analysis that exposes the military-industrial complex </em><strong style="color: #222222;"> </strong></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><strong>Washington, D.C.</strong> — The newly launched <a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ft.nylas.com%2Ft1%2F218%2F7r9uh2r0mf7byeexwvuz0tfxe%2F1%2Ff9a68b42ac3b194cb621b642475825a26eaa20330c9bb34a1f313ada5810e79a&data=04%7C01%7C%7Cb2d94dc7e5c34e389b9308da17054a43%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637847608728673940%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=fPY8GO%2FBBoatrIgJTrQJnUOr3XXTojAv1c9sQStY3uU%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://t.nylas.com/t1/218/7r9uh2r0mf7byeexwvuz0tfxe/1/f9a68b42ac3b194cb621b642475825a26eaa20330c9bb34a1f313ada5810e79a" shash="Ga4k+JgvY0GrrEXDL2SoEDCE6BgcReKUUp6Evu0CzgR4MrP3fWUN8seM3Kijyz4QYWU2ZwePXiOe3BbEeVwihaDfGvWceExwF/Qih0Uq49zRZInacyxaBrrIzjw2oew8RDMlCoyQE8uhU8XMhY5b69IlSogJJDf8zVQaF1QcAhQ=" style="color: #1155cc;" title="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ft.nylas.com%2Ft1%2F218%2F7r9uh2r0mf7byeexwvuz0tfxe%2F1%2Ff9a68b42ac3b194cb621b642475825a26eaa20330c9bb34a1f313ada5810e79a&data=04%7C01%7C%7Cb2d94dc7e5c34e389b9308da17054a43%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637847608728673940%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=fPY8GO%2FBBoatrIgJTrQJnUOr3XXTojAv1c9sQStY3uU%3D&reserved=0">Pierre Sprey Award for Defense Reporting and Analysis</a> is now accepting submissions. Named after the late defense analyst noted for his critiques of the U.S. military-industrial complex, the award is intended to celebrate clear-thinking and courageous journalism that exposes systemic, intentional, and corrupt standard operating procedures at the highest levels of the Pentagon, Congress, and weapons manufacturers. It recognizes work that furthers public understanding of the need to reform our nation’s military establishment and the systems that feed off it.</div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;">A Yale- and Cornell-educated aeronautical engineer, Sprey was one of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s “whiz kids” during the Johnson administration and was highly influential in the design of the F-16 fighter jet and the A-10 Warthog. After spending years in Washington, he became a leading critic of the war industry, revolving door, and obscene military budgets. Along with Colonel John Boyd, Tom Christie, and Chuck Spinney, he was a leader of the highly effective military reform movement in the 1980s.</div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;">He continued to be an active critic of high-tech weapons systems that are exorbitantly expensive and ineffective throughout his life. </div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;">Submissions will be reviewed by a panel of Pierre Sprey’s peers, including Tom Christie, a former Director of the Pentagon’s Office of Operational Test and Evaluation who worked at the Pentagon for more than three decades; Franklin Spinney, a former Pentagon analyst; Winslow Wheeler a national security expert who worked on Capitol Hill with both Republican and Democratic US Senators; and Andrew Cockburn, the Washington, D.C. editor of <em>Harper’s Magazine</em>. </div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;">“This award memorializes the work and example set by a brilliant engineer and mathematician who combined creativity and elegance of design with a fearless integrity to inspire several generations of military officers, defense academics, analysts, and investigative journalists,” says Franklin Spinney.</div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;">"Pierre was more than a good friend and extraordinary teacher. Time after time he would deliver a stunning analysis that would make me think, ‘That just can't be true.’ He would then go through his profound ability to collect data I didn't know existed and to rip it apart and then rebuild it into findings that tore huge holes in conventional wisdom that the practitioners of business as usual did their best to ignore once they found they couldn't refute it. That is the spirit of this award," says Winslow Wheeler. </div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #222222;">"Pierre was always Insightful, always razor sharp, often provocative, but always right," says Tom Christie.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #222222;">“Absurd levels of Pentagon spending bear no relationship to what’s needed for our security,” says Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. “Pentagon spending is driven by profits for weapons manufacturers who bribe Pentagon brass with the promise of cushy jobs when they retire. Pierre understood that and fought against it by designing cost effective weapons.”</span></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;">The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2022. Winners will be announced in February 2023, with awards conferred at a ceremony in March. There will be a first prize of $10,000 and two runner-up prizes of $1,000 each.</div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;">Learn more about the<em> </em>Pierre Sprey Award for Defense Reporting and Analysis <a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ft.nylas.com%2Ft1%2F218%2F7r9uh2r0mf7byeexwvuz0tfxe%2F2%2F68f563ac3b8488385cbc520d81a129a70409d53e3517f2705998c45f169424d0&data=04%7C01%7C%7Cb2d94dc7e5c34e389b9308da17054a43%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637847608728673940%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=gD1O8DziRMJRtkSNvssOF4dZXraRYOcXkHtpR9NcFxs%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://t.nylas.com/t1/218/7r9uh2r0mf7byeexwvuz0tfxe/2/68f563ac3b8488385cbc520d81a129a70409d53e3517f2705998c45f169424d0" shash="iLd9PfkCnbaQO021q1HZtyyFJDOYKD6P8iT5AEEuHMqL+56BGAJIq/wuM4ozja6O/e7PKZeWNspq27hHFYIttx7FKNntwkthRNiUiDvPrB31wFsVTf7E1AIMRJvi3+7pV6RloWwsqhF3kqbTUJefFqCubiopApEIi9+jzH9+F3Y=" style="color: #1155cc;" title="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ft.nylas.com%2Ft1%2F218%2F7r9uh2r0mf7byeexwvuz0tfxe%2F2%2F68f563ac3b8488385cbc520d81a129a70409d53e3517f2705998c45f169424d0&data=04%7C01%7C%7Cb2d94dc7e5c34e389b9308da17054a43%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637847608728673940%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=gD1O8DziRMJRtkSNvssOF4dZXraRYOcXkHtpR9NcFxs%3D&reserved=0">here</a>.</div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">###</div><p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></p><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black;"></span></div>Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-71385468479052188782022-02-27T16:14:00.002-05:002022-03-04T15:51:26.113-05:00How the Narcotic of Defense Spending Undermines a Sensible Grand Strategy<p> </p><p>by Chuck Spinney</p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;">The MICC’s <a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/criteria-of-sensible-grand-strategy.html" target="_blank">grand-strategic chickens</a> are coming home to roost big time. While war is bad, the Russo-Ukrainian War has the champagne corks quietly popping in the Pentagon, on K Street, in the defense industry, and throughout the halls of Congress.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;">Taxpayers are going to be paying for their party for a long time. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">It is no accident that the United States is on the cusp of the Second Cold War.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Future historians may well view the last 30 years as a case study in the institutional survival of the American Military - Industrial - Congressional Complex (MICC), together with its supporting blob now saturating the media, think tanks, academia, and the intelligence community. Perhaps, these future historians will come also to view the Global War on Terror (GWOT) as the bridging operation that greased the transition to Cold War II by keeping defense budgets at Cold War levels after Cold War I ended. Also, 9-11 may have re-acclimated the American people to the climate of fear now needed to sustain Cold War II for the remainder of the 21</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 9px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>st</sup></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> Century.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The First Cold War’s 40-year climate of fear was something Mikhail Gorbachev tried to end. But Presidents Clinton and Bush (the 2</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 9px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>nd</sup></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">) were busy planting the seed money for a new generation of cold-war inspired weapons. These weapons required massive future defense budgets that would require a climate of fear to sustain (especially for the across-the-board <a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2017/02/sleepwalking-into-nuclear-arms-race.html" target="_blank"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #094fd1;">nuclear modernization</span></a> program). President Obama then locked in these programs, and won a Nobel Peace Prize to boot. President Trump and the Dems in Congress worked overtime to ice the Pentagon’s budget cake by incestuously amplifying the growing Russophobia. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">No one wants war, but rising tension and the politics of fear … and their bedfellow: <i>demonization</i> … had to be magnified to justify the huge <i>bow wave</i> of defense spending looming in the budgetary offing, particularly the trillion+ dollars to pay for the nuclear modernization program. This “chicken” takes us back to the “egg” laid in the 1990s.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">As it gradually sank in that the First Cold War had indeed ended when the Soviet threat evaporated in 1991, the titans in the defense industry understood their comfortable market for new hi-tech, high-cost weapons could dry up. They also knew<i> that sword makers do not have the management and engineering skills</i> to make good affordable plowshares. So, they went on a Pentagon subsidized consolidation binge to gobble up access to what threatened to be a stagnating market. Their collective logic was explained in October 1991 in a <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B666O7-HemObVElDSnVCeVJPOWM/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-3ba4svA3hHRdi1sgvXeShw" target="_blank"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #094fd1;">speech by William Anders, CEO of General Dynamics (see especially page 13</span></a>). </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">At the same time, the defense industrialists recognized that market diversification was necessary. So, it was no accident that a lobbying operation named the Committee to Expand NATO emerged in the early 1990s and was headed by a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_P._Jackson" target="_blank">vice president of Lockheed Martin</a> — for a reminder, see <a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2015/09/why-is-us-foreign-policy-shambles.html" target="_blank"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #094fd1;">Why is US Foreign Policy a Shambles?</span></a>. At the very least, in the mid-1990s, it seemed that expanding NATO implied dramatically increased requirements for what is known in NATO jargon as <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_84112.htm" target="_blank"><i>weapons</i> <i>interoperability</i></a><i>.</i> This promised huge new markets for American weapons, communications systems, and logistics infrastructure, as ex-Warsaw Pact countries trashed their Soviet weapons (e.g., F-16s to replace old Warsaw Pact Migs, etc.). That this <i>interoperability</i> cornucopia did not materialize to the extent dreamed of is quite beside the point, when it comes to understanding the motives shaping the hopes and dreams underpinning the powerful American impulse to expand NATO — despite <i>promises</i> to the contrary made by leaders in the US, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom (see this page in <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/search?s=nato+expansion&op=Search" target="_blank"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #094fd1;">National Security Archive</span></a>). </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Against the background of broken promises not to expand NATO, Mr. Putin has made several speeches explaining why NATO expansion would be a threat to Russian security. In this sense, NATO expansion has become both the chicken and the egg when it comes to understanding the origins of the Russo-Ukrainian war, which is now on the cusp of locking in the perpetual state of fear needed to sustain a Second Cold War for the remainder of the 21</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 9px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>st</sup></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> Century. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Washington observers have long argued that the Pentagon doesn’t have a strategy. As the famous American strategic thinker, John Boyd opined repeatedly, “They are wrong, … the strategy is simple,” (albeit focused more intensely on domestic politics than international relations). “It is: Don’t interrupt the money flow, add to it.” </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">But the Pentagon’s strategy of maximizing its budget has created a growing dependency on defense spending in the American political economy. This grotesque distortion was first recognized by President Eisenhower in 1961. In 1987, George Kennan, forty years after he fathered the dominant US policy of “Containment” for the entire First Cold War, summed up the narcotic of defense spending, saying prophetically:</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px 36px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy,” </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px 36px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Source: George Kennan, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;">At Century’s Ending: Refections, 1982-1995</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996) pg.118. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">And that dear reader, is why the Russo-Ukrainian War — a predictable consequence of NATO expansion — has champagne corks popping in the Pentagon, in the defense industry, and in their wholly owned subsidiaries in Congress, think tanks, the intelligence apparat, and the press. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Understanding the internal political-economic causes of the American addiction to the narcotic of defense spending is at the heart of the problem. This understanding is essential to reforming the foreign policy mess exacerbated by NATO expansion. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">So, there is much work to be done, but a great beginning can be found in reading and updating the late Seymour Melman’s path breaking work, which began in the 1950s (e.g., see <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Profits-Without-Production-Seymour-Melman/dp/0812212584/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=2QC1ILUAH46M0&keywords=profit+without+production&qid=1645875504&sprefix=profits+without+produ,aps,47&sr=8-3" target="_blank"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #094fd1;">Profits Without Production</span></a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Permanent-War-Economy-American-Capitalism/dp/0671222619/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=35Z6GNZ0Z4TFE&keywords=Permanent+war+economy&qid=1645875817&sprefix=permanent+war+economy,aps,53&sr=8-3" target="_blank"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #094fd1;">The Permanent War Economy</span></a> for an introduction).</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">But a first step along a road to clearer thinking is for concerned American citizens to appreciate what Mr. Putin has been saying — and to understand why Mr. Putin thinks he is justified in saying it. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Attached herewith is James Carden’s useful analysis of how the American impulse described above is perceived by the key decision maker on the receiving end of that impulse:</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Chuck Spinney</span></p>
<p style="color: #a0000a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Putin’s path to war in three speeches</b></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b><i>The time between 2007 and 2022 was a period of missed opportunities for the West</i></b></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">James W. Carden, February 25, 2022 </span></p>
<p style="color: #094fd1; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://archive.fo/Di9sV#selection-1363.0-1375.18">https://archive.fo/Di9sV#selection-1363.0-1375.18<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #094fd1;"></span></a></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">[Reposted by permission of the author. Reformatted and underlining by CS]</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">With regard to the illegal war being waged by Russia against Ukraine, no one has any right to be surprised.</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">For all the understandable and justifiable outrage over Russian president Vladimir Putin’s decision to abandon diplomacy and launch what appears to be an unprovoked act of aggression, a look at prior statements by Mr. Putin shows that, with the passage of time, patience and rationality gave way to irrationally, paranoia and ultimately the decision to launch an armed conflict.</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-align: center;"><b>I</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Any proper accounting of the history of the downturn in US-Russia relations must include Putin’s 2007 <a href="https://archive.fo/o/Di9sV/https://russialist.org/transcript-putin-speech-and-the-following-discussion-at-the-munich-conference-on-security-policy/" target="_blank">address to the Munich Security Conference</a>. To many, this was a kind of point of no return, with Putin putting the US and its European allies on notice: there are <span style="text-decoration: underline;">red lines not to be crossed</span>.</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Having cooperated with and facilitated the war against the Taliban in 2001, Russia, along with France and Germany, opposed George W. Bush’s unilateral war of choice against Iraq in 2003. At Munich, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Putin charged, correctly, that with the actions taken by the US against Iraq and during its so-called global war on terror</span>,</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px 36.8px; text-indent: -0.8px;">We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way.</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px 36.8px; text-indent: -0.8px;">Putin continued, “<span style="text-decoration: underline;">The use of force can only be considered legitimate if the decision is sanctioned by the UN. And we do not need to substitute NATO or the EU for the UN</span>.”</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Putin, in line with his immediate predecessors, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, also voiced grave concern over the project of <span style="text-decoration: underline;">NATO expansion</span>. Today, pundits such as former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and rabid neoconservative commentators like Anne Applebaum would have us believe that the current crisis has nothing whatsoever to do with NATO expansion.</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Yet a reading of Putin’s Munich address should put their thesis to bed. Said Putin:</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px 36.8px; text-indent: -0.8px;">I think it is obvious that NATO expansion…represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><i>we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended?</i></span> And what happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-align: center;"><b>II</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">In the years between Munich and Mr. Putin’s next major international statement, his <a href="https://archive.fo/o/Di9sV/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/28/read-putins-u-n-general-assembly-speech/" target="_blank">UN Assembly address of 2015</a>, much occurred to further poison relations between the world’s two nuclear superpowers, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">including but not limited to:</span> </p>
<ul>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">the US recognition of Kosovo (2008); </li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">a pledge by NATO that Ukraine and Georgia would become members (2008); </li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">the Russian war in Georgia (2008); </li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">US regime change wars in Libya and Syria (2011); </li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">the passage of the Magnitsky Act (2012); and </li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">the Ukrainian civil war after Russia occupied Crimea (2014-present).</li>
</ul>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">At the UN, Putin took square aim at America’s self-appointed role as arbiter of the so-called international rules-based order. By 2015, it was clear that Putin’s patience with the US was at its limit.</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px 36.8px; text-indent: -0.8px;">We all know that after the end of the Cold War — everyone is aware of that — a single center of domination emerged in the world, and then those who found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think that if they were strong and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">exceptional</span>, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">they knew better and they did not have to reckon with the UN</span>.</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Taking aim at the debacles caused by unilateral military action taken by the US in the name of democracy and human rights, Putin noted that the result was not a “triumph of democracy and progress.” What resulted instead was “violence, poverty and social disaster.”</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Addressing America’s role in sowing instability in the Greater Middle East for the better part of a decade and a half, Putin mused:</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px 36.8px; text-indent: -0.8px;">I cannot help asking those who have caused the situation, do you realize now what you’ve done? But I am afraid no one is going to answer that. Indeed, policies based on self-conceit and belief in one’s exceptionality and impunity have never been abandoned.</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">And, yes, NATO expansion was still very much on Mr. Putin’s mind in 2015. “They continue,” he said of the US and Europe, “their policy of expanding NATO. What for?”</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px 36.8px; text-indent: -0.8px;">If the Warsaw Bloc stopped its existence, the Soviet Union have [sic] collapsed and, nevertheless, NATO continues expanding as well as its military infrastructure. Then they offered the poor Soviet countries a false choice: either to be with the West or with the East.</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-align: center;"><b>III</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67843" target="_blank">During last night’s address</a>, in which Putin announced the commencement of hostilities against Ukraine, he restated his previous objections to <span style="text-decoration: underline;">NATO expansion</span>, stating that </p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px 36.8px; text-indent: -0.8px;">“fundamental threats to Russia have grown yearly as a result of the expansion of NATO.” He condemned the alliance’s support for “extreme nationalists and neo-Nazis in Ukraine.”</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Going much further than he had previously, Putin tried to justify his own war of choice by claiming “we had no option but to initiate a special military operation to protect the people who for eight years have been subject to bullying and genocide from the Kiev regime.”</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Yet <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Putin’s actions</span> are not only a departure from the sentiments and principles he himself had once so forcefully espoused, they are a wholesale repudiation of them.</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">In the end, the period between 2007 and 2022 may come to be regarded, in the light of history, as years of missed opportunity. And while the ultimate responsibility for this war falls on Mr. Putin, the West’s failure to take him seriously has no doubt helped bring us to this dangerous moment.</p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><i>James W. Carden is contributing opinion writer for The Asia Times and a former advisor to the US State Department.</i></p>Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-8890189209406861082020-11-01T12:18:00.001-05:002023-02-03T09:51:38.324-05:00<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>How To Design A War Technology:</b></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><b> </b></span></p><p style="color: #b23c0e; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b><i>What Wins? </i></b></span></p><p style="color: #b23c0e; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b><i>What Is Reasonably Cheap Or Too Expensive?</i></b></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> Purdue University, College of Liberal Arts, <a href="https://news.cla.purdue.edu/author/cla-research-office/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">CLA Research Office</span></a>, June 25, 2020</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><a href="https://news.cla.purdue.edu/2020/06/25/how-to-design-a-war-technology-what-wins-what-is-reasonably-cheap-or-too-expensive/">https://news.cla.purdue.edu/2020/06/25/how-to-design-a-war-technology-what-wins-what-is-reasonably-cheap-or-too-expensive/<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></span></a></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-align: left;">[Reposted with permission]</p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>CLA’s FORCES initiative brings together scholars and students with policymakers, military commanders, and decision-makers to engage in essential strategic issues of the day, such as how politics shape war-making and defense technologies. Here, FORCES Founder Sorin Adam Matei, CLA associate dean of research, and FORCES Operations Officer Robert Kirchubel interview Pierre Sprey, co-creator of the A-10 and F-16 aircraft.</i></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">In April 2020, we invited as a virtual guest to the FORCES speaker series <a href="http://pogoarchives.org/labyrinth/09-sprey-w-covers.pdf"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">Pierre Sprey</span></a>, co-creator of the A-10 and F-16 planes. A legend in some military and political circles, a strong-minded debater, and a dissenter during the 1980s, Sprey was a founding member of the <a href="https://www.airforcemag.com/article/0208reformers/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">Military Reform Movement</span></a>. He defined the goal of the movement simply: “We thought that the country deserved a good defense, wasn’t getting one, and was paying too much for the one it had.”</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-align: center;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">****</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The reform movement tried to reallocate defense spending towards winning wars and reducing costs in the face of counterproductive bureaucratic and political incentives. Sprey worked closely with <a href="https://www.airforcemag.com/article/0208reformers/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">Col. John Boyd</span></a>, another legendary figure of mid-to-late 20</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; font-size: 9px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> century U.S. military thinking. Boyd enlisted in the Army Air Force at the end of World War II, returned to serve as an F-86 fighter pilot in Korea, became the Air Force’s leading air-to-air tactician, and then commanded a major air base during the Vietnam War. Boyd is best known in aviation circles for innovating tactics that changed the way every air force in the world fights and for his energy maneuverability theory which revolutionized fighter plane design. After retiring, he grew into a strategic thinker of Clausewitzian caliber. </span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>[CS Note: readers interested in learning more about Boyd’s strategic theories, a compendium of his works and writings about his work can be found at </i><a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/compendium-colonel-john-boyds.html"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>An Introduction to the Strategic Theories of John Boyd</i></span></a><i>.]</i></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; background-color: #fce5cd; font-kerning: none;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8t4Aj1T0_IU/X57ZcClqj1I/AAAAAAAACMA/LmEbZpXGdtIiw8oFOKhH_pxzWn5KAUNdgCLcBGAsYHQ/s560/spreypic-e1593463830775.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="560" data-original-width="300" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8t4Aj1T0_IU/X57ZcClqj1I/AAAAAAAACMA/LmEbZpXGdtIiw8oFOKhH_pxzWn5KAUNdgCLcBGAsYHQ/w214-h400/spreypic-e1593463830775.png" width="214" /></a></div><p></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>Pierre Sprey, engineer, weapons designer, defense expert" In this interview, Sprey offers a unique perspective into his own work as a Pentagon official, and later as a consultant, who helped shape an entire generation of war-winning technologies during the 1960s and 1970s. He offers his opinions, at times strong and controversial, which are, of course, his own, on how politics and technologies of war mix (or not). His interview, edited here for brevity and clarity, was also integrated into the </i><a href="https://www.cla.purdue.edu/research/forces-initiative/about-us/students-and-fellows.html"><i>Technology, War, and Strategy</i></a><i> seminar, which Matei and Kirchubel taught in Purdue’s Honors College.</i> </span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">****</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Question. When and how did you first see the need for a Military Reform Movement?</b></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>In brief: Combat is the struggle between intelligent, thinking, responding, and reacting opponents.</i></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Answer.</b> The Reform Movement grew out of the Fighter Mafia–John Boyd and similar-minded people. A bunch of non-Air Force people, civilians, Army, Navy and Marine types joined us and it grew during the ’70s. We thought that the country deserved a good defense, wasn’t getting one, and was paying too much for the one it had. Of course, professionally we were deeply interested in improving the military. When we decided to work with some people on the Hill and form a Congressional Military Reform Caucus it became more formalized. We initially met at the Heritage Foundation; today they would disown us. <i>[Laughs]</i></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">A very important guy in the process was Bill Lind, Sen. Gary Hart’s staff guy on military affairs. By the early ’80s we had about a hundred members from both houses of Congress, I think mainly because we were getting a lot of media attention. The major coalescing factor was that we were all admirers and participants in John Boyd’s focus on the need to pay attention to the people side [of the military], and the need for more intelligent thought about strategy and tactics. The inspiration of John Boyd’s ideas was at the heart of the reform movement.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">In my assessment, and that of others more qualified than me, Boyd is the American Clausewitz. And not just the US, he’s one of the three or four great military thinkers of the world. Interestingly, Boyd was no fan of Clausewitz. His copy of Clausewitz was a treasure to behold because it was ripped apart and profusely commented on in the margins. Wherever Boyd thought Clausewitz had said something stupid or not useful, there’d be scribbled annotations. But Sun Tzu, he simply absorbed Sun Tzu. Boyd went beyond him into the modern era but never in any way contradicted his teachings. Boyd was very, very enamored with Sun Tzu’s notion that the best way to win is without battles.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I would synthesize Boyd’s contributions in the following way: He saw combat as a competition or struggle between intelligent, thinking, responding, and reacting opponents. So, everything in his conception is two-sided. There are no simple geometric solutions to how to array troops or anything like that because you always have to be thinking about move and countermove by the enemy.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">By the way, there’s a very good history of the military reform movement written by Winslow Wheeler, a book titled “Military Reform.”</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Q. You are known for advocating and supporting the A-10, the “ugly duckling” that has proved to be an asset for the US military. You argued against the idea the US military can rely on one type of plane to do it all – bomb, strafe, dogfight, land on carriers – an oversized Swiss Army Knife, good for all things but not very good for any one thing in particular. Did the A-10 vindicate you?</b></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>In brief: Truth tellers and blunt speakers are not welcome in the Pentagon.</i></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>A.</b> Boyd and I started working together in 1967 to save the completely screwed up F-15 design the Air Force had come up with at the time. I largely played the role of student to John, helping on the engineering side and stuff. By 1968-69, we were so disgusted with what the bureaucracy did to ruin our upgraded F-15 design that we formed an underground guerilla campaign to build a real air-to-air fighter, the F-16. And almost in parallel with that I started working separately on the A-10.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The Air Force had a whole slew of acquisition people who were very big on multi-mission, super expensive airplanes. They’d already tried and failed with the F-111, which turned out such a disaster, the first of their really big multi-mission disasters. They then made a horrible mess of starting their next new fighter, the F-15. Because their bureaucracy proved so incompetent, the Air Force had to call in John. But truth tellers and blunt speakers like John are not welcome in the Pentagon.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Our opposition to multi-mission was not based on some theoretical consideration that single-purpose airplanes are always better than multi-purpose. I’m completely open to the idea, then and today, that if you could design an <i>effective</i> multi-purpose platform inexpensively enough, that’s wonderful. Except, it turned out that a force based on the multi-mission designs then available was vastly more expensive and less combat effective, (that is, effective in a historically-based sense) than one based on single-purpose designs: air-to-air, close support and deep strike.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The A-10 story is muddied by the fact that we designed it for a mission that the Air Force hated. An airplane to directly support the Army was traditionally anathema to most of the Air Force bomber generals. The A-10 only came about because of a peculiar circumstance: the Air Force wanted to kill the Army’s Cheyenne helicopter for fear of losing budget millions to the Army.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">We used the excuse of killing the Cheyenne, a disaster which richly deserved killing, to put across a close support airplane that the Air Force never wanted and still doesn’t want—but one that, over the last four wars, has proved more effective in killing tactical targets than any other jet.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">As a footnote to working with Boyd, one of Boyd’s unknown and brilliant strengths was that he was a brilliant bureaucratic tactician. He instinctively understood the bureaucracy and how it reacted, he viewed them and overcame just as he would a military enemy.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Q. What is the greatest weakness of the American way of using technology in war?</b></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>In brief: The really devastating, people-impacting aspect of how we use technology in war is that almost every new technology we’re developing is killing individual initiative at lower levels and putting more and more top-down control into higher level headquarters.</i></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>A.</b> Aside from the fact that the technology we’re getting is becoming more and more grossly inadequate and badly designed and executed, the really devastating, people-impacting aspect of how we use military technology is that almost every new technology we’re developing is killing individual initiative at lower levels and putting ever more top-down control into higher headquarters. It was considered one of the great sins in the German blitzkrieg formations to tell a subordinate how to do something. You gave him the responsibility to accomplish the mission, and he determined the method. Today, we develop and use our technology for the opposite purpose.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">One extreme example is when you have the president sitting at his desk and watching a drone strike on a big video screen. That is an utter disaster for the whole chain of command. There is no reason the president needs to watch drone strikes. But what happens when he does, when you hook up the huge communications network necessary? Think about what it takes to transmit that stuff up through one-star, two-star, four-star headquarters and then to the president; that’s a huge network and a huge investment in communications. That drone strike should simply be settled between the drone operator and the unit being supported. It’s nobody else’s business. But when more and more high-ranking people watch it, those poor guys at the tip of the spear are under deadly pressure. They can’t take a single risky or innovative action. If they don’t do it by the book, some four-star general is going to come down on them like a ton of bricks, court-martial them, or whatever.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Q. At times in American military history, we have adhered to the “better is the enemy of good enough” theory of our weaponry (think Sherman tank vs Panther). Yet at other times, in the quality vs quantity debate, we side 200% with the former (today’s aircraft and submarines). Please comment on this debate.</b></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>In brief: As soon as you define effectiveness in a way that includes both the effect of the individual weapon and the effect of the numbers of those weapons that you’re able to deliver in the face of the enemy, then the whole debate solves itself.</i></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>A. </b>I’ve been fighting that canard all my life. I despise couching it as quality versus quantity, because that’s basically a sales tool for advocates who want to inflate the budget. When you couch the debate as “Well, we could build a small number of really good weapons that really save the lives of our people, or you buy a whole bunch of cheap weapons and then you’re sending our people to die,” that argument is always launched in favor of raising the budget. It’s a salesman’s tool.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Instead, the useful way to look at it is to forget about quality versus quantity and to sit down and get serious about what constitutes effectiveness. When you define effectiveness in a way that includes both the effect of the individual weapon and the effect of the numbers of those weapons you are able to deliver in the face of the enemy, then the whole debate solves itself. But of course, the bureaucrats who sit down and write the requirements for the new glitzy weapon never include the issue of how many of them show up in combat and how many of those are still working when the rifleman or the pilot or the artilleryman needs to pull the trigger.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">If you couched effectiveness correctly, there would be no quality versus quantity debate at all. You would simply build the most effective weapon that delivers the force that’s most likely to make you win. But as soon as you leave out the idea of the force numbers deployed in battle, then you get into these total abortions of small buys of super expensive weapons that don’t work, of which the prime example is the F-35, which is like the F-111 on steroids. Right now, the F-35 can’t fly more often than once every three days. So, there’s your quality-versus-quantity debate, right? Nobody looked at how many F-35s we could buy within a fixed budget or how many of the ones bought would show up for combat. And if we had, we’d have come up with a much better, much bigger Air Force.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Q. If we should prepare for war with a near-peer power, what should the military technology developers and decision makers focus on?</b></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>In brief: We should prepare for war against any competent enemy and see how much defense we can get within a reasonable budget.</i></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>A. </b>The U.S. should certainly prepare for war against a competent enemy. We should prepare for war against any competent enemy and see how much defense we can get within a reasonable budget. But at the same time, we should make sure that whatever it was we put together works at the other end of the scale. You must design a force against uncertainty. And while there’s nothing imminent on the horizon that looks like a competent and powerful enemy, it might not take long for another nation to become a competent and powerful enemy. And we should be prepared to deal with it, not on a high tech threat-concocted basis but based on what we know is happening in real world weapons production and which weapons work and which of those we should be afraid of.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">It’s the same thing we did with the A-10. People keep on saying we designed the A-10 to kill tanks in the Fulda Gap. That’s hogwash. We designed it to kill everything from guys in sandals in the jungle to massed tanks in the Fulda Gap. And we were very sure and very careful to make sure that what we did to kill tanks didn’t ruin the airplane as a weapon against insurgents with rifles. And we should do the same thing at the national level. I mean, it’s the only sensible thing to do, given that we never get the threat right. And, I might add, exactly that is true of the threat that the nation is facing right now, the coronavirus, which we have horribly misestimated.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Q. Do you think the Covid-19 virus disruption, and the associated economic downturn, will have a significant impact on the technologies or systems that we have been discussing? If so, what might that be?</b></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>In brief: We have a hopelessly incompetent bureaucracy in the United States for dealing with epidemics.</i></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>A. </b>Obviously, as we now see, the U.S. was totally unprepared, had no such plan. We have a hopelessly incompetent public health bureaucracy in the States for dealing with epidemics. And I say that by comparison with countries that have competent ones. It’s not that it’s impossible; it is definitely hard to get a competent bureaucracy. Taiwan has done a brilliant job and has essentially no deaths because they had a plan in place, more than a plan (late March 2020). They had a plan and a structure and a way of activating testing and so on that worked perfectly. And beyond a shadow of a doubt we should have something as good as what Taiwan has – I mean, a version adapted to our circumstances.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Of course, every sensible military must be prepared if they’re going to going to face a natural or planted bio threat, either way. Of course, you must be prepared for epidemics. Our offensive biological warfare capabilities are in the hands of one of the most thoroughly incompetent bureaucracies you ever saw—and should have been shut down ages ago. I’ve been tracking them since probably 1970, and the same goes for our chemical warfare. But biological warfare in the sense of protecting against epidemics is obviously necessary—how could you imagine not doing it?</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Q. If you could do one thing to change American political and military establishments’ strategic choices, what would that be?</b></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>In brief: The single thing that leads us to the greatest strategic mistakes is the idea of agreed intelligence and agreed assessment of threats.</i></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>A. </b>That question relates directly to what we were just talking about. The single thing that leads us to the greatest mistakes is the idea of agreed intelligence and agreed assessment of threats, almost always inflated. We have done appallingly badly at assessing every threat the United States has faced from the Berlin Wall on. We mis-assessed the Cold War, the end of the Soviet Empire, the domino threat of Ho Chi Minh. You name it, without fail we’ve gotten all that wrong. And yet, we based the nation’s strategy on it—and then we wonder why we failed.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Of course, the reason we got the threats so wrong is that the threats are political weapons for increasing the budget, and agreed intelligence is immediately captured by the powerful political interests of the military industrial complex who need inflated threats to grow the budget.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">And so we’re constantly looking at false threats on which to base a national strategy. The problems all start with the “observe, orient” beginning of the OODA loop: you know, “observe, orient, decide, and act,” and then go back and around the loop. I mean, that’s super easy to understand. The observing and orienting at the national level must start with intelligence and threats. As soon as you put the ability to shape and falsify the threat in the hands of a single bureaucracy, you’re doomed. You’ll never get the threat right because the political pressures will overwhelm and distort it.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I am very much in favor of disagreed intelligence, where you have three or four intelligence agencies, each grinding their own ax and each giving you a different assessment. Every one of our last three or four wars has been based on false intelligence and total mis-assessment of the enemy, all of it agreed intelligence that came out of the national intelligence CIA/DIA/NSA behemoths. If we would allow and encourage all of them to disagree, maybe we would get a little closer to the truth. We would at least have a very good feel for the uncertainties in the threat assessment.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Q. The students in our course come from a variety of backgrounds, and are majoring in a variety of disciplines, including accounting, economics, engineering, and political science. Presumably, each has an interest in technology, war, and strategy, and the issues that we discuss. What would you say to these students about their decision to sign up for, and attend this course? Why does it matter? And how can it help them better understand the world in which they will live in 10-20-30 years?</b></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>In brief: A course like this is for people who genuinely care about their country, and in one way or another, want it to improve.</i></span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>A. </b>There are several factors that make the course useful and worthwhile, probably more today than ever before. One is the fact that we have a voluntary military, and so the military and military knowledge is much more isolated today than it ever was when we had draft. Back then the general population, being widely exposed to draftees, kind of understood the Army, Navy, Air Force and their bureaucracies and the bumbling that goes on. We’re insulated from that today unless we know people who have joined the much smaller volunteer military. We have almost no window into that defense world, other than the press, which totally misreports it. Another reason is defense is an enormous piece of our economy. A lot of how our country is ruled has to do with the military budget. That huge defense budget carries all kinds of votes in Congress and exerts enormous pressures on the president. So, if you want to be a decent citizen, if you want to know about your government, how to make choices and who to vote for and so on, you have to know the fundamentals of what goes on inside that $750 billion budget and the huge organizations behind it.</span></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">A course like this is for people who genuinely care about their country, and in one way or another, want it to improve. They need to have some feel for the power and failings of the defense sector. They’re getting both bad media information and not getting any personal exposure to the military juggernaut. Your course addresses this gap.</span></p>Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-48460939771029086972020-08-18T15:01:00.002-04:002020-08-18T15:09:29.595-04:00The Pandemic Has Revealed America’s Zip Code Map of Inequality<p> <span face="" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 19px;">Marshall Auerback, Counterpunch, 17 August</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="4" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;"><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/17/the-pandemic-has-revealed-americas-zip-code-map-of-inequality/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/17/the-pandemic-has-revealed-americas-zip-code-map-of-inequality/</a></p><p data-reader-unique-id="4" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;">It is understandably tempting to drop all the blame for America’s catastrophic response to COVID-19 on the big desk in the Oval Office. But there’s more to the story than epic incompetence, grift and delusion at the highest levels of government. The stark divide in the level of health care from testing to treatment is divided by wealth and the legacy of systemic racism.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N2sTWraAY0s/Xzwkog_UivI/AAAAAAAACEk/fb86ajwjapoJzvV5xex-zKrp1O_rR45EwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1200/IMG_0321-scaled.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N2sTWraAY0s/Xzwkog_UivI/AAAAAAAACEk/fb86ajwjapoJzvV5xex-zKrp1O_rR45EwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/IMG_0321-scaled.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p data-reader-unique-id="4" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 19px; max-width: 100%; text-align: center;"><span color="" style="caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65); font-size: 12px;">Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="5" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;">In <a data-reader-unique-id="6" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/coronavirus-american-failure/614191/?utm_source=email-promo&utm_medium=cr&utm_campaign=ed-yong-cover-actives&utm_content=20200803&utm_term=sep-20&silverid=NjQyNTQ5Mzk0OTM0S0" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">the words of Ed Yong of the Atlantic</a>: “Chronic underfunding of public health neutered the nation’s ability to prevent the pathogen’s spread. A bloated, inefficient health-care system left hospitals ill-prepared for the ensuing wave of sickness. Racist policies that have endured since the days of colonization and slavery left Indigenous and Black Americans especially vulnerable to COVID-19.” Yong could also add <a data-reader-unique-id="7" href="https://www.propublica.org/article/it-cost-me-everything-in-texas-covid-19-takes-a-devastating-toll-on-hispanic-residents?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=river" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">Hispanics</a> to that list, along with virtually any person of limited economic means, regardless of race.</p><p data-reader-unique-id="8" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;">In the land of the free and the home of the brave, <a data-reader-unique-id="9" href="https://www.wired.com/story/your-income-predicts-how-well-you-can-socially-distance/" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">income and zip code determine everything.</a> And this is not a new phenomenon. In a recent article in <a data-reader-unique-id="10" href="https://mondediplo.com/2020/08/02populism-expertise" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">Le Monde Diplomatique</a>, historian <a data-reader-unique-id="11" href="https://tcfrank.com/" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">Thomas Frank</a> quotes physician <a data-reader-unique-id="12" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shadid" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">Dr. Michael A. Shadid</a>, who was a longtime advocate for cooperative health care from the 1920s onward until his death. In his 1947 book, <a data-reader-unique-id="13" href="https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchCode=LCCN&searchArg=med47000058&searchType=1&permalink=y" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;"><i data-reader-unique-id="14" style="max-width: 100%;">Doctors of Today and Tomorrow</i></a>, Shadid made the case for socialized medicine on the grounds that “[p]oor people get sick quicker, stay sick longer, need medical aid most, get it least. Some are poor because they are sick. Others are sick because they are poor.”</p><p data-reader-unique-id="15" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;">Nothing has fundamentally changed since Shadid’s time. The United States continues to have the most expensive health care system in the world, yet a <a data-reader-unique-id="16" href="https://www.axios.com/the-us-health-care-system-is-not-the-best-in-the-world-9369a2bf-70b7-4222-b428-c7024a6875f3.html" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">2019 comparison of health indicators</a> in the United States versus those of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries’ average reveals a system that persistently produces inferior outcomes relative to other nations (in spite of higher expenditures) and has done so for decades.</p><p data-reader-unique-id="17" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;">COVID-19 has both amplified and revealed these long-standing flaws, tragically reflected in its death count, but it is by no means a historical anomaly. Earlier pandemics reveal a similar pattern, suggesting a more widespread systemic problem: namely, that the high death counts relative to the rest of the world are an inescapable consequence of our for-profit, pervasively oligopolistic health care system. The problems of a for-profit health care system are exacerbated by the diversion of resources and skills into militarism, and unequal food distribution systems’ effect on diet and obesity. All of these pre-existing problems contribute to higher mortality rates, as does access to proper medical care, which is heavily circumscribed by income.</p><p data-reader-unique-id="18" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;">In terms of fatalities, COVID-19 now ranks as one of the most severe <a data-reader-unique-id="19" href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/basics/past-pandemics.html" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">pandemics in modern history</a>, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The most deadly was the <a data-reader-unique-id="20" href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">1918 influenza pandemic</a>: 50 million deaths globally out of a worldwide population of <a data-reader-unique-id="21" href="https://ourworldindata.org/spanish-flu-largest-influenza-pandemic-in-history" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">1.8 billion</a>, or 2.7 percent, while the U.S. recorded <a data-reader-unique-id="22" href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">675,000</a> fatalities, or 0.65 percent on a per capita basis out of a population of <a data-reader-unique-id="23" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2740912/#:~:text=The%20estimated%20population%20of%20the,generally%20put%20at%2020%20million." style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">103 million</a>. The only “good” thing that can be said about the 1918 tragedy is that the United States fared relatively better than the rest of the world, by this measure.</p><p data-reader-unique-id="24" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;">By contrast, a notable feature of <a data-reader-unique-id="25" href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/basics/past-pandemics.html" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">four major pandemics over the past 63 years</a>* (the 1957-1958 H2N2 influenza virus, the 1968 H3N2 influenza virus, the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus or so-called “swine flu,” and COVID-19 today) is America’s persistent underperformance in terms of fatalities relative to the rest of the world in spite of the vastly higher sums the country devotes to health care expenditures (in <a data-reader-unique-id="26" href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2019#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Spends%20More%20on%20Health%20Care%20Than%20Any%20Other%20Country&text=Notes%3A%20Current%20expenditures%20on%20health.&text=In%202018%2C%20the%20U.S.%20spent,%2C%20Switzerland%2C%20spent%2012.2%20percent." style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">both absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP</a>). For all of the talk about <a data-reader-unique-id="27" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism#:~:text=American%20exceptionalism%20is%20the%20theory,from%20that%20of%20other%20nations." style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">American exceptionalism</a>, the only thing “exceptional” about the U.S. health care system is this profound systemic failure.</p><p data-reader-unique-id="28" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;">The <a data-reader-unique-id="29" href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1957-1958-pandemic.html" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">1957 H2N2 flu virus</a> caused 1.1 million deaths globally out of a <a data-reader-unique-id="30" href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">worldwide population of 2.9 billion</a>, or 0.038 percent on a per capita basis; whereas in the United States, it caused about <a data-reader-unique-id="31" href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1957-1958-pandemic.html" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">116,000</a> deaths out of a U.S. population of <a data-reader-unique-id="32" href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">178 million</a>, or 0.065 percent on a per capita basis. The 1968 <a data-reader-unique-id="33" href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1968-pandemic.html" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">H3N2 virus</a> resulted in 1 million fatalities worldwide out of a global population of <a data-reader-unique-id="34" href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">3.6 billion</a>, or 0.028 percent on a per capita basis; in the United States, there were 100,000 deaths out of a population of 203 million, or 0.049 percent on a per capita basis. The <a data-reader-unique-id="35" href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemic.html" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">2009 H1N1 virus</a> caused far fewer overall deaths both globally and within the U.S., with <a data-reader-unique-id="36" href="https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2012/06/cdc-estimate-global-h1n1-pandemic-deaths-284000" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">284,000 fatalities globally</a> and a mere <a data-reader-unique-id="37" href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemic.html" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">12,469 fatalities in the U.S.</a>; per capita fatality rates were the same (.004 percent on a per capita basis). But COVID-19 has reflected the reversion to American underperformance: <a data-reader-unique-id="38" href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">as of August 13</a>, confirmed global fatalities (out of a <a data-reader-unique-id="39" href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">worldwide population of 7.8 billion</a>) were 749,776, or 0.0096 percent on a per capita basis, versus <a data-reader-unique-id="40" href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">169,488 deaths in the United States</a> out of an existing population of <a data-reader-unique-id="41" href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">331 million</a>, or 0.051 percent on a per capita basis.</p><p data-reader-unique-id="42" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;">Even more disturbing is that American fatalities are profoundly impacted by income disparities. Low-income communities and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) are experiencing substantially higher rates of mortality. Examining by zip code the geographic distribution of the segments of the population most likely to die from COVID-19—BIPOC, as well as people over the age of 65, and those of any age who are <a data-reader-unique-id="43" href="https://data.cms.gov/stories/s/COVID-19-Nursing-Home-Data/bkwz-xpvg" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">nursing home residents</a> (other than those in luxury elderly care facilities)—these three overlapping segments account for most deaths. It may be that in the northern states these most vulnerable people are heavily concentrated in densely populated areas and thus are quickly exposed to infection and die relatively soon after COVID-19 starts spreading in their area. The New York experience <a data-reader-unique-id="44" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/nyregion/coronavirus-deaths-nyc.html" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">validates that assessment</a>.</p><p data-reader-unique-id="45" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;">In the southern and western states, these most vulnerable populations are more widely scattered across vast suburban and rural areas, which likely explains why the United States as a whole has experienced rolling hot spots, in which the more diffuse population centers become infected and die relatively later after the initial outbreaks of the virus that were largely experienced in heavily urbanized regions. We see this pattern manifested in <a data-reader-unique-id="46" href="https://www.azfamily.com/news/continuing_coverage/coronavirus_coverage/arizona-covid-19-hot-spots-pop-up-in-areas-with-large-minority-populations/article_56680d10-c31a-11ea-a716-d7541550164d.html" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">a recent Arizona compilation of new cases by zip code</a>, as AZ Family reports using analysis by CBS 5 Investigates. Arizona has been one of areas most badly affected by COVID-19 during the summer months, and the <a data-reader-unique-id="47" href="https://www.azfamily.com/news/continuing_coverage/coronavirus_coverage/arizona-covid-19-hot-spots-pop-up-in-areas-with-large-minority-populations/article_56680d10-c31a-11ea-a716-d7541550164d.html" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">AZ Family</a> report illustrates that the hotspots for new cases are dominated by zip codes with “large minority populations” living in areas that are rural or on the outskirts of urban centers.</p><p data-reader-unique-id="48" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;">Why is this significant? David Dayen of the American Prospect <a data-reader-unique-id="49" href="https://prospect.org/coronavirus/unsanitized-virus-heads-to-where-hospital-beds-are-scarce/" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">explains</a>: “Rural hospitals… are in total crisis in the U.S., with <a data-reader-unique-id="50" href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/19/us-rural-hospital-closures-report" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">19 closures last year</a> and 120 since 2010. As hospital networks consolidate and strive for ever-greater profits, rural hospitals that fail to bring in the necessary revenue fall away.”</p><p data-reader-unique-id="51" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;">In <a data-reader-unique-id="52" href="https://prospect.org/coronavirus/unsanitized-virus-heads-to-where-hospital-beds-are-scarce/" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">the same piece</a>, Dayen quotes a study from <a data-reader-unique-id="53" href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00581" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">Health Affairs</a>, which reports that “49 percent of the lowest-income communities had no ICU beds… whereas only 3 percent of the highest-income communities had no ICU beds.” He <a data-reader-unique-id="54" href="https://prospect.org/coronavirus/unsanitized-virus-heads-to-where-hospital-beds-are-scarce/" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">highlights</a> an extreme example of this problem, originally reported by <a data-reader-unique-id="55" href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Texas-Mexico-border-coronavirus-crisis-US-15454210.php" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">the Houston Chronicle</a>: the Rio Grande Valley, along the Texas-Mexico border, “home to 1.3 million residents… [with] no public hospital. Starr County is one of the only in America to have to resort to triage, choosing who to care for and who to send home to die.”</p><p data-reader-unique-id="56" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;">Dayen’s analysis illustrates the fundamental flaw in the system: Levels of provision are a function of profitability; they do not reflect health care priorities. Hence the lowest-income hospitals are often shut down, which means worse health care outcomes for residents in these poorly serviced areas.</p><p data-reader-unique-id="57" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;">The other problem in Texas is that the state historically has also featured a high concentration of undocumented (largely Hispanic) immigrants (<a data-reader-unique-id="58" href="https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/u-s-unauthorized-immigrants-by-state/" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">the second-highest “unauthorized immigrant” population in the U.S.</a>, behind only California), who are being forced to work even when sick, since they are, by virtue of their undocumented status, largely excluded from any and all virus-relief economic aid and <a data-reader-unique-id="59" href="https://www.texmed.org/July14Journal/" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">access to primary health care</a>. As ProPublica <a data-reader-unique-id="60" href="https://www.propublica.org/article/it-cost-me-everything-in-texas-covid-19-takes-a-devastating-toll-on-hispanic-residents?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=river" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">noted</a>: “Texas is also the largest state in the nation that refused to expand health insurance for low-income residents under the Affordable Care Act… <a data-reader-unique-id="61" href="https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/14/texans-health-insurance-jobs-pandemic/" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">Nearly a third of adults</a> under 65 in Texas lack health insurance, the worst uninsured rate in the country, and more than 60% of those without health insurance in the state are Hispanic.”</p><p data-reader-unique-id="62" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;">Furthermore, <a data-reader-unique-id="63" href="https://www.propublica.org/article/it-cost-me-everything-in-texas-covid-19-takes-a-devastating-toll-on-hispanic-residents?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=river" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">living in crowded multigenerational settings</a>, workers infected on the job come home and risk spreading the illness to their parents and grandparents (many of whom may also have problematic immigration status in the country and risk deportation if they seek to address their health issues). Consequently, Hispanics are now suffering some of the worst health outcomes in the U.S.</p><p data-reader-unique-id="64" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;">With this information in context, it’s clear the more we lay blame at Trump’s feet, the further we’re going to be from confronting that COVID-19 fits neatly into a decades-old pattern of pandemic response. American health care can literally impoverish its citizens even as it undermines their physical well-being. Breaking the pattern can only happen if Americans keep putting pressure on institutionalized racism, get serious about inequality, and flip the switch on our employer-based private health care system.</p><p data-reader-unique-id="65" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;"><em data-reader-unique-id="66" style="max-width: 100%;">*<a data-reader-unique-id="67" href="https://bit.ly/3gyTU5X" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">Chuck Spinney</a> provided research assistance on the compilation and analysis of the pandemic data. (see <a href="https://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2020/07/food-for-thought-preliminary-historical.html" target="_blank">table</a>)</em></p><div data-reader-unique-id="68" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: -apple-system-font; max-width: 100%;"><i data-reader-unique-id="69" style="max-width: 100%;">This article was produced by <a data-reader-unique-id="70" href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/economy-for-all/" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">Economy for All</a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</i></div>Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-615649006053070182020-07-28T10:09:00.005-04:002020-08-18T14:36:24.856-04:00 Food for thought: A Preliminary Historical Perspective on the Current Pandemic<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13px;">Chuck Spinney, 27 July 2020</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Sources: CDC (<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/pandemic-timeline-1918.htm">1</a>, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/pandemic-timeline-1930-and-beyond.htm">2</a>, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/pandemic-timeline-1930-and-beyond.htm">3</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic">4</a>), <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer">Our World in Data Corona Virus Explorer</a> </p>
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<li style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">In terms of total deaths, Covid-19 (145,546 deaths as of 25 Jul) now ranks as the second most largest US death experience since 1918 (675,000), but US population has increased three-fold since 1918. On a per capita basis, death rates to date clearly do not come close to comparing to the 1918 Pandemic. </li>
<li style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">In terms of per capita death rates, the US experience in 1918-19 (0.625%) was much less intense (so far by a factor of 14!) than that for the entire world (2.7%).</li>
<li style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">In terms of per-capita deaths to date, the US death rate in the Covid-19 pandemic (0.044%) ranks as the 4th most severe since 1918 (0.625%), well behind 1957 (0.066%) and slightly behind 1969 (0.049%) pandemics.</li>
<li style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">In contrast to 1918, in terms of per capita death rates, the US experience in 1958, 1968, and 2020 (as of 25 Jul) has been and continues to be significantly WORSE than that for the rest of the world (although some of the world Covid-19 numbers are far more incomplete than US data. (See also graphic beneath table.)</li>
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<p style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">While it is easy to blame the sorry US response to Covid 19 on President Trump’s clear incompetence in dealing with the crisis, the relative deterioration in US per capita death rates compared to other parts of world may have deeper, longer-term roots.</p>
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<p style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">————————————————</span></p>Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-49445730309825314762019-12-08T15:04:00.000-05:002019-12-08T15:04:37.856-05:00Authorizations for Madness; The Effects and Consequences of Congress’ Endless Permissions for War<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 13px;">by </span><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/mhoh7765/" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">MATTHEW HOH</span></a><span style="font-size: 13px;"> Counterpunch, 6 December 2019</span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/06/authorizations-for-madness-the-effects-and-consequences-of-congress-endless-permissions-for-war/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/06/authorizations-for-madness-the-effects-and-consequences-of-congress-endless-permissions-for-war/</a></span></div>
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<i>[Reposted with permission of the editor]</i></div>
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<a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/dropzone/2019/12/2357606823_f19d1ff389_c-768x510.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="768" height="211" src="https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/dropzone/2019/12/2357606823_f19d1ff389_c-768x510.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13px;">Photograph Source: The U.S. Army – </span><a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">CC BY 2.0</span></a></div>
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<i>I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can…Its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.</i></div>
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<i>– Dwight Eisenhower.</i></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For the first time in decades, passage of the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/2500"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">National Defense Authorization Act</span></a> (NDAA) has been delayed due to disagreements between Democrats and Republicans. The disagreements at the center of the delay in Congress are, as usual, partisan in nature: funding for the President’s border wall with Mexico, a Space Force the <a href="https://time.com/5352947/air-force-secretary-nobody-supports-space-force/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Pentagon doesn’t want</span></a>, the <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/defense/470710-impeachment-battle-looms-over-must-pass-defense-bill"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">impeachment</span></a> hearings, and other domestic political issues. This delay in passage of a reconciled NDAA between the two houses of Congress, however offers an opportunity, because buried within the NDAA are possibilities to repeal the pieces of legislation that have brought mass human, financial and moral consequences to the US, have wrecked entire nations and societies abroad, and have made the United States less safe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>The Best Authorizations the Military-Industrial Complex Can Buy</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In both 2001 and 2002, via large majorities, the Congress passed authorizations for war. While not declarations of war, these mandates, each titled an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) provided the legal framework in <a href="https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ40/PLAW-107publ40.pdf"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">2001</span></a> for attacks against al-Qaeda and in <a href="https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ243/PLAW-107publ243.pdf"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">2002</span></a> for the invasion of Iraq. <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/2001-aumf_n_5b9bc513e4b013b0977a1f83"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Since 2001</span></a>, the first AUMF has far exceeded its original purpose and has been used to justify <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/map-shows-places-world-where-us-military-operates-180970997/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">military strikes and operations</span></a> in close to twenty countries in the Middle East, <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3my38/exclusive-the-us-has-more-military-operations-in-africa-than-the-middle-east"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Africa</span></a> and Asia, often against nations, organizations, and individuals who had nothing to do with 9/11. It was even cited by President Obama, and then President Trump, as the authority to extra-constitutionally <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/01/30/obama-killed-a-16-year-old-american-in-yemen-trump-just-killed-his-8-year-old-sister/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">execute an American citizen and his teenage children</span></a>, without trial, by drones and commandos. President Trump, as the 2001 is still operative, can seemingly do what he pleases with the military overseas. With regards to the 2002 AUMF, I think most Americans would find it a shock to know it is still in effect, that the congressional blessing given to the Bush Administration to launch the Iraq War, based on the lies of Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda, has never been revoked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Within the NDAA, presented as amendments, are calls for the <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/2001-aumf-house-repeal_n_5d0aa028e4b0f7b7442b6c40"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">2001</span></a> and <a href="https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/2002-iraq-aumf-repeal-provision-national-defense-authorization-act-fiscal-year-2020"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">2002</span></a> AUMFs to be repealed. The oft stated arguments offered against repeal by politicians and pundits in the service of the war machine refer to the world-wide presence of terror groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS); appeal to the sunk cost of US lives and treasure in the post-9/11 wars; or point to the requirement for the Pentagon’s leadership abroad, somehow claiming that US military, and CIA, presence and activity over the last two decades <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/09/17/us-led-global-war-terrorism-has-succeeded-creating-more-global-terrorism"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">has brought about stability and peace</span></a>. It doesn’t take very much to belie such excuses and reasons, simply having paid attention to the news of endless war for the last couple of decades or by <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/10/majorities-of-u-s-veterans-public-say-the-wars-in-iraq-and-afghanistan-were-not-worth-fighting/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">speaking to a war veteran</span></a> will guide most people to an understanding that these wars have not just been failures, but never-ending catastrophes of counter-production and suffering, proving with clear certainty both the old adages of war as hell and as a breeding ground for unintended consequences.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The list of reasons to not repeal these AUMFs are heard in varying degrees from congressional leaders and members on both sides. These reasons are at best specious and are most commonly political myths and tropes that fluctuate around American exceptionalism and the benevolence of war making. The antidote to such falsehoods of war is hard experience and undeniable fact. The listing of all such experience and fact is too great to provide, however, I believe simply outlining the costs and consequences of the actual results of the wars enabled by the AUMFs is enough to cause democrats, republican and independent voters, – men and women <a href="https://aboutfaceveterans.org/drop-the-mic-campaign/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">who are not on the dole of the weapons industry</span></a>, unlike nearly all members of Congress – to want to see a repeal of both AUMFs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>What Have the AUMFs Accomplished?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Based on <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780393079425"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">FBI</span></a> and <a href="https://peterbergen.com/the-almanac-of-al-qaeda/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">journalist</span></a> investigations, al Qaeda’s strength was between 200 and 400 members world-wide in September of 2001. Al Qaeda now has affiliates in every corner of the world, their <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/16/cia-chief-just-confirmed-war-terror-has-created-lot-more-terrorists"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">forces measure</span></a> in the tens of thousands of fighters, and they control territory in Yemen, Syria and Africa. Per <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/10/29/by-protecting-idlib-the-us-created-a-safe-haven-for-baghdadi-and-isis/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Brett McGurk</span></a>, the former US envoy for combatting al Qaeda and ISIS, Idlib Province in Syria is the largest single location of al Qaeda fighters ever assembled in the world. In Afghanistan, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/28/the-shattered-afghan-dream-of-peace"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">the Taliban are stronger</span></a> than at any point since 2001, and, with regards to international terrorism, where there was one international terror group in Afghanistan in 2001, now the Pentagon <a href="https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/1019029/department-of-defense-press-briefing-by-general-nicholson-in-the-pentagon-brief/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">reports twenty groups</span></a>, the largest gathering of such groups in the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It is important to remember ISIS is the former al Qaeda in Iraq, an organization that came into being due to the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the United States. While apologists for the United States’ wars and militarized foreign policy will argue this was an unforeseeable and regrettable accident, it seems beyond dispute, as understood through <a href="https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-west-saw-isis-as-strategic-asset-b99ad7a29092"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">leaked US intelligence documents</span></a>, comments by <a href="https://off-guardian.org/2017/01/06/leaked-john-kerry-audio-white-house-wanted-isis-to-rise-in-syria/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">American</span></a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgBsTT0h_SA"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">foreign</span></a> officials, and multiple <a href="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/07/01/obama-and-the-dia-islamic-state-memo-what-trump-gets-right/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">journalist</span></a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2017.1361281"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">academic</span></a> reports, that ISIS’ success in Syria and Iraq in the first half of this decade was due to the direct and indirect military, logistic and financial support to ISIS by the US and it allies. This same support occurred for <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/vp-biden-apologizes-for-telling-truth-about-turkey-saudi-and-isis"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #551a8b;">al Qaeda</span></a> and their associated forces in <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-support-for-al-qaeda-l_b_10089410"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Syria</span></a>. At times the US found itself providing air cover for <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/10/29/by-protecting-idlib-the-us-created-a-safe-haven-for-baghdadi-and-isis/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">al Qaeda</span></a> forces in Syria and even air strikes in support of <a href="https://theduran.com/us-fighter-jets-provide-air-support-isis-syria-masks-now-come-off/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">ISIS</span></a>. Such use of US warplanes resulted in accusations that the US was serving as <a href="https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/item/16443-kucinich-strike-on-syria-makes-u-s-al-qaeda-air-force"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">al Qaeda and ISIS’ Air Force</span></a>in Syria. In response US active duty soldiers protested via social media, angered at being on the same side as the people they saw as responsible for 9/11.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">While much of the counter-productive results of the AUMFs are correctly described as <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/blowback-is-real-and-were-living-through-it/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">blowback</span></a>, the outcome of incompetent and nefariousness US meddling overseas, whether it be through Reagan-era support for Islamic militants in Afghanistan or Obama’s use of “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/hillary-clinton-libya.html"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">smart power</span></a>” in Libya, I certainly do not want to take away from the agency of those people who have spent decades fighting against the US Empire and its allies. The 9/11 hijackers, the murderers who give reason for these AUMFs, offered the following <a href="https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">three motives</span></a> for their attack:</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">the US sanctions and bombings of Iraq through the 1990s,</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">the US support for Israel against the Palestinians,</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">the stationing of the US military in Saudi Arabia.</span></li>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The 9/11 hijackers did not murder thousands of Americans because they hated our freedoms, but because they saw the US as engaging in an ongoing war against Muslim people and lands. Not forgetting the terrible and criminal nature of 9/11, I don’t think it extreme to say the hijackers’ grievances were legitimate, regardless of whether you agree with them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Rather than executing a response to that act of terror which would directly pursue the perpetrators while ameliorating the conditions that gave rise to the attacks, the US chose a path that inflamed anti-US sentiments and assisted terrorist recruiting by opening wars against Muslims across the world, <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/terror-factory-fbi-trevor-aaronson-book"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">including in the US</span></a>. The result should not be surprising: US <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/why-gen-petraeus-assassination-inc-threatens-us-all/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">military</span></a>,<a href="http://archive.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2009/10/09/most_insurgents_in_afghanistan_not_religiously_motivated_military_reports_say/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">intelligence</span></a> agencies, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/16/AR2005111602519.html"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">journalists</span></a> and other <a href="https://www.voanews.com/extremism-watch/un-study-finds-government-action-main-factor-extremism-africa"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">international organizations</span></a> continually report the reasons people join such groups is not out of ideology or religious devotion, but out of resistance to invasion and occupation, and in response to the death of family, friends and neighbors by foreign and corrupt government forces. Anywhere from 70-90% of the people who are fighting our soldiers in Africa, Asia and across the Greater Middle East are doing so simply because our soldiers are occupying them or are backing predatory and kleptocratic local government forces.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Often, when I ask those in the US who possess the loudest desire for overseas intervention, occupation and war what they would do if their own home towns and cities were occupied by a foreign army I usually receive a quiet non-reply or an answer so intellectually and morally dissonant that I have to catch my breath. Yet, it is such silence and dissonance that allows for these wars to continue and disallows any consideration that without the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs we may not today have a world-wide network of al Qaeda fighters and, most certainly, we would not have ISIS. The AUMFs, and the wars they have enabled, have worsened terrorism, not defeated it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>What Have the AUMFs Cost?</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0000ee; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://dcas.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/pages/report_sum_reason.xhtml">More than 7,000 US service members have been killed and more than 50,000 wounded</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> in the wars since 9/11. Of the 2.5 million troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan it is estimated <a href="https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/common/common_veterans.asp"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">as many as 20%</span></a> are afflicted with PTSD, while <a href="https://www.publichealth.va.gov/docs/epidemiology/TBI-report-fy2013-qtr4.pdf"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">20% more</span></a> may have traumatic brain injury. Based on US Veterans Administration (VA) data, Afghan and Iraq veterans have <a href="https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/mentalhealth/suicide_prevention/data.asp"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">rates of suicide 4-10 times higher</span></a> than their civilian peers, adjusted for age and sex. This translates to almost two Afghan and Iraq veterans dying by suicide each day. Do the math and it is clear more Afghan and Iraq veterans are being lost to suicide than to combat. The cost to the people overseas to whom we have brought these wars is hard to realize. <a href="https://shadowproof.com/2015/04/09/unworthy-victims-western-wars-have-killed-four-million-muslims-since-1990-2/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Between one and four million people</span></a> have been killed, directly and indirectly, while tens of millions have been wounded or psychologically traumatized, and tens of millions more made homeless – the cause of our planet’s worst refugee crisis since World War Two.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Financially, the cost of these wars is immense: more <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">than $6 trillion dollars.</span></a> The cost of these wars is <a href="https://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176311/tomgram%253A_william_hartung%252C_the_trillion-dollar_national_security_budget/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">just one element of the $1.2 trillion</span></a> the US government spends annually on wars and war making. <a href="https://www.warresisters.org/sites/default/files/fy2020pie_chart-low_resb.pdf"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Half of each dollar</span></a> paid in federal income tax goes towards some form or consequence of war. While the results of such spending are not hard to foresee or understand: a cyclical and dependent relationship between the Pentagon, weapons industry and Congress, the creation of a whole new class of worker and wealth distribution is not so understood or noticed, but exists and is especially malignant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Where the manufacturing, oil, financial and tech centers of the US were once the most affluent regions of the country, for more than a decade now Washington, DC’s counties have composedthe wealthiest section of the United States. In 2016, <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_counties_in_the_United_States"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">4 of the wealthiest 6 counties</span></a> in the US were Washington, DC suburbs. As discretionary federal spending, aside from that going to defense, intelligence and homeland security agencies, has <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/policy-basics-non-defense-discretionary-programs"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">remained flat or fallen</span></a> in the last two decades, in relation to inflation and GDP, that household wealth amassed in and around Washington, DC has come primarily from year after year of trillion dollar aggregate spending in support of war making (with the exception of President Obama’s 2009 bank bailout). The sustainment of thiswar wealth class in and around Washington, DC, seems set for permanence as predicted by future congressional spending priorities, while non-war making classes of Americans, such as scientists, educators and environmentalists, will continue to see <a href="https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000168-951c-d37e-ad6a-95fdd0870001"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">reduced support</span></a> from the federal government.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This is a ghastly redistribution of wealth, perhaps unlike any known in modern human history, certainly not in American history. As taxpayers send trillions to Washington. DC, that money flows to the men and women that remotely oversee, manage and staff the wars that kill and destroy millions of lives overseas and at home. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees and civilian contractors servicing the wars take home six figure annual salaries allowing them second homes, luxury cars and plastic surgery, while veterans put guns in their mouths, refugees die in capsized boats and as many as four million nameless souls scream silently in death.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The only additional statistic I have the space to provide, of a vast many which compose that incomprehensible cost of more than $6 trillion spent solely for these wars, is that nearly $1 trillion of the $6 trillion dollars is simply just <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">interest and debt payments</span></a>. For politicians, whether or not they claim some form of fiscal conservatism as a political principal, these interest and debt payments alone should cause them to reconsider these wars. It should also make all Americans flinch when they are told, by leaders of both parties and the media, that reform or expansion of domestic public policy programs is too expensive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>All That We Have To Do…</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In 2004 Osama bin Laden <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2004/11/200849163336457223.html"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">said</span></a>:</span></div>
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<i>All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.</i></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It is not hard to imagine bin Laden smiling at his accomplishments from his oceanic grave.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">These AUMFs and the wars have provided tens of thousands of recruits to international terror groups; mass profits to the weapons industry and those that service it; promotions to generals and admirals, with <a href="https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/06/05/DOD-Retirees-From-4-star-General-to-7-Figure-Income"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">corporate board seats</span></a> upon retirement; and a perpetual and endless supply of bloody shirts for politicians to wave via an unquestioning and obsequious corporate media to stoke compliant anger and malleable fear. What is hard to imagine, impossible even, is anyone else who has benefited from these wars.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Brutality, Stupidity, Futility</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The wars since 9/11 have been brutal, stupid and futile. The majority of Americans, including Afghan and Iraq war veterans, believe the wars to <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/10/majorities-of-u-s-veterans-public-say-the-wars-in-iraq-and-afghanistan-were-not-worth-fighting/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">have not been worth fighting</span></a>. Cravenly, with some notable exceptions by progressives and libertarians, there has not been a concerted effort within Congress to put an end to these wars, gain some control over the American war machine and cripple its ability to deliver mass suffering and death.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">With the NDAA stalled in conference committee an opportunity now exists for members of Congress to hear from their constituents that the wars must come to an end. While revoking the AUMFs would by no means wave a magic wand that would end the bloodshed, it would be a crucial first step in forcing the Trump administration, and subsequent administrations, to return to Congress for approval to start another war or to even continue with those wars that are now well into their second decade.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Please call your members of Congress and tell them to ensure their party leadership keeps the amendments to repeal the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/amendment/116th-congress/house-amendment/556?s=a&r=9"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">2001</span></a> and <a href="https://www.congress.gov/amendment/116th-congress/house-amendment/555"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">2002</span></a> AUMFs in the final version of the NDAA. These authorizations for madness must come to an end.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">More articles by:<a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/mhoh7765/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">MATTHEW HOH</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Matthew Hoh is a member of the advisory boards of Expose Facts, Veterans For Peace and World Beyond War. In 2009 he resigned his position with the State Department in Afghanistan in protest of the escalation of the Afghan War by the Obama Administration. He previously had been in Iraq with a State Department team and with the U.S. Marines. He is a Senior Fellow with the Center for International Policy.</i></span></div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-18616277406263824132019-05-23T17:39:00.000-04:002019-05-23T17:41:53.046-04:00PODCAST: Classifying John Boyd with Chuck Spinney<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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BY <a href="https://www.pogo.org/about/people/dan-grazier">DAN GRAZIER</a>, Center for Defense Information, <a href="https://www.pogo.org/">Project On Government Oversight</a>, MAY 23, 2019</div>
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<a href="https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/05/podcast-classifying-john-boyd-with-chuck-spinney/">https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/05/podcast-classifying-john-boyd-with-chuck-spinney/</a></div>
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Military scholars and practitioners continue to debate the significance and merit of John Boyd’s ideas more than 20 years after his death. </div>
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<i>Dan Grazier interviews Chuck Spinney, May 2019. (Photo: Dan Grazier)</i></div>
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Colonel Boyd is the legendary Air Force fighter pilot who, in addition to revolutionizing aerial combat tactics and aircraft design, also changed the way Americans think about conflict and warfare. He profoundly influenced the Marine Corps’ maneuver warfare doctrine and helped shape the ground campaign that led to the rapid defeat of the Iraqi Army during the 1991 Gulf War.</div>
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In recent years, some have attempted to classify Boyd’s ideas as airpower theory, which at its core is the basic idea that an air force, when commanded by airmen bombing targets selected by airmen, can influence the outcome of a conflict at the strategic level, independent of ground or naval forces.</div>
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Chuck Spinney, one of Boyd’s closest collaborators, explains how Boyd pointedly disagreed with airpower theory and how his ideas encompass conflict in all forms.</div>
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<iframe allow="autoplay" frameborder="no" height="250" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/625311411&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true" width="80%"></iframe></div>
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The Pentagon Labyrinth, a podcast by POGO's Center for Defense Information, discusses key issues and current challenges for military and Pentagon reform.</div>
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Show Notes:</div>
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<a href="https://media.defense.gov/2017/Dec/27/2001861508/-1/-1/0/T_0029_FADOK_BOYD_AND_WARDEN.PDF">John Boyd and John Warden: Air Power’s Quest for Strategic Paralysis</a> – David Fadok</div>
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<a href="http://self.gutenberg.org/wplbn0002170893-airpower-for-strategic-effect-by-colin-s-gray.aspx?">Airpower for Strategic Effect</a> – Colin Gray</div>
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“<a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58a3add7e3df28d9fbff4501/t/58a4a32ce4fcb5d8f00b7243/1487184684871/Destruction+and+Creation_3+Sep+1976.pdf">Destruction and Creation</a>” – John Boyd</div>
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“<a href="https://americawar.wordpress.com/thinkers/john-r-boyd/genghis-john/">Genghis John</a>” – Franklin C. Spinney</div>
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*<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhIeTzW9iWw">Music: “Without Limits” Ross Bugden</a>*</div>
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<a href="https://www.pogo.org/projects/center-for-defense-information">Center for Defense Information</a></div>
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<i>The Center for Defense Information at POGO aims to secure far more effective and ethical military forces at significantly lower cost.</i></div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-38679690198392787552019-05-12T12:42:00.000-04:002019-05-12T12:42:36.525-04:00The Psychology of Russiagate<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Even if you do not agree with the analysis presented in the attached video, it is well worth watching and thinking about.</div>
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<b>America in denial: Gabor Maté on the psychology of Russiagate </b></div>
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<b><i>Physician, mental health expert, and best-selling author Dr. Gabor Maté sits down with The Grayzone’s Aaron Maté to analyze how Russiagate was able to take hold of U.S. society following Donald Trump’s election.</i></b></div>
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By Aaron Maté, The Grayzone, 7 May 2009</div>
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<a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/05/07/gabor-mate-russiagate-interview-transcript/">https://thegrayzone.com/2019/05/07/gabor-mate-russiagate-interview-transcript/</a></div>
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(Interview transcript)</div>
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AARON MATÉ: It’s The Grayzone, coming to you from The People’s Forum in New York City. I’m Aaron Maté, here with another Maté – his name is Gabor. He is a physician, an expert on childhood trauma, mental health, chronic illness, and the author of several best-selling books. He’s also my father. And I wanted to bring him today to discuss Russiagate, which is now in a new chapter. Many people are now grappling with the fact that Robert Mueller has just returned a verdict on the issue of a Trump-Russia conspiracy – which so many people were led to believe in – and Mueller has rejected it. [<a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/05/07/gabor-mate-russiagate-interview-transcript/">continued</a>]</div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-70446740142611881652019-05-08T13:47:00.000-04:002019-05-12T07:03:52.858-04:00Will the Mueller report put the Russia-Trump collusion narrative to rest? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Attached herewith is ace investigative reporter Gareth Porter’s insightful explanation of why the Mueller report is likely to prolong the increasingly dangerous distraction created by the baseless Trump-Russia collusion allegations. </div>
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Porter’s assessment is well worth careful reading.</div>
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Chuck Spinney</div>
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<b>Mueller Stoked Trump-Russia Alarmism, Despite Finding No Collusion</b></div>
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Gareth Porter, Truthout, May 5, 2019</div>
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<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/mueller-stoked-trump-russia-alarmism-despite-finding-no-collusion/">https://truthout.org/articles/mueller-stoked-trump-russia-alarmism-despite-finding-no-collusion/</a></div>
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Reposted with permission of the author</div>
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<i>Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and historian writing on US national security policy. His latest book, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, was published in February of 2014. Follow him on Twitter: </i><a href="https://twitter.com/GarethPorter"><i>@GarethPorter</i></a><i>. </i></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Ann Mueller and Special Counsel Robert Mueller walk on March 24, 2019, in Washington, D.C. </i></div>
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The Mueller report did not find evidence that contacts between Trump campaign advisers and staff and Russians during the 2016 election campaign constitute “collusion” or “conspiracy” with a Russian effort to elect Donald Trump.</div>
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Nevertheless, Mueller’s report is bound to prolong the U.S. political obsession with the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, because it keeps alive the idea that Trump campaign contacts with Russians were a threat to U.S. national security.</div>
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That view will encourage Democrats in Congress and the corporate media figures still committed to the Trump-Russia narrative to push the issue for many months to come. That means that Congress and the media will be diverted from the real domestic threats to democracy that stem both from the Trump administration’s anti-democratic policies and from the dysfunctional U.S. political system.</div>
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The continued focus on the collusion narrative also plays into the hands of the national security state and powerful arms contractors, which have stoked the new Cold War with Russia. For senior officials in the national security state, the threat to American interests in 2016 was not only Russian “meddling” in the election but also Trump’s perceived interest in improving relations with Moscow, which would mean relaxing sanctions. They viewed Trump as a threat after he declared in his first major foreign policy address as a candidate on April 26, 2016, “We desire to live peacefully and in friendship with Russia and China” and said, “This horrible cycle of hostility must end and ideally will end soon.”</div>
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Just before stepping down as CIA director in January 2017, John O. Brennan issued an extraordinary warning to Trump in an interview with Fox News not to stray from the established hardline policy toward Russia. “I think Mr. Trump has to understand,” Brennan declared, “that absolving Russia of various actions that it’s taken in the past number of years is a road, that he, I think, needs to be very, very careful about moving down.”</div>
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The national security bureaucracy has an overriding interest in keeping heavy pressure on Russia and the Putin government and on mobilizing public support and resources for a more aggressive policy toward Russia, including a military buildup for potential war and more emphasis on offensive-use cyber war capabilities.</div>
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Mueller, a former FBI director who was deeply involved in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0CfAh2PJ6k">justifying the Bush administration’s aggressive war in Iraq</a>, clearly shares the same political perspective and interests. Although the report makes no direct judgment about the motive behind the contacts with Russians, it is based on the implicit assumption that contacts between a presidential campaign and Russian officials or intermediaries are contrary to the national interest. That idea is extended even further, moreover, to include contacts with anyone who had ever been a Russian official or was alleged to be “linked” in some way to the Russians – an idea that has been adopted in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/08/us/politics/trump-russia-kushner-manafort.html">media coverage</a> of the Mueller investigation.</div>
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<b>The Trump Tower Meeting and the Moscow Trump Tower Negotiations</b></div>
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Mueller’s accounts of two episodes that have been the subject of intensive media and Congressional suggestions of collusion — the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Trump’s negotiations with a Russian real estate company on a Trump Tower in Moscow – show clearly that they were nothing of the sort.</div>
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The Mueller report feeds into the growing power of militarist interests in maintaining high tensions with Russia and scoring record military budgets.</div>
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The Trump Tower meeting has been depicted as clear evidence of the Trump campaign responding with alacrity to an offer of dirt on Hillary Clinton by a lawyer linked to the Kremlin. But Mueller’s account makes it clear that it was merely about an offer of the kind of opposition research material that is commonly used in campaigns – and far less sensational than what was gathered in the now-discredited Steele Dossier.</div>
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Although publicist Rob Goldstone had told the Trump campaign that Veselnitskaya was offering information that represented the Russian government’s assistance to Trump’s campaign, she was actually a former Russian prosecutor who had been an independent lawyer since 2001. Her client was the son of Russian businessman Peter Katsyv, whose company was a defendant in a civil forfeiture action in the United States related to the Magnitsky act.</div>
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Veselnitskaya had no connection to the Clinton emails. She was merely offering a document alleging that two U.S.-based businessmen, Dirk and Daniel Ziff, had engaged in tax evasion and money laundering in Russia and had used some of their ill-gotten gains to contribute to the Democratic National Committee (DNC). But when Donald Trump, Jr. asked if any of the illegally obtained money could be traced to Clinton, she admitted that it was doubtful, and the Trump campaign figures lost interest.</div>
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The Mueller account of Trump’s negotiations over a possible Trump Tower in Moscow in 2015-16 included the previously published story about Russian-American real estate developer and racketeer Felix Sater that had generated <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/us/politics/trump-tower-putin-felix-sater.html">sensational headlines</a>. Sater was representing the Russian company with which Trump signed a nonbinding Letter of Intent in late October 2015 to build a Moscow Trump Tower.</div>
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A few days after the signing Sater boasted in an email to Michael Cohen, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, “I will get Putin on the program, and we will get Donald Trump elected.” And later in the day, he referred to getting Putin to endorse Trump’s negotiating prowess in a press conference.</div>
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That boast generated stories suggesting possible collusion. But far from being a Putin agent, Sater been an informant for the FBI ever since he signed a 1998 cooperation agreement to avoid punishment on a racketeering charge to which he pleaded guilty. According to a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4406683-Sater-Unsealed.html#document/p11/a410120">2011 Justice Department court filing</a>, he had “provided the United States intelligence community with highly sensitive information concerning various terrorists and rogue states.”</div>
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Sater <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/31/felix-sater-trump-russia-mueller-report/">told The Intercept</a> that his talk of getting Putin on board and getting Trump elected was simply “marketing”. And he added, “If I knew of even the slightest instance of anybody in the United States colluding with Russia, I’d be in the offices of the FBI in about three minutes.”</div>
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Mueller’s report shows that Cohen didn’t take Sater’s boast seriously. In fact, Cohen concluded that Sater didn’t have the clout to get Russian government approval for a deal and began to make his own contacts for that purpose. There were continuing exchanges in subsequent months about a visit to Moscow to view possible sites, but one week after Trump’s June 7 primary victories clinched the nomination, Cohen informed Sater that neither he nor Trump would be visiting, effectively ending the consideration of a deal with Sater.</div>
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<b>Papadopoulos and Mifsud</b></div>
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Mueller’s account shows that the 28-year old George Papadopoulos – pressed into service as foreign policy adviser despite his lack of experience — had sought out Josef Mifsud, the director of the “London Academy of Diplomacy,” because he hoped he could help reach a Moscow contact with whom he could discuss a possible trip to Moscow by the campaign personnel to discuss future U.S.-Russian relations. Papadopoulos did have a series of conversations via Skype and email with Ivan Timofeev, who was in touch with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs about a potential meeting, but it never took place.</div>
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The Mueller report diverts attention from real threats to democracy from Trump’s domestic agenda, including its attack on voting rights.</div>
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In a meeting on April 26, 2016, however, Mifsud told Papadopoulos that he had been told in Moscow that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of her emails. Mifsud denied that claim to the FBI, but Papadopoulos confirmed it in his FBI interview, and Australia’s top diplomat in London, Alexander Downer, reported to the Australian government that Papadopoulos had told him the same thing.</div>
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The Mueller report does not recount Papadopoulos’s reaction to that sudden revelation. But he <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Deep-State-Target-Crosshairs-President/dp/1635764939">recalls in his own book, Deep State Target</a>, that Mifsud provided no further explanation, causing him to wonder what that could mean and whether Mifsud was a credible source on such a serious matter – especially since Mifsud had misled him by introducing a young Russian woman to him as Putin’s niece.</div>
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Papadopoulos says he recognized that he could have nothing to do with any such subject and immediately changed the subject. Mueller’s report confirms his apparent resolve to do nothing about the remark. It found no evidence that he had passed on Mifsud’s remark or that it was discussed internally by the campaign staff. If Mifsud was testing the Trump campaign’s interest in a Russian hack, he found none.</div>
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<b>The Manafort-Kilimnik Connection</b></div>
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No aspect of the Trump-Russia issue has generated more heat than the fact that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort provided polling results in 2016 to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian-born associate in Manafort’s previous work in Ukraine, which also supports the Trump-Russia narrative. Manafort told Kilimnik to pass on the information to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to whom Manafort owed as much as $25 million related to a failed investment fund.</div>
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Mueller found no basis for collusion in the episode, but many will exploit the report’s sensational claim, which was included in a Mueller court filing, that Kilimnik is a Russian agent. The court document in question says, “The FBI … has assessed that Kilimnik has ties to Russian intelligence.” But as U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson noted in a February 13, 2019, hearing, “I have not been provided with the evidence that I would need to decide” on the truth of the accusation.</div>
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Citing such an undocumented “assessment” as evidence is a highly political decision. It represents nothing more than the judgment of a single FBI official: Peter Strzok, who had been head of the Bureau’s counterespionage section until the Mueller investigation brought him in to be its primary Russian expert in May 2017. Strzok had both a personal career interest in promoting the Russian subversion scare and a strong animus toward Trump – as revealed by his now-famous email exchanges with Lisa Page. He was a key player in the small group of senior FBI officials who <a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2019/02/13/the-real-motive-behind-the-fbi-plan-to-investigate-trump-as-a-russian-agent/">discussed a plan in April 2017</a> to investigate Trump as a witting or unwitting tool of Russian policy.</div>
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The charge that Kilimnik had “ties to Russian intelligence” is so vague as to be virtually meaningless. And as press accounts have confirmed, it was based on nothing more than a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/the-astonishing-tale-of-the-man-mueller-calls-person-a/562217/">“smattering of circumstantial evidence”</a>, based on little more than the fact that he had attended a military language school in the dying days of the Soviet Union.</div>
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That fact has been the basis for suspicions on the part of some that he could have gone on to be a KGB operative. The Mueller report cites one former colleague in the International Republican Institute as claiming he was fired because of suspicions of being Russian intelligence, but another former co-worker contradicted that claim. And the U.S. Embassy in Kiev did not regard Kilimnik as having had any such hostile intelligence ties and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/us/politics/konstantin-kilimnik-russia.html">used Kilimnik as a valid source</a> for information on Ukrainian oligarchs.</div>
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<b>Did the Russians Really Threaten U.S. Democracy?</b></div>
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The Mueller report is based on the generally agreed premise that Russian political efforts to influence the 2016 election through the Internet Research Agency “troll farm” obviously represented electoral interference that is unprecedented in U.S.-Russian relations. But that position ignores the fact of American interference in Russia’s pivotal presidential election in 1996. A team of American specialists on election strategy with close ties to President Bill Clinton was dispatched to Moscow to assist the U.S.-backed candidate, Boris Yeltsin, by providing political advice and technical assistance to his campaign. It is well established that the U.S. assistance, which remained covert, was <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-09-mn-22423-story.html">crucial to Yeltsin’s victory</a> over the Communist Party candidate.</div>
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The report reaffirms the generally accepted view that the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the private St. Petersburg company owned by a businessman close to Putin, had a deep impact on pubic opinion through large-scale social media campaigns using false American personae. It repeats an estimate from Facebook that posts from IRA “trolls” may have reached as many as 126 million Americans – a figure The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/20/us/politics/russia-interference-election-trump-clinton.html">trumpeted as evidence of a Russian political coup</a> in influencing the 2016 election by comparing it with the number of people who voted (139 million).</div>
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But that claim is a grotesque exaggeration of the IRA’s actual influence on the election. The original source of that Facebook statistic, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch, <a href="https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/10-31-17%20Stretch%20Testimony.pdf">explained in his testimony</a> that the figure was a calculation of how many people could potentially have gotten at least one IRA post in their Facebook feed over more than two years. Stretch further testified that the average Facebook user in the United States is served roughly 220 stories in News Feed each day. Facebook calculated that over the two-year period from 2015 to 2017, the Facebook posts from the IRA represented “about four-thousandths of one percent” of the content in News Feed, or approximately 1 out of 23,000 pieces of content” for those who did get some IRA feeds.</div>
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In fact, the troll farm’s influence was minute and its output was very crude and unsophisticated compared with that of the campaign of highly targeted social media ads carried out by the <a href="https://medium.com/startup-grind/how-the-trump-campaign-built-an-identity-database-and-used-facebook-ads-to-win-the-election-4ff7d24269ac">Trump campaign’s digital operation, “Project Alamo”</a>. That unprecedented social media campaign was able to target individuals with ads based on information about their values and interest gleaned from a vast array of data sources. And Trump’s staff used the targeting to ensure that voting for Clinton among young liberal white voters and Blacks would be reduced.</div>
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That massive, data-driven campaign was complemented, moreover, by a <a href="https://www.cjr.org/analysis/breitbart-media-trump-harvard-study.php">huge new right-wing media system, led by Breitbart</a>, that drove media coverage and mobilized tens of millions of pro-Trump voters with hyper-partisan stories – often “fake news – that helped consolidate Trump’s base.</div>
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Thus, Facebook users who were getting IRA content in their newsfeeds were overwhelmingly influenced by “Project Alamo” and the Breitbart-led media system – not by the Russian troll farm.</div>
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Mueller treats the WikiLeaks publication of the purloined DNC emails as an assault on the Democratic system – as though it were a continuation of Soviet Cold War “active measures.” But it is a false parallel, because the revelation of the Democratic Party leadership’s covert interventions to deny Bernie Sanders’s candidacy a fair chance to win some early primaries were not only true but sorely needed to force reform of the Democratic Party’s leadership.</div>
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The Mueller report doesn’t show the Trump campaign collusion the public had been led by media coverage to expect. But it is a siren song for a continued focus on the supposed threat to U.S. democracy from Russian “meddling”. It is aimed at maintaining public support for a focus on the threat from Russia, which diverts the attention of the media and Congress from real threats to democracy from Trump’s domestic agenda, including its attack on voting rights. And it feeds into the growing power of militarist interests in maintaining high tensions with Russia and scoring record military budgets.</div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-63366234566023402212019-04-25T16:15:00.002-04:002022-02-15T22:58:36.209-05:00Why is Boeing Imploding? Part III<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 13px;">by Chuck Spinney</span></div>
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Attached below is a very important investigative report in the New York Times describing the shoddy manufacturing and quality control practices for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner production line at Boeing’s Charleston, SC assembly plant. While I have highlighted parts that struck me as important, I urge you to read the entire report. It is quite detailed, well sourced, and informative.</div>
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Coming on top of the still evolving Boeing 737 Max scandal, the NYT report begs the question: What is going on at Boeing -- a company that has been widely acknowledged as America’s premier commercial aircraft manufacturer? </div>
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The NYT report while excellent in describing the dangerous practices at Boeing’s Charleston factory, sheds no light on this deeper question. </div>
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This is a question with deep roots in some of the most important political-economic problems now facing our nation, and in the case of Boeing, it has been building up for at least twenty years. </div>
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I believe this larger context makes Boeing’s implosion is quite understandable and, dare I say, predictable. </div>
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The problems with Boeing are deeply connected to the larger story of American deindustrialization enhanced in Boeing’s case by the pathological political-economic practices of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC) and how those practices spill over into the larger manufacturing sector of our economy. The late professor Seymour Melman began warning about deindustrialization and the nexus of its causal factors (i.e., managerialism, financialization, and the spillover of the MICC’s cost-plus political-economic practices) in the 1970s (see <a href="https://www.amazon.com/PROFITS-W-PRODUCTION-Seymour-Melman/dp/0394518950/ref=pd_sbs_14_1/146-6614809-1578631?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0394518950&pd_rd_r=81b25494-645b-11e9-8e21-1bab6014d995&pd_rd_w=lJGRw&pd_rd_wg=bm0WD&pf_rd_p=588939de-d3f8-42f1-a3d8-d556eae5797d&pf_rd_r=SP0WDKSGD5S630214SCA&psc=1&refRID=SP0WDKSGD5S630214SCA">Profits Without Production (1983)</a> for his synthesis of these ideas). </div>
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Boeing’s ongoing implosion derives from a dangerous combination of effects from (1) the neo-liberal de-industrializing political-economic practices championed by Democrats and Republicans alike since the mid 1970s (particularly deregulation, conglomeratization via mega mergers, financialization, union busting, outsourcing, managerialism and its obsession with short-term profit maximization at the expense of long term investment, and government-industry crony capitalism, particularly “regulatory capture”), and (2) the disintegration of Boeing’s traditional iron wall between its quasi-market-based airliner production and its typical cost-plus, corner-cutting crony business practices of its defense sector (as is hinted at by the virtual take over of Boeing’s senior management by people with backgrounds in the defense business), and (3) by the natural sclerotic effects of giantism created by Boeing’s Pentagon-subsidized megamerger with McDonnell-Douglas promoted and paid for by the Clinton Administration (which resulted in a far greater defense concentration as well as the movement of its Boeing’s Headquarters from its commercial production hub in Seattle to a non-production hub in Chicago in 2001 together with the establishment of one of the largest crony-capitalist <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000100">lobbying</a> operations in Washington DC.)</div>
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The attached five links address these larger issues in the context of Boeing, note that they all predate the NYT report by at least six years. </div>
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References: </div>
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1. <a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2013/07/why-is-boeing-imploding-part-ii.html">Why Is Boeing Imploding? Part II</a> (13 July 2013)</div>
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2. <a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2011/02/why-boeing-is-imploding.html">Why is Boeing Imploding? Part I</a> (08 February 2011)</div>
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3. <a href="https://harpers.org/blog/2013/07/boeings-plastic-planes/">Boeing’s Plastic Planes: How Boeing’s adoption of defense-contracting practices led to the flawed Dreamliner 787,</a> Andrew Cockburn, Harpers Magazine, 17 July 2013</div>
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4. <a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2012/11/something-to-think-about-as-we-heave.html">America’s Defense Dependency,</a> Franklin Spinney, Counterpunch, 16 November 2012</div>
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5. <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VJKyxD-Nde22XjvDKoh2Ucua3guZ801x/view?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Hart-Smith Report: Boeing Paper #MDC 00K0096</a>, February 2001 CS note: this a devastating critique of outsourcing to maximize profits and reduce labor costs. It is an internal Boeing paper written by a brilliant Industrial Engineer employed by Boeing. Originally uncovered and publicized by the Seattle Times in February 2011. Note how the recommendations at the end of the report, if properly implemented, might have prevented many of the problems identified in the attached NYT report. </div>
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Chuck Spinney</div>
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<b>Claims of Shoddy Production Draw Scrutiny to a Second Boeing Jet</b></div>
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<b><i>Workers at a 787 Dreamliner plant in South Carolina have complained of defective manufacturing, debris left on planes and pressure to not report violations.</i></b></div>
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By Natalie Kitroeff and David Gelles, New York Times, April 20, 2019</div>
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<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamliner-production-problems.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamliner-production-problems.html</a></div>
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NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — When Boeing broke ground on its new factory near Charleston in 2009, the plant was trumpeted as a state-of-the-art manufacturing hub, building one of the most advanced aircraft in the world. But in the decade since, the factory, which makes the 787 Dreamliner, has been <span style="background-color: #fffa91;">plagued by shoddy production and weak oversight that have threatened to compromise safety.</span></div>
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A New York Times review of hundreds of pages of internal emails, corporate documents and federal records, as well as interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees, reveals a <span style="background-color: #fffa91;">culture that often valued production speed over quality. </span>Facing long manufacturing delays, Boeing pushed its work force to quickly turn out Dreamliners, <span style="background-color: #fffa91;">at times ignoring issues raised by employees.</span></div>
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Complaints about the frenzied pace echo broader concerns about the company in the wake of two deadly crashes involving another jet, the 737 Max. Boeing is now facing questions about whether the race to get the Max done, and catch up to its rival Airbus, led it to miss safety risks in the design, like an anti-stall system that played a role in both crashes.</div>
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<span style="background-color: #fffa91;">Safety lapses at the North Charleston plant have drawn the scrutiny of airlines and regulators.</span> Qatar Airways stopped accepting planes from the factory after manufacturing mishaps damaged jets and delayed deliveries. Workers have filed nearly a dozen <span style="background-color: #fffa91;">whistle-blower claims and safety complaints with federal regulators</span>, describing issues like defective manufacturing, debris left on planes and pressure to not report violations. Others have sued Boeing, saying they were retaliated against for flagging manufacturing mistakes.</div>
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Joseph Clayton, a technician at the North Charleston plant, one of two facilities where the Dreamliner is built, said he routinely found debris dangerously close to wiring beneath cockpits.</div>
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“I’ve told my wife that I never plan to fly on it,” he said. “It’s just a safety issue.”</div>
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In an industry where safety is paramount, <span style="background-color: #fffa91;">the collective concerns involving two crucial Boeing planes — the company’s workhorse, the 737 Max, and another crown jewel, the 787 Dreamliner — point to potentially systemic problems</span>. Regulators and lawmakers are taking a deeper look at Boeing’s priorities, and whether profits sometimes trumped safety. The leadership of Boeing, one of the country’s largest exporters, now finds itself in the unfamiliar position of having to defend its practices and motivations.</div>
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“Boeing South Carolina teammates are producing the highest levels of quality in our history,” Kevin McAllister, Boeing’s head of commercial airplanes, said in a statement. “I am proud of our teams’ exceptional commitment to quality and stand behind the work they do each and every day.”</div>
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<span style="background-color: #fffa91;">All factories deal with manufacturing errors, and there is no evidence that the problems in South Carolina have led to any major safety incidents.</span> The Dreamliner has never crashed, although the fleet was briefly grounded after a battery fire. Airlines, too, have confidence in the Dreamliner.</div>
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But workers sometimes made dangerous mistakes, according to the current and former Boeing employees, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation.</div>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Faulty parts have been installed in planes. </li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Tools and metal shavings have routinely been left inside jets, often near electrical systems. </li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Aircraft have taken test flights with debris in an engine and a tail, risking failure.</li>
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On several planes, <span style="background-color: #fffa91;">John Barnett, a former quality manager</span> who worked at Boeing for nearly three decades and retired in 2017, <span style="background-color: #fffa91;">discovered clusters of metal slivers hanging over the wiring that commands the flight controls.</span> If the sharp metal pieces — produced when fasteners were fitted into nuts — penetrate the wires, he said, it could be “catastrophic.”</div>
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Mr. <span style="background-color: #fffa91;">Barnett, who filed a whistle-blower complaint with regulators, said he had repeatedly urged his bosses to remove the shavings. But they refused and moved him to another part of the plant.</span></div>
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A spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, Lynn Lunsford, said the agency had inspected several planes certified by Boeing as free of such debris and found those same metal slivers. In certain circumstances, he said, the problem can lead to electrical shorts and cause fires.</div>
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Officials believe the shavings may have damaged an in-service airplane on one occasion in 2012, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.</div>
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<span style="background-color: #fffa91;">The F.A.A. issued a directive in 2017 requiring that Dreamliners be cleared of shavings before they are delivered.</span> Boeing said it was complying and was working with the supplier to improve the design of the nut. But it has determined that the issue does not present a flight safety issue.</div>
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“As a quality manager at Boeing, you’re the last line of defense before a defect makes it out to the flying public,” <span style="background-color: #fffa91;">Mr. Barnett said. “And I haven’t seen a plane out of Charleston yet that I’d put my name on saying it’s safe and airworthy.”</span></div>
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<b>‘It Could Have Locked Up the Gears’</b></div>
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Less than a month after the crash of the second 737 Max jet, Boeing called North Charleston employees to an urgent meeting. The company had a problem: Customers were finding random objects in new planes.</div>
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A senior manager implored workers to check more carefully, invoking the crashes. “The company is going through a very difficult time right now,” he said, according to two employees who were present and spoke on the condition of anonymity.</div>
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So-called <span style="background-color: #fffa91;">foreign object debris is a common issue in aviation. Employees are supposed to clean the bowels of the aircraft as they work</span>, often with a vacuum, so they don’t accidentally contaminate the planes with shavings, tools, parts or other items.</div>
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<span style="background-color: #fffa91;">But debris has remained a persistent problem in South Carolina.</span> In an email this month, Brad Zaback, the head of the 787 program, reminded the North Charleston staff that stray objects left inside planes “can potentially have serious safety consequences when left unchecked.”</div>
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<span style="background-color: #fffa91;">The issue has cost Boeing at other plants</span>. In March, the Air Force halted deliveries of the <span style="background-color: #fffa91;">KC-46 tanker, built in Everett, Wash.</span>, after finding a wrench, bolts and trash inside new planes</div>
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“To say it bluntly, this is unacceptable,” Will Roper, an assistant secretary of the Air Force, told a congressional subcommittee in March. “Our flight lines are spotless. Our depots are spotless, because debris translates into a safety issue.”</div>
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Boeing said it was working to address the issue with the Air Force, which resumed deliveries this month.</div>
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<span style="background-color: #fffa91;">At the North Charleston plant, the current and former workers describe a losing battle with debris.</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">“I’ve found tubes of sealant, nuts, stuff from the build process,” said Rich Mester, a former technician who reviewed planes before delivery. Mr. Mester was fired, and a claim was filed on his behalf with the National Labor Relations Board over his termination. “They’re supposed to have been inspected for this stuff, and it still makes it out to us.”</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Employees have found a ladder and a string of lights left inside the tails of planes, near the gears of the horizontal stabilizer. “It could have locked up the gears,” Mr. Mester said.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Dan Ormson, who worked for American Airlines until retiring this year, regularly found debris while inspecting Dreamliners in North Charleston, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.</li>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Mr. Ormson discovered loose objects touching electrical wiring and rags near the landing gear. He often collected bits and pieces in zip-lock bags to show one of the plant’s top executives, Dave Carbon.</li>
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The debris can create hazardous situations. One of the people said Mr. Ormson had once found a piece of Bubble Wrap near the pedal the co-pilot uses to control the plane’s direction, which could have jammed midflight.</div>
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On a Dreamliner that Boeing had already given a test flight, Mr. Ormson saw that a bolt was loose inside one of the engines. The small piece of metal could have caused the engine to malfunction.</div>
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American Airlines said it conducted rigorous inspections of new planes before putting them into service. “We have confidence in the 787s we have in our fleet,” said Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for the airline.</div>
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<b>A Pool of Nonunion Workers</b></div>
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When it was unveiled in 2007, the 787 Dreamliner was Boeing’s most important new plane in a generation. The wide-body jet, with a lightweight carbon fiber fuselage and advanced technology, was a hit with carriers craving fuel savings.</div>
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Airlines ordered hundreds of the planes, which cost upward of $200 million each. <span style="background-color: #fffa91;">Spurred by high demand, Boeing set up a new factory.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fffa91;">North Charleston was ideal in many ways. South Carolina has the lowest percentage of union representation in the nation, giving Boeing a potentially less expensive work force</span>.</div>
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<span style="background-color: #fffa91;">South Carolina doled out nearly $1 billion in tax incentives, including $33 million to train local workers. Boeing pledged to create 3,800 jobs.</span></div>
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While Boeing has nurtured generations of aerospace professionals in the Seattle area, there was no comparable work force in South Carolina. Instead, managers had to recruit from technical colleges in Tulsa, Okla., and Atlanta.</div>
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<span style="background-color: #fffa91;">Managers were also urged to not hire unionized employees from the Boeing factory in Everett, where the Dreamliner is also made,</span> according to two former employees.</div>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">“They didn’t want us bringing union employees out to a nonunion area,” said David Kitson, a former quality manager, who oversaw a team responsible for ensuring that planes are safe to fly.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">“We struggled with that,” said Mr. Kitson, who retired in 2015. “There wasn’t the qualified labor pool locally.” Another former manager, Michael Storey, confirmed his account.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">The 787 was already running years behind schedule because of manufacturing hiccups and supplier delays. The labor shortages in North Charleston only made it worse.</li>
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The initial excitement when the first Dreamliners entered service in late 2011 was short lived. A little more than a year later, the entire fleet was grounded after a battery fire on a Japan Airlines plane.</div>
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Boeing was forced to compensate carriers, hurting profit. All the while, the production delays mounted, and Airbus was close behind with a rival plane, the A350.</div>
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<span style="background-color: #fffa91;">In North Charleston, the time crunch had consequences.</span> </div>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Hundreds of tools began disappearing, according to complaints filed in 2014 with the F.A.A. by two former managers, Jennifer Jacobsen and David McClaughlin. Some were “found lying around the aircraft,” Ms. Jacobsen said in her complaint.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">The two managers also said they had been pushed to cover up delays. Managers told employees to install equipment out of order to make it “appear to Boeing executives in Chicago, the aircraft purchasers and Boeing’s shareholders that the work is being performed on schedule, where in fact the aircraft is far behind schedule,” according to their complaints.</li>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">The F.A.A. investigated the complaints and didn’t find violations on its visit to the plant in early 2014. But the agency said it had previously found “improper tool control” and the “presence of foreign object debris.”</li>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Both managers left after they were accused of inaccurately approving the time sheets of employees who did not report to them. They both claim they were retaliated against for flagging violations. Through their lawyer, Rob Turkewitz, they declined to comment.</li>
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Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for Boeing, said, “We prioritize safety and quality over speed, but all three can be accomplished while still producing one of the safest airplanes flying today.”</div>
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<span style="background-color: #fffa91;">Planes were also damaged during manufacturing.</span> </div>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">A Dreamliner built for American Airlines suffered a flood in the cabin so severe that seats, ceiling panels, carpeting and electronics had to be replaced in a weekslong process.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">While inspecting a plane being prepared for delivery, Mr. Clayton, the technician currently at the plant, recently found chewing gum holding together part of a door’s trim. “It was not a safety issue, but it’s not what you want to present to a customer,” he said.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">An employee filed a complaint about the gum with the F.A.A. The agency is investigating, an F.A.A. official said.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">[If you’ve worked at Boeing and want to discuss your experience, reach us confidentially here.]</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">The disarray frustrated one major carrier. In 2014, factory employees were told to watch a video from the chief executive of Qatar Airways.</li>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">He chastised the North Charleston workers, saying he was upset that Boeing wasn’t being transparent about the length or cause of delays. In several instances, workers had damaged the exterior of planes made for the airline, requiring Boeing to push back delivery to fix the jets.</li>
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<span style="background-color: #fffa91;">Ever since, Qatar has bought only Dreamliners built in Everett.</span></div>
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In a statement, Qatar Airways said it “continues to be a long-term supporter of Boeing and has full confidence in all its aircraft and manufacturing facilities.”</div>
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<b>Defective Parts Disappear</b></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fffa91;">A spokesman for Boeing, Gordon Johndroe, said, “We prioritize safety and quality over speed, but all three can be accomplished</span> while still producing one of the safest airplanes flying today.”</div>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">In the interest of meeting deadlines, managers sometimes played down or ignored problems, according to current and former workers.</li>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Mr. Barnett, the former quality manager, who goes by Swampy in a nod to his Louisiana roots, learned in 2016 that a senior manager had pulled a dented hydraulic tube from a scrap bin, he said. He said the tube, part of the central system controlling the plane’s movement, was installed on a Dreamliner. Mr. Barnett said the senior manager had told him, “Don’t worry about it.” He filed a complaint with human resources, company documents show.</li>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">He also reported to management that defective parts had gone missing, raising the prospect that they had been installed in planes. His bosses, he said, told him to finish the paperwork on the missing parts without figuring out where they had gone.</li>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">The F.A.A. investigated and found that Boeing had lost some damaged parts. Boeing said that as a precautionary matter, it had sent notices to airlines about the issue. The company said it had also investigated the flawed hydraulic tube and hadn’t substantiated Mr. Barnett’s claims.</li>
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“Safety issues are immediately investigated, and changes are made wherever necessary,” said the Boeing spokesman, Mr. Johndroe.</div>
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<span style="background-color: #fffa91;">But several former employees said high-level managers pushed internal quality inspectors to stop recording defects.</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Cynthia Kitchens, a former quality manager, said her superiors penalized her in performance reviews and berated her on the factory floor after she flagged wire bundles rife with metal shavings and defective metal parts that had been installed on planes.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">“It was intimidation,” she said. “Every time I started finding stuff, I was harassed.”</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Ms. Kitchens left in 2016 and sued Boeing for age and sex discrimination. The case was dismissed.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Some employees said they had been punished or fired when they voiced concerns.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Mr. Barnett was reprimanded in 2014 for documenting errors. In a performance review seen by The Times, a senior manager downgraded him for “using email to express process violations,” instead of engaging “F2F,” or face to face.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">He took that to mean he shouldn’t put problems in writing. The manager said Mr. Barnett needed to get better at “working in the gray areas and help find a way while maintaining compliance.”</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Liam Wallis, a former quality manager, said in a wrongful-termination lawsuit that Boeing had fired him after he discovered that planes were being manufactured using obsolete engineering specifications. Mr. Wallis also said in the suit, filed in March, that an employee who didn’t exist had signed off on the repairs of an aircraft.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">His boss had criticized him in the past for writing up violations, according to the lawsuit and emails reviewed by The Times. Boeing said it had fired Mr. Wallis for falsifying documents.</li>
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Through his lawyers, Mr. Wallis declined to comment for this article. Boeing has denied his claims and moved to dismiss the case.</div>
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<span style="background-color: #fffa91;">In North Charleston, the pace of </span><span style="background-color: #fffa91; text-decoration: underline;">production has quickened</span><span style="background-color: #fffa91;">. Starting this year, Boeing is producing 14 Dreamliners a month, split between North Charleston and Everett, up from the previous 12. </span><span style="background-color: #fffa91; text-decoration: underline;">At the same time, Boeing said it was eliminating about a hundred quality control positions in North Charleston</span><span style="background-color: #fffa91;">.</span></div>
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“They’re trying to shorten the time of manufacturing,” said Mr. Mester, the former mechanic. “But are you willing to sacrifice the safety of our product to maximize profit?”</div>
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[The reporters on this article can be reached at Natalie.Kitroeff@nytimes.com and David.Gelles@nytimes.com.]</div>
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Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.</div>
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A version of this article appears in print on April 21, 2019, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Safety Concerns Plague Boeing Dreamliner Plant</div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-44582043592304900542019-02-06T16:03:00.000-05:002019-02-15T20:11:41.098-05:00Ernie Fitzgerald Remembered (II)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) pays tribute to the memory of Ernie Fitzgerald in a 23 minute floor speech the Senate Floor, 6 February 2019. (This is second posting about the late Ernie Fitzgerald; the first can be found at this <a href="https://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2019/02/ernie-fitzgerald-remembered.html" target="_blank">link</a>.) </div>
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<a href="https://youtu.be/LAQ-YUFp2FM">https://youtu.be/LAQ-YUFp2FM</a></div>
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The text of Grassley’s tribute can be found at this <a href="https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-pays-tribute-ernie-fitzgerald">link</a>. </div>
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See also this excellent remembrance by my friend and long time Pentagon watcher Andrew Cockburn in <i>Counterpunch.</i></div>
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FEBRUARY 6, 2019</div>
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<a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/06/ernie-fitzgerald-the-man-who-waged-bureaucratic-warfare-on-the-pentagon/"><b>Ernie Fitzgerald: the Man Who Waged Bureaucratic Warfare on the Pentagon</b></a></div>
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by <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/andrew-cockburn/">ANDREW COCKBURN</a>, Counterpunch, 6 February 2019</div>
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Ernie Fitzgerald, who died on January 31, always tried to be optimistic. “That’s where the Joint Chiefs will make their last stand when the taxpayers finally storm the building,” he would say, pointing to the hot dog stand at the center of the Pentagon’s inner greensward. The Chiefs would have richer territory to defend today – hot dogs have given way to an Au Bon Pain eatery, and defense spending has soared to heights even beyond the levels decried, and whenever possible sabotaged, by Ernie as he waged bureaucratic warfare from his guerrilla headquarters on the fifth floor.</div>
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That was long after he had been sacked from his position as a senior air force cost management official on the direct orders of Richard Nixon (“get rid of that son of a bitch”) for testifying to congress that the air force was facing, accepting, and concealing a $2 billion cost overrun on the C-5A transport plane being built by Lockheed. Ernie sued Nixon and the cronies involved in the illegal firing, fought the case all the way to the supreme court, won his job back, sued again when the air force nevertheless refused him proper exercise of his responsibilities, and won again.</div>
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Even though the air force did its best to keep him well away from further official probes of major contractors’ larcenous operations, Ernie nevertheless not only inspired fellow whistleblowers and helped organize an effectiv system for promoting their revelations, but also, being a propagandist of genius, instilled in the public mind a perception of defense spending as systemized rip-off.</div>
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The inspiration benefited not only whistleblowers – he called it “committing truth” – but also journalists, as I can attest, having been the recipient of countless calls that invariably began with “this is o-o-ld Fitzgerald” in his beautifully modulated Alabama drawl. But beyond such direct contacts, Ernie conceived and encouraged an organization, The Project on Military Procurement to broadcast revelations of Pentagon malfeasance while protecting the leaker, often via the cover of his potent contacts on Capitol Hill. The Project subsequently evolved into the ongoing and potent Project on Government Oversight.</div>
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Ernie’s particular stroke of promotional insight was that, though the public’s eyes may glaze over when informed that some weapons system or other was costing billions more than initially advertised, they would readily understand the fraud of a toilet seat priced at $640, or a $435 hammer, obscenities that he unearthed and publicized, and that generated the appropriate outrage. His hope was that such examples would lead to the understanding that grotesquely overpriced bombers and missiles were simply collections of such spare parts “flying in close formation.”</div>
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More fundamentally, Ernie’s experiences in the Pentagon weapons-buying culture lead him to the essential truth that outrageous weapons costs are not merely manifestations of corruption or incompetence, but actual official policy. In his terrific books, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/High-Priests-Waste-Ernest-Fitzgerald/dp/B000QA4O24/counterpunchmaga">High Priests of Waste</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0395362458/counterpunchmaga">The Pentagonists</a> (he wrote as well as he talked) he laid out an ironclad case for this proposition, including unguarded admissions by high officials such as Dr. Eugene Fubini, in his time a hugely influential Pentagon advocate for hi-tech (and invariably hugely expensive) weaponry, who stated publicly that defense spending could never be cut because “We have an arsenal economy, and we just can’t change it without violent dislocation.” Air Force General “Zeke” Zoekler went so far as to explain, in response to Ernie’s efforts to curb costly inefficiencies in a vast program supervised by the general, that so far as defense procurement was concerned, “inefficiency is national policy” necessary for the attainment of “social goals.”</div>
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Given that politicians and the universe of public opinion manipulators readily accept and tout this notion, regardless of whether we are thereby provided with an effective defense, or whether there is any threat against which we need to defend, it is hardly surprising that the military-industrial-complex enjoys almost unchallenged political power, a fact that Ernie well understood. As he remarked to me in the aftermath of the 1980 election, in which both parties had held out promises of rivers of gold to the military in hopes of endorsement by the MIC, “The Joint Chiefs just auctioned off the presidency from the battlements of the Pentagon.” Today’s world, in which our president’s agenda, generally marked by rapine and pillage, has proceeded almost without effective challenge except when he contemplated cutting the defense budget (Trump’s effort to cut it to $700 billion from the 2020 tab was almost immediately quashed) or halting foreign military engagements (necessary excuses for budget nourishment) bely Ernie’s optimism regarding an eventual taxpayer revolt. But he never gave up fighting. We have lost a great patriot.</div>
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More articles by:<a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/andrew-cockburn/">ANDREW COCKBURN</a></div>
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<i>Andrew Cockburn is the Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine. An Irishman, he has covered national security topics in this country for many years. In addition to publishing numerous books, he co-produced the 1997 feature film The Peacemaker and the 2009 documentary on the financial crisis American Casino. His latest book is </i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805099263/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20"><i>Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins</i></a><i> (Henry Holt).</i></div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-80875102469564848652019-02-04T13:39:00.000-05:002019-02-15T20:05:00.400-05:00Ernie Fitzgerald Remembered (I)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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My long time friend and colleague, the legendary A. Ernest Fitzgerald (<a href="https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Biographies/Display/Article/107066/a-ernest-fitzgerald/">AF bio</a>), passed away a few days ago at the age of 92 after a long illness.</div>
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Being around people like Ernie Fitzgerald was one of the main reasons I loved working in the Pentagon. Most people working in the Department of Defense go along to get along; and while a majority (certainly not all) are patriotic, intelligent, and hard working … they are also boring. But there is something about military institutions that attracts a very few fun-loving, brilliant mavericks who love to throw rocks at the institutional boat, particularly when it is in the interest of committing truth and doing what they believe to be right in the face of incompetence or corruption or both — and all institutions that spend other people’s money, like the DoD, are prone to both incompetence and corruption. These mavericks have the same virtues as the majority — but they are definitely not boring, and they possess something else: an inner drive that is very rare. Their numbers are few, because military institutions hate them, view them as being certifiably crazy, and go overboard to expel them. On the other hand, these institutions need their “crazies” to stay healthy and vibrant. The late Ernie Fitzgerald was one of the most precious of the “crazies” — and he beat the expulsion game in a truly amazing way. </div>
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I first heard about Fitzgerald at the very beginning of my career in November 1968, when he testified — or in his words, “Committed truth” — to Senator Proxmire’s Joint Economics Committee on the huge cost overrun on the C-5A transport. At that time I was a 2nd Lt buried in the Flight Dynamics Laboratory at Wright-Patterson AFB, and congressional hearings were distant abstract affairs. But the newspaper reports of his testimony were electrifying. Moreover, they struck home; I had been hearing horror stories about the C-5, particularly its landing gear, for almost a year from one of my closest friends, also a 2nd Lt, who worked in the C-5 program office, which was just down the street from my office. My reaction was — Thank God, at least someone in DC has their head screwed on and is finally telling the truth about this piece of crap! Ernie immediately became a hero to both my friend and me. </div>
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I finally met Ernie 10 years later, when I was a civilian working in the Pentagon. Ernie had been fired by the Air Force, but the expulsion failed spectacularly. The AF was forced to rehire him, together with back pay, via a law suit that made it all the way to the Supreme Court together with some reckless statements about firing him by President Nixon that were discovered on the Watergate tapes. Ernie had become world famous, not least because, in his spare time, he also penned the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/High-Priests-Waste-Ernest-Fitzgerald/dp/B000QA4O24/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549215555&sr=8-1&keywords=Fitzgerald+high+priests+of+waste">High Priests of Waste</a>, a best selling book about his adventures in the Pentagon and the underlying causes of cost overruns. </div>
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This book is now a classic, because Ernie was much more than a whistle blower; he was a brilliant industrial engineer who understood the pathological nature of manufacturing and contracting in the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex. His timeless book should be mandatory reading still for anyone involved in the design and purchasing of weapons by the DoD. Despite his fame, Ernie was in not in the least bit pretentious. Quite the contrary, his twinkling eyes, infectious smile, and his deep Alabama accent were accompanied by a wonderful sense of humor that would have everyone (except the generals) rolling in the aisles with laughter. We became fast friends over the following years.</div>
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Most of all, Ernie, the happy warrior, loved launching the V-2s in his righteous war against blatant government waste. Everyone has heard about the $640 toilet seat and the $436 hammer, but many people do not realize that the thousands of newspaper reports about these outrages had their origin directly or indirectly in the anti waste campaign Ernie launched in the early days of Ronald Reagan's spending spree. Without Ernie, there would have been no spare parts “horrors.” <br />
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In the early 1980s, Ernie, with his characteristic down-home humor, described to me the strategic goal of his spare parts crusade by saying (and this is almost a direct quote): </div>
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“Chuck, you have to understand, an average person cannot relate to the overpricing of an airplane like the F-15 fighter or B-1 bomber or an M-1 tank, so first, we have to explain how the Pentagon’s overpricing scam works in terms of things they are familiar with, like toilet seats, hammers, screws, ash trays, etc. Then, step 2 is simply to explain how an F-15 or B-1 bomber or M-1 is simply a bundle of overpriced spare parts flying in close formation.” </div>
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The great Washington Post cartoonist, Herblock, was one of the very few observers who instinctively understood Ernie’s game plan, and he did some of his best work highlighting the connection between Steps I and 2. </div>
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That Step 2 of Ernie’s strategy did not play out as he hoped is no reflection on him. With a few exceptions, like Herblock, Step 2 was a mental '<i>bridge too far'</i> for the crass publicity seeking predilections of the press-politician lash-up in the contemporary <a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/the-deep-state.html" target="_blank">American Deep State</a>.</div>
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Long-time defense reporter Mark Thompson has written a great tribute to Ernie's career that can viewed at this <a href="https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/02/remembering-ernie-fitzgerald/" target="_blank">link</a>.<br />
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Ernie was a great friend and an exemplar to anyone aspiring to a career in the Department of Defense. I shall miss him.</div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-7434763952577710232019-01-21T16:36:00.000-05:002019-01-21T18:28:03.529-05:00Who Killed Lt Van Dorn? (II)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The producers of the award winning documentary “Who Killed Lt Van Dorn?” (described <a href="https://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2018/11/who-killed-lt-van-dorn.html">here</a>) have adapted their film for the public radio program and the podcast <a href="https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/the-militarys-deadliest-helicopter/">Reveal</a>. </div>
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“Who Killed Lt Van Dorn?” is a tragic story of one fatal helicopter crash and how that helicopter became the deadliest aircraft in the US military. The podcast does not duplicate the movie, but is complimentary to it.</div>
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If you want to understand why throwing money at the Pentagon always results in more cries about low readiness, aging weapons, and shrinking forces … and cries for ever higher defense budgets, this tragic story is a good place to start. It is a case study in the deeper problems afflicting the military -- and it should both anger and educate citizens of all political persuasions to elicit bi-partisan calls for reform. </div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-47736718430150378882019-01-20T09:50:00.000-05:002019-03-07T12:21:26.653-05:00Eisenhower’s Nightmare on Steroids (I)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>Slightly different versions of this posting have appeared in The American Conservative at this </i><i><a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/eisenhowers-nightmare-nukes-in-space-edition/">link</a>, </i><i>on the website of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity at this </i><i><a href="http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2019/january/19/eisenhower-s-nightmare-on-steroids/">link</a>, and on the website of the American Committee for East-West Accord at this <a href="https://eastwestaccord.com/chuck-spinney-eisenhowers-nightmare-space-wars-edition/" target="_blank">link</a>.</i></div>
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President Trump’s <a href="https://media.defense.gov/2019/Jan/17/2002080666/-1/-1/1/2019-MISSILE-DEFENSE-REVIEW.PDF">plan</a> to escalate efforts in Ballistic Missile Defense, including the introduction of space-based weapons, should not be viewed in isolation. </div>
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It comes on top of the Defense Department’s plan to execute an <a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2017/02/sleepwalking-into-nuclear-arms-race.html">across-the-board modernization</a> of all our nuclear strike forces. It comes on top of the expansion of NATO under three Presidents despite earlier promises (<a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early">here</a> and <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2018-03-16/nato-expansion-what-yeltsin-heard">here</a>) to the contrary. It comes on top of the unilateral <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty">decision</a> by President Bush to withdraw from the ABM treaty in June 2002, on top of President Trump’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_Forces_Treaty#Planned_US_withdrawal">threat</a> to withdraw from the INF treaty, and on top of Mr. Trump’s publication of a more aggressive <a href="https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.PDF">Nuclear Posture Review</a>. To argue that such a massive effort is directed at deterring Iran or North Korea is ludicrous. Russia and China know who these programs and policies are aimed at.</div>
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Viewed thru the lens of the precautionary principle: any sensible strategic planner in Russia and China would have no choice but to see these efforts as being a consistent, integrated plan to harden the US nuclear shield while sharpening the US nuclear sword. Since the make up of the offensive modernization program — i.e., the nuclear sword — includes (1) adding precision guidance and upgrading the warhead to the dial-a-yield B-61 gravity bomb, (2) new/upgraded C4ISR systems, (3) a massive modernization of nuclear laboratory infrastructure (4) new family of interoperable nuclear warheads for ballistic and cruise missiles, (5) new ICBMs, (6) new air launched cruise missiles, (7) new bombers, (8) new missile launching submarines, (9) modernized SLBMs, (10) new sea launched cruise missiles, (11) new space-based C4ISR systems, including (12) the possibility of ASAT capabilities, it is quite obvious that Russian and Chinese war planners will have no choice but to make the worst case assumptions about US intentions. Russian and Chinese planners will be forced to assume the US is returning to the thoroughly discredited 1970s-era nuclear war-fighting theory of graduated nuclear escalation via the use of a series limited nuclear options, punctuated perhaps by diplomatic signaling. Application of the precautionary principle by Russian and Chinese nuclear war planners would force them to conclude that the U.S. believes it can fight and win a nuclear war regardless of any US protestations about its sword-shield modernization plan being a defensive upgrade to a nuclear deterrence strategy. </div>
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Perhaps more importantly, savvy Russian and Chinese political advisors will understand how the flood of money pouring into these sword/shield modernization efforts will paralyze the patronage-addicted U.S. decision making system. The fact that the multi-billion dollar, failure-prone BMD program continued unabated after the end of the First Cold War illustrates the paralyzing staying power of patronage addiction. Now, the flood of dollars to every congressional district will increase sharply, creating an even more powerful web of political patronage in the form of jobs, corporate profits, and domestic political power. This web will, like its predecessors, lock in the continued funding of these programs for reasons of domestic politics that have nothing to do with the needs of foreign policy — and future political leaders in the United States will be trapped into continuing these programs for the reasons President Eisenhower outlined in his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyBNmecVtdU">Farewell Address</a> — only this time, our future will be Eisenhower’s nightmare on steroids.</div>
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So, even if President Trump has the best of intentions, he and his successors will find it impossible to convince Presidents Putin or Xi, or their successors, that the US political system does not want — or more accurately, does not need — a New Cold War. Given the current chaos in U.S. politics, our adversaries (and friends) may well think hyping the domestic politics of pervasive unreasoning fear by starting and maintaining a New Cold War is the only way the U.S. political elite can bring order to the increasingly corrupt, chaotic, and dysfunctional political system of their own making. </div>
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In such circumstances, it is hard to see how Mr Trump could convince Presidents Putin and Xi that he really wants better relations, when his own government is unleashing huge uncontrollable domestic patronage forces that will shape such a US foreign policy for the next 30 to 50 years. </div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-78485133894444866732018-11-05T17:37:00.000-05:002019-01-29T14:34:52.256-05:00Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I am pleased to announce the Washington premier of an important investigative documentary film. “Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn,” will premier on November 14 at 7 PM in Landmark’s E Street Cinema, located at 555 11th Street NW, Washington DC. Attached FYI is the official flyer by the sponsors of this premier. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This superb documentary shows how the interests, idealism, and safety of young soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen at the pointy end of the spear are short shrifted time after time by contractor-friendly decision-making priorities aimed at promoting the profits and power of the Military - Industrial - Congressional Complex. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If you want to understand why throwing money at the Pentagon always ends in more cries about low readiness, aging, and shrinking forces … and cries for ever higher defense budgets, this movie may anger you, but it is a good place to begin your research.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ucberkeleyirp/"><span style="color: #365899; font-kerning: none;">Investigative Reporting Program</span></a> at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pogo.org/"><span style="color: #365899; font-kerning: none;">Project On Government Oversight</span></a> are hosting a screening of the documentary film <a href="https://www.facebook.com/VanDornMovie/"><span style="color: #365899; font-kerning: none;">Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn?</span></a> The poignant picture of one family's tragedy uncovers a long history of negligence and institutional failings that led to the fatal crash of a 53E helicopter, the deadliest aircraft in the military. A panel discussion will follow the film.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We hope you can attend a screening at 7:00pm, with doors opening at 6:40pm on Nov. 14 at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/estreetcinema/"><span style="color: #365899; font-kerning: none;">Landmark's E Street Cinema</span></a>. To order tickets, please click the Tickets Available button or follow this link: <a href="http://investigativestudios.ticketleap.com/who-killed-lt-van-dorn-dc/?fbclid=IwAR2yXFyKDV5YEyDc46jAwLvYMS-kUbK8ty9FyJYay78ME2sEy3Kq3PUIDKk"><span style="color: #365899; font-kerning: none;">investigativestudios.ticketleap.com/who-killed-lt-van-dorn-dc/</span></a></span><span style="color: black; font-kerning: none;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Written, Directed, and Produced by Zachary Stauffer</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Associate Producer Jason Paladino</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-kerning: none;">Contact: <a href="mailto:zachary.stauffer@gmail.com"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">zachary.stauffer@gmail.com</span></a> or 415-420-3032</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-kerning: none;"><b>Logline</b>: </span><span style="font-kerning: none;">“Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn?” is an intimate portrait of a deadly 2014 Navy helicopter crash that exposes how military, political and business leaders have failed our men and women in uniform.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>One Paragraph Synopsis:</b> Lt. Wes Van Dorn, a 29-year-old United States Naval Academy graduate and the married father of two young sons, died when the helicopter he was piloting crashed off the coast of Virginia during a 2014 training exercise. Motivated by her grief, his wife Nicole sought an explanation for the cause of the disaster. Her efforts spurred an investigation that uncovered a long history of negligence and institutional failings around the 53E helicopter—the model Van Dorn was piloting when he was killed, and the deadliest aircraft in the US military. Through incisive reporting and interviews with Van Dorn’s colleagues and family, <i>Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn?</i> is at once a poignant picture of one family's tragedy, as well as a revelatory inquiry into the murky inner-workings of the American defense establishment.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-kerning: none;"><b>Film Website:</b> <a href="https://www.vandornmovie.com/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #1155cc;">vandornmovie.com</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-kerning: none;"><b>Facebook:</b> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/VanDornMovie/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #1155cc;">facebook.com/vandonrmovie</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-kerning: none;"><b>Twitter:</b> <a href="https://twitter.com/vandornmovie?lang=en"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #1155cc;">twitter.com/vandornmovie</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Trailer: </b><a href="https://vimeo.com/284061744"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">https://vimeo.com/284061744</span></a> </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-kerning: none;"><b>World Premiere: </b><a href="https://www.mvff.com/premieres/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">2018 Mill Valley Film Festival</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/hidden-gems-of-the-mill-valley-film-festival">A “riveting documentary” and one of the Mill Valley Film Festival’s “hidden gems.”</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/why-are-us-military-personnel-using-unsafe-equipment/">"Every concerned citizen and every member of Congress should see this film. Lives depend on it."</a></span><span style="color: #111111; font-kerning: none;"> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.mvff.com/mvff41-audience-favourites/">Audience Award</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> for Active Cinema at the Mill Valley Film Festival</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Director Bio: </b>Zachary Stauffer is a staff producer at UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program and its primary director of photography. <i>Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn?</i> is his first feature documentary. Throughout his career, he’s contributed to a number of documentary films, many for PBS <i>Frontline</i>, including <i>Money and March Madness</i> (2011), <i>Murdoch’s Scandal</i> (2012), and the DuPont award-winning <i>Rape in the Fields</i> (2013), and its follow-ups, <i>Rape on the Night Shift</i> (2015) and <i>Trafficked in America</i> (2018). His short documentary, <i>A Day Late In Oakland </i>(2008), about the murder of journalist Chauncey Bailey, was nominated for two IDA awards.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Backstory: </b>“Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn?” is the first feature documentary produced at the Investigative Reporting Program at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley (IRP) by its new production arm Investigative Studios. Until now, the IRP has been largely known for the work of its founder, Lowell Bergman, on PBS Frontline and other outlets, including most recently this April, “Trafficked in America.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This story story began when Associate Producer Jason Paladino, then a graduate student at the Graduate School of Journalism, lost his high school friend, aircrewman Brian Collins, on Van Dorn’s flight. The two grew up together in Truckee. After talking with Collins’s friends at the funeral, Paladino suspected that there might be a story to pursue on the Navy and Marine 53E helicopters and began to work on an investigation for his master’s thesis. That’s when he met Mike Hixenbaugh, a military reporter at the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, who had already started digging into the story of the 53. They opened up a collaboration and both became fellows at the IRP after Paladino graduated. They published a series of stories in the newspaper and, with the help of the IRP, a four-minute investigation on NBC Nightly News.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">First-time director Zachary Stauffer, a staff producer and DP at the IRP, saw a larger story in Van Dorn’s death and began developing it as a film. What could explain the safety record of the 53, which has killed 132 people? What could the story of this helicopter tell us about how America’s military and the defense industry work? “Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn?” gathers all the strands from years of research—the emotional personal stories, the investigative findings and the context—and weaves them into a single unforgettable narrative.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Over the course of production, six alumni and 12 current students at the Graduate School of Journalism have worked on the film, reflecting Bergman’s teaching philosophy, that the best way to learn journalism is to do it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>About Investigative Studios: </b>Investigative Studios, Inc. is a nonprofit corporation formed for the purpose of newsgathering, journalism education and media production in support of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and its Investigative Reporting Program.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>About The Investigative Reporting Program:</b> The IRP is a professional newsroom and teaching institute at the University of California, Berkeley. We are committed to reporting stories that expose injustice and abuse of power while training the next generation of journalists in the highest standards of our craft.</span></div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-73192693316809412802018-10-27T10:46:00.001-04:002018-10-27T10:55:56.074-04:00The Heat: Chas Freeman One-on-One<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This video is a brilliant exegesis of the challenges facing US foreign policy in general and US - China relations in particular. Former Ambassador Chas Freeman was President Nixon’s primary interpreter during Nixon’s historic opening to China. He held a variety of high level positions in the State Department and the Pentagon, culminating his distinguished career as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. </div>
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I urge all readers to listen carefully to this One-on-One interview with CGTN’s Anand Naidoo.</div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-18540864557289223952018-10-24T14:24:00.002-04:002018-10-24T14:24:53.641-04:00Leak by Leak: Erdogan Exerts His Leverage Over the Saudis<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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by <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/patrick-cockburn/">PATRICK COCKBURN</a>, Counterpunch, OCTOBER 24, 2018</div>
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[Reposted with permission of author and editor]</div>
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<a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/10/24/leak-by-leak-erdogan-exerts-his-leverage-over-the-saudis/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/10/24/leak-by-leak-erdogan-exerts-his-leverage-over-the-saudis/</a></div>
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President <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/president-recep-tayyip-erdogan">Recep Tayyip Erdogan</a> is a skilful politician who knows how to maximise his advantages and this was very much on display in his speech to the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/Turkey">Turkish</a> parliament.</div>
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He contemptuously dismissed the official Saudi story that the murder of <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/jamal-Khashoggi">Jamal Khashoggi</a> was the accidental outcome of a botched interrogation by a “rogue” Saudi intelligence team.</div>
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It was always naive to imagine that Mr Erdogan would tell all that Turkey knows about the murder and the Saudi role in it because such information – particularly the alleged audio recording of the killing – is invaluable in giving Turkey leverage over Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser degree, the US.</div>
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Mr Erdogan disappointed the media by not producing “a smoking gun”, but it is not in his interests to do so for the moment. However, he was categorical in showing that the killing of Mr Khashoggi was premeditated. “Intelligence and security institutions have evidence showing the murder was planned,” he said. “Pinning such a case on some security and intelligence members will not satisfy us or the international community.”</div>
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This unlikely narrative is, of course, exactly what Saudi Arabia is trying to sell to the rest of the world. Mr Erdogan did not mention Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman by name. But then he does not have to. All he had to say was that “from the person who gave the order to the person who carried it out, they must all be brought to account”. The nation has repeatedly denied any suggestion that the crown prince may have been involved.</div>
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The crown prince is discovering, as have many authoritarian leaders in the past, that once you win total control of a country it becomes impossible to talk of ignorance of its crimes.</div>
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Mr Erdogan is shooting at an open goal. When Saudi Arabia denied knowing anything about the killing for 17 days and then issued a vague and unconvincing admission of the “rogue operation”, it created a vacuum of information about a story which the whole world is watching with fascinated interest. This vacuum is being filled by unattributable briefings by Turkish officials, drip-fed to the Turkish and international media at a pace geared to keep the finger pointing at Riyadh and the affair at the top of the news agenda.</div>
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The Saudi admission on 19 October that Mr Khashoggi was killed has made things worse rather than better for them. Their feeble cover story is already in shreds. Mr Erdogan is very reasonably asking what has happened to the body and what are the names of the Turkish “collaborators” to whom Riyadh is claiming operatives have handed over the corpse.</div>
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The problem for Saudi Arabia is that any attempt to explain away its role in the killing is likely to be immediately discredited by Turkish leaks. It is almost certain that the audio recording of Mr Khashoggi’s final moments really exists and will finally be made public. Meanwhile, it enables Turkey to pile on the pressure on the kingdom in the knowledge that it holds all the high cards.</div>
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It will play these cards very carefully because, once revealed, they lose their value. For Turkey, the Khashoggi affair has provided an unexpected and miraculous opportunity to recalibrate its relations with Saudi Arabia and the US to its own advantage. The Saudi bid to be the undisputed leader of the Sunni Muslims, although never really convincing and always overstating the kingdom’s strength, is dissolving by the day. Mr Erdogan can look to extract concessions – although he may not get them – from Saudi Arabia when it comes to the war in Yemen, the blockade of Qatar and confrontation with Iran, as well as financial benefits.</div>
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Whatever happens, the aggressive, arrogant but disaster-prone Saudi foreign policy over the last three years under the leadership of the crown prince is likely to be thoroughly diluted in future.</div>
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Mr Erdogan will be looking to modify the stance of the US towards Turkey on issues such as the US alliance with the Syrian Kurds, whose enclave in Syria Ankara denounces as being run by the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which the Turkish state has been fighting since 1984.</div>
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Support free-thinking journalism and subscribe to Independent MindsThis is a delicate moment for President Trump. The Khashoggi affair may not much effect the midterm elections, but it will affect the US position in the world. Mr Trump’s most radical change of policy has been to exit the Iran nuclear deal and to reimpose severe sanctions on Iranian oil exports in early November. The main US regional ally in this was to have been the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, but this strategy is in deep trouble. Turkey has close if shaky relations with Iran and says it will not comply with sanctions. Saudi Arabia will go on being an important regional player because of its oil and money, but its prestige and influence have been damaged beyond repair.</div>
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If the crown prince does survive then he is likely to be much more under US influence and less likely to act independently than in the past. For the moment, he will be watching the news from Ankara and living from leak to leak.</div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-89761671109421474452018-08-29T17:40:00.000-04:002018-08-29T17:43:03.732-04:00Is DHS Hyping the Politics of Fearing Fear Itself?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Attached herewith is another important report on the growing flakiness of the so-called Russia-Gate narrative. This story is becoming increasingly laden with complex twists and turns and dead ends: one interesting new twist in this tale is the role of empire building by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — our newest and perhaps least needed security/intelligence bureaucracy. The author, Gareth Porter, describes the emerging role of DHS’s smarmy bureaucratic ambition to forge its own security narrative around its own elastic concept of protecting our nation’s “critical infrastructure.” IMO, DHS is creating of yet another unaccountable national security money gusher, powered by a toxic mix of patronage, secrecy, and the politics of fearing fear itself.</div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Porter">Gareth Porter</a> has written several important books on national security policy; he holds a PhD in history from Cornell University, and he is one of the very best investigative journalists in America. In 2012, he won the prestigious <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Gellhorn_Prize_for_Journalism">Martha Gelhorn Prize for Journalism</a>. Politically, Porter is a liberal, and his articles appear in liberal journals like Alternet, Counterpunch, Consortium News, Salon, Truthout, and the Nation — but his work also appears in the American Conservative and the Libertarian <a href="http://antiwar.com/">Antiwar.com</a>. He always searches for the truth, even if it leads him away from his leanings. But be advised, Gareth is my friend, so I freely admit I am biased, so judge for yourself whether or not this is an eye opening essay. </div>
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Chuck Spinney</div>
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<b>How the Department of Homeland Security Created a Deceptive Tale of Russia Hacking US Voter Sites</b></div>
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<b><i>The narrative about Russian cyberattacks on American election infrastructure is a self-interested abuse of power by DHS based on distortion of evidence, writes Gareth Porter.</i></b></div>
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By Gareth Porter, Special to Consortium News, Volume 24, Number 241, August 28, 2018</div>
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Reprinted with permission of author</div>
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<a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2018/08/28/how-the-department-of-homeland-security-created-a-deceptive-tale-of-russia-hacking-u-s-voter-sites/">https://consortiumnews.com/2018/08/28/how-the-department-of-homeland-security-created-a-deceptive-tale-of-russia-hacking-u-s-voter-sites/</a></div>
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<i>[CS Note: this is slightly reformatted to ease reading, but not one word has been changed]</i></div>
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<i>Gareth Porter</i></div>
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The narrative of Russian intelligence attacking state and local election boards and threatening the integrity of U.S. elections has achieved near-universal acceptance by media and political elites. And now it has been accepted by the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-intelligence-officials-warn-of-pervasive-russian-efforts-to-disrupt-2018-elections-1533235652">Trump administration’s intelligence chief, Dan Coats</a>, as well. </div>
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But the real story behind that narrative, recounted here for the first time, reveals that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created and nurtured an account that was grossly and deliberately deceptive. </div>
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DHS compiled an intelligence report suggesting hackers linked to the Russian government could have targeted voter-related websites in many states and then leaked a sensational story of Russian attacks on those sites without the qualifications that would have revealed a different story. When state election officials began asking questions, they discovered that the DHS claims were false and, in at least one case, laughable.</div>
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The National Security Agency and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigating team have also claimed evidence that Russian military intelligence was behind election infrastructure hacking, but on closer examination, those claims turn out to be speculative and misleading as well. Mueller’s indictment of 12 GRU military intelligence officers does not cite any violations of U.S. election laws though it claims Russia interfered with the 2016 election.</div>
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<b>A Sensational Story </b></div>
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On Sept. 29, 2016, a few weeks after the hacking of election-related websites in Illinois and Arizona, ABC News carried a sensational headline: “Russian Hackers Targeted Nearly Half of States’ Voter Registration Systems, Successfully Infiltrated 4.” The <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/russian-hackers-targeted-half-states-voter-registration-systems/story?id=42435822">story</a> itself reported that “more than 20 state election systems” had been hacked, and four states had been “breached” by hackers suspected of working for the Russian government. The story cited only sources “knowledgeable” about the matter, indicating that those who were pushing the story were eager to hide the institutional origins of the information.</div>
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Behind that sensational story was a federal agency seeking to establish its leadership within the national security state apparatus on cybersecurity, despite its limited resources for such responsibility. In late summer and fall 2016, the Department of Homeland Security was maneuvering politically to designate state and local voter registration databases and voting systems as “critical infrastructure.” Such a designation would make voter-related networks and websites under the protection a “priority sub-sector” in the DHS “National Infrastructure Protection Plan, which already included 16 such sub-sectors. </div>
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DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and other senior DHS officials <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/01/06/statement-secretary-johnson-designation-election-infrastructure-critical">consulted with many state election officials</a> in the hope of getting their approval for such a designation. Meanwhile, the DHS was finishing an intelligence report that would both highlight the Russian threat to U.S. election infrastructure and the role DHS could play in protecting it, thus creating political impetus to the designation. But several secretaries of state—the officials in charge of the election infrastructure in their state—strongly opposed the designation that Johnson wanted. </div>
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On Jan. 6, 2017—the same day three intelligence agencies released a joint “assessment” on Russian interference in the election—Johnson announced the designation anyway.</div>
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Media stories continued to reflect the official assumption that cyber attacks on state election websites were Russian-sponsored. Stunningly, The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/08/homeland-security-tied-to-attempted-hack-of-georgias-election-database-report.html">reported</a> in December 2016 that DHS was itself behind hacking attempts of Georgia’s election database.</div>
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The facts surrounding the two actual breaches of state websites in Illinois and Arizona, as well as the broader context of cyberattacks on state websites, didn’t support that premise at all.</div>
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In July <span style="color: #ff2600;">[2016]</span>, Illinois discovered an intrusion into its voter registration website and the theft of personal information on as many as <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois-state-board-of-elections-hack-update-met-0830-20160829-story.html">200,000 registered voters</a>. (The 2018 Mueller indictments of GRU officers would unaccountably <a href="http://www.cbs46.com/story/38640402/12-russians-indicted-in-mueller-investigation">put the figure at 500,000</a>.) Significantly, however, the hackers only had copied the information and had left it unchanged in the database. </div>
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That was a crucial clue to the motive behind the hack. DHS Assistant Secretary for Cyber Security and Communications Andy Ozment <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?415978-1/hearing-focuses-cybersecurity-us-election-system">told a Congressional committee</a> in late September 2016 that the fact hackers hadn’t tampered with the voter data indicated that the aim of the theft was not to influence the electoral process. Instead, it was “possibly for the purpose of selling personal information.” Ozment was contradicting the line that already was being taken on the Illinois and Arizona hacks by the National Protection and Programs Directorate and other senior DHS officials. </div>
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In an interview with me last year, Ken Menzel, the legal adviser to the Illinois secretary of state, confirmed what Ozment had testified. “Hackers have been trying constantly to get into it since 2006,” Menzel said, adding that they had been probing every other official Illinois database with such personal data for vulnerabilities as well. “Every governmental database—driver’s licenses, health care, you name it—has people trying to get into it,” said Menzel.</div>
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In the other successful cyberattack on an electoral website, hackers had acquired the username and password for the voter database Arizona used during the summer, as Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan learned from the FBI. But the reason that it had become known, according to Reagan in an <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/state-election-hacks-undermine-voters-confidence/">interview with Mother Jones</a>, was that the login and password had shown up for sale on the dark web—the network of websites used by cyber criminals to sell stolen data and other illicit wares. </div>
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Furthermore, the FBI had told her that the effort to penetrate the database was the work of a “known hacker” whom the FBI had monitored “frequently” in the past. Thus, there were reasons to believe that both Illinois and Arizona hacking incidents were linked to criminal hackers seeking information they could sell for profit.</div>
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Meanwhile, the FBI was unable to come up with any theory about what Russia might have intended to do with voter registration data such as what was taken in the Illinois hack. When FBI Counterintelligence official Bill Priestap was <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?430128-1/senate-intel-panel-told-21-states-targeted-russia-2016-election">asked in a June 2017 hearing</a> how Moscow might use such data, his answer revealed that he had no clue: </div>
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<i>“They took the data to understand what it consisted of,” </i>said the struggling Priestap<i>, “so they can affect better understanding and plan accordingly in regards to possibly impacting future elections by knowing what is there and studying it.” </i> </div>
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The inability to think of any plausible way for the Russian government to use such data explains why DHS and the intelligence community adopted the argument, as senior DHS officials Samuel Liles and Jeanette Manfra put it, that the hacks </div>
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<i>“could be intended or used to undermine public confidence in electoral processes and potentially the outcome.” </i></div>
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But such a strategy could not have had any effect without a decision by DHS and the U.S. intelligence community to assert publicly that the intrusions and other scanning and probing were Russian operations, despite the absence of hard evidence. So DHS and other agencies were consciously sowing public doubts about U.S. elections that they were attributing to Russia.</div>
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<b>DHS Reveals Its Self-Serving Methodology</b></div>
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In June 2017, Liles and Manfra <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/06/21/written-testimony-ia-cyber-division-acting-director-dr-samuel-liles-and-nppd-acting">testified</a> to the Senate Intelligence Committee that an October 2016 DHS intelligence report had listed election systems in 21 states that were “<i>potentially targeted by Russian government cyber actors.”</i> They revealed that the sensational story leaked to the press in late September 2016 had been based on a draft of the DHS report. And more importantly, their use of the phrase “potentially targeted” showed that they were arguing only that the cyber incidents it listed were possible indications of a Russian attack on election infrastructure. </div>
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Furthermore, Liles and Manfra said the DHS report had “catalogued suspicious activity we observed on state government networks across the country,” which had been “largely based on suspected malicious tactics and infrastructure.” They were referring to a list of eight IP addresses an August 2016 <a href="https://s.yimg.com/dh/ap/politics/images/boe_flash_aug_2016_final.pdf">FBI “flash alert”</a> had obtained from the Illinois and Arizona intrusions, which DHS and FBI had not been able to attribute to the Russian government.</div>
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<i>Manfra: No doubt it was the Russians. (C-SPAN)</i></div>
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The DHS officials recalled that the DHS began to “receive reports of cyber-enabled scanning and probing of election-related infrastructure in some states, some of which appeared to originate from servers operated by a Russian company.” Six of the eight IP addresses in the FBI alert were indeed traced to King Servers, owned by a young Russian living in Siberia. But as DHS cyber specialists knew well, the country of ownership of the server doesn’t prove anything about who was responsible for hacking: As cybersecurity expert Jeffrey Carr <a href="https://medium.com/@jeffreyscarr/the-arizona-election-hack-story-is-an-embarrassment-to-everyone-involved-a4dce25d3634">pointed out</a>, the Russian hackers who coordinated the Russian attack on Georgian government websites in 2008 used a Texas-based company as the hosting provider. </div>
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The cybersecurity firm ThreatConnect <a href="https://threatconnect.com/blog/state-board-election-rabbit-hole/">noted</a> in 2016 that one of the other two IP addresses had hosted a Russian criminal market for five months in 2015. But that was not a serious indicator, either. Private IP addresses are reassigned frequently by server companies, so there is not a necessary connection between users of the same IP address at different times.</div>
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The DHS methodology of selecting reports of cyber incidents involving election-related websites as “potentially targeted” by Russian government-sponsored hackers was based on no objective evidence whatever. The resulting list appears to have included any one of the eight addresses as well as any attack or “scan” on a public website that could be linked in any way to elections. </div>
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This methodology conveniently ignored the fact that criminal hackers were constantly trying to get access to every database in those same state, country and municipal systems. Not only for Illinois and Arizona officials, but state electoral officials.</div>
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In fact, 14 of the 21 states on the list experienced nothing more than the routine scanning that occurs every day, <a href="https://www.burr.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/One-Pager%20Recs%20FINAL%20VERSION%203-20.pdf">according to the Senate Intelligence Committee</a>. Only six involved what was referred to as a “malicious access attempt,” meaning an effort to penetrate the site. One of them was in Ohio, where the attempt to find a weakness lasted less than a second and was considered by DHS’s internet security contractor <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/30/politics/states-targeted-by-russian-hackers/index.html">a “non-event”</a> at the time.</div>
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<b>State Officials Force DHS to Tell the Truth</b></div>
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For a year, DHS did not inform the 21 states on its list that their election boards or other election-related sites had been attacked in a presumed Russian-sponsored operation. The excuse DHS officials cited was that it could not reveal such sensitive intelligence to state officials without security clearances. But the reluctance to reveal the details about each case was certainly related to the reasonable expectation that states would publicly challenge their claims, creating a potential serious embarrassment. </div>
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On Sept. 22, 2017, DHS notified 21 states about the cyber incidents that had been included in the October 2016 report. The public announcement of the notifications said DHS had notified each chief election officer of “any potential targeting we were aware of in their state leading up to the 2016 election.” The phrase “potential targeting” again telegraphed the broad and vague criterion DHS had adopted, but it was ignored in media stories.</div>
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But the notifications, which took the form of phone calls lasting only a few minutes, provided a minimum of information and failed to convey the significant qualification that DHS was only suggesting targeting as a possibility. </div>
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<i>“It was a couple of guys from DHS reading from a script,” </i>recalled one state election official who asked not to be identified<i>. “They said [our state] was targeted by Russian government cyber actors.”</i></div>
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A number of state election officials recognized that this information conflicted with what they knew. And if they complained, they got a more accurate picture from DHS. After Wisconsin Secretary of State Michael Haas demanded further clarification, he got an email <a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2017/09/26/wisconsin-elections-commission-offers-apology-raises-questions-hacking-attempt/703660001/">response from a DHS official </a> with a different account. </div>
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<i>“[B]ased on our external analysis,” </i>the official wrote<i>, “the WI [Wisconsin] IP address affected belongs to the WI Department of Workforce Development, not the Elections Commission.”</i></div>
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California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said DHS initially had notified his office </div>
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<i>“that Russian cyber actors ‘scanned’ </i>California’s Internet-facing systems in 2016, including Secretary of State websites.” </div>
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But under further questioning, DHS <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dhs-russia-hacking_us_59cd0da3e4b0e005cc57235d">admitted to Padilla</a> that what the hackers had targeted was the California Department of Technology’s network.</div>
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Texas Secretary of State <a href="https://www.statesman.com/news/hackers-targeted-texas-secretary-state-website-official-says/7XQbmyh6msawwmX7aJNWDP/">Rolando Pablos</a> and Oklahoma Election Board spokesman <a href="https://ktul.com/election-officials-russian-hackers-probed-oklahoma-system">Byron Dean</a> also denied that any state website with voter- or election-related information had been targeted, and Pablos <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2017/09/29/texas-denies-it-was-target-election-related-hacking/">demanded</a> that DHS “correct its erroneous notification.” </div>
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Despite these embarrassing admissions, a <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dhs-russia-hacking_us_59cd0da3e4b0e005cc57235d">statement issued </a>by DHS spokesman Scott McConnell on Sept. 28, 201<i>7 </i>said the DHS </div>
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<i>“stood by” </i>its assessment that 21 states<i> “were the target of Russian government cyber actors seeking vulnerabilities and access to U.S. election infrastructure.” </i></div>
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The statement retreated from the previous admission that the notifications involved “potential targeting,” but it also revealed for the first time that DHS had defined “targeting” very broadly indeed. </div>
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It said the category included </div>
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<i>“some cases” </i>involving<i> “direct scanning of targeted systems” </i>but also cases in which <i>“malicious actors scanned for vulnerabilities in networks that may be connected to those systems or have similar characteristics in order to gain information about how to later penetrate their target.” </i></div>
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It is true that hackers may scan one website in the hope of learning something that could be useful for penetrating another website, as cybersecurity expert Prof. Herbert S. Lin of Stanford University explained to me in an interview. But including any incident in which that motive was theoretical meant that any state website could be included on the DHS list, without any evidence it was related to a political motive.</div>
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Arizona’s further exchanges with DHS revealed just how far DHS had gone in exploiting that escape clause in order to add more states to its “targeted” list. Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan tweeted that DHS had informed her that </div>
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<i>“the Russian government targeted our voter registration systems in 2016.” </i>After meeting with DHS officials in early October 2017, however, Reagan <a href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2017/10/13/arizonas-top-voting-official-now-says-russian-hack-cant-confirmed/761890001/">wrote in a blog post</a> that DHS<i> “could not confirm that any attempted Russian government hack occurred whatsoever to any election-related system in Arizona, much less the statewide voter registration database.” </i></div>
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What the DHS said in that meeting, as Reagan’s spokesman Matt Roberts recounted to me, is even more shocking. </div>
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<i>“When we pressed DHS on what exactly was actually targeted, they said it was the Phoenix public library’s computers system,” </i>Roberts recalled.</div>
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<i>National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Md. (Wikimedia)</i></div>
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In April 2018, a CBS News “60 Minutes” segment reported that the October 2016 DHS intelligence report had included the Russian government hacking of a “county database in Arizona.” Responding to that CBS report, an unidentified “senior Trump administration official” who was well-briefed on the DHS report <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-election/arizona-election-database-targeted-in-2016-by-criminals-not-russia-source-idUSKBN1HF11F">told Reuters</a> that “media reports” on the issue had sometimes “conflated criminal hacking with Russian government activity,” and that the cyberattack on the target in Arizona “was not perpetrated by the Russian government.” </div>
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<b>NSA Finds a GRU Election Plot</b></div>
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NSA intelligence analysts claimed in a May 2017 analysis to have documented an effort by Russian military intelligence (GRU) to hack into U.S. electoral institutions. </div>
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In an intelligence analysis <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/top-secret-nsa-report-details-russian-hacking-effort-days-before-2016-election/">obtained by The Intercept</a> and reported in June 2017, NSA analysts wrote that the GRU had sent a spear-phishing email—one with an attachment designed to look exactly like one from a trusted institution but that contains malware design to get control of the computer—to a vendor of voting machine technology in Florida. The hackers then designed a fake web page that looked like that of the vendor. They sent it to a list of 122 email addresses NSA believed to be local government organizations that probably were “involved in the management of voter registration systems.” The objective of the new spear-phishing campaign, the NSA suggested, was to get control of their computers through malware to carry out the exfiltration of voter-related data.</div>
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But the authors of The Intercept story failed to notice crucial details in the NSA report that should have tipped them off that the attribution of the spear-phishing campaign to the GRU was based merely on the analysts’ own judgment—and that their judgment was faulty. </div>
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The Intercept article included a color-coded chart from the original NSA report that provides crucial information missing from the text of the NSA analysis itself as well as The Intercept’s account. The chart clearly distinguishes between the elements of the NSA’s account of the alleged Russian scheme that were based on “Confirmed Information” (shown in green) and those that were based on “Analyst Judgment” (shown in yellow). The connection between the “operator” of the spear-phishing campaign the report describes and an unidentified entity confirmed to be under the authority of the GRU is shown as a yellow line, meaning that it is based on “Analyst Judgment” and labeled “probably.” </div>
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A major criterion for any attribution of a hacking incident is whether there are strong similarities to previous hacks identified with a specific actor. But the chart concedes that “several characteristics” of the campaign depicted in the report distinguish it from “another major GRU spear-phishing program,” the identity of which has been redacted from the report. </div>
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The NSA chart refers to evidence that the same operator also had launched spear-phishing campaigns on other web-based mail applications, including the Russian company “Mail.ru.” Those targets suggest that the actors were more likely Russian criminal hackers rather than Russian military intelligence.</div>
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Even more damaging to its case, the NSA reports that the same operator who had sent the spear-phishing emails also had sent a test email to the “American Samoa Election Office.” Criminal hackers could have been interested in personal information from the database associated with that office. But the idea that Russian military intelligence was planning to hack the voter rolls in American Samoa, an unincorporated U.S. territory with 56,000 inhabitants who can’t even vote in U.S. presidential elections, is plainly risible.</div>
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<b>The Mueller Indictment’s Sleight of Hand</b></div>
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The Mueller indictment of GRU officers released on July 13 appeared at first reading to offer new evidence of Russian government responsibility for the hacking of Illinois and other state voter-related websites. A close analysis of the relevant paragraphs, however, confirms the lack of any real intelligence supporting that claim. </div>
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Mueller accused two GRU officers of working with unidentified “co-conspirators” on those hacks. But the only alleged evidence linking the GRU to the operators in the hacking incidents is the claim that a GRU official named Anatoly Kovalev and “co-conspirators” deleted search history related to the preparation for the hack after the FBI issued its alert on the hacking identifying the IP address associated with it in August 2016. </div>
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A careful reading of the relevant paragraphs shows that the claim is spurious. </div>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">The first sentence in Paragraph 71 says that both Kovalev and his “co-conspirators” researched domains used by U.S. state boards of elections and other entities “for website vulnerabilities.” </li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">The second says Kovalev and “co-conspirators” had searched for “state political party email addresses, including filtered queries for email addresses listed on state Republican Party websites.” </li>
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<i>Mueller: Don’t read the fine print. (The White House/Wikimedia)</i></div>
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Searching for website vulnerabilities would be evidence of intent to hack them, of course, but searching Republican Party websites for email addresses is hardly evidence of any hacking plan. And Paragraph 74 states that Kovalev “deleted his search history”—not the search histories of any “co-conspirator”—thus revealing that there were no joint searches and suggesting that the subject Kovalev had searched was Republican Party emails. So any deletion by Kovalev of his search history after the FBI alert would not be evidence of his involvement in the hacking of the Illinois election board website. </div>
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With this rhetorical misdirection unraveled, it becomes clear that the repetition in every paragraph of the section of the phrase <i>“Kovalev and his co-conspirators”</i> was aimed at giving the reader the impression the accusation is based on hard intelligence about possible collusion that doesn’t exist.</div>
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<b>The Need for Critical Scrutiny of DHS Cyberattack Claims</b></div>
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The DHS campaign to establish its role as the protector of U.S. electoral institutions is not the only case in which that agency has used a devious means to sow fear of Russian cyberattacks. </div>
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In December 2016, DHS and the FBI published a long list of IP addresses as indicators of possible Russian cyberattacks. But most of the addresses on the list had no connection with Russian intelligence, as former U.S. government cyber-warfare officer Rob Lee <a href="http://www.robertmlee.org/critiques-of-the-dhsfbis-grizzly-steppe-report/">found on close examination</a>.</div>
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When someone at the Burlington, Vt., Electric Company spotted one of those IP addresses on one of its computers, the company reported it to DHS. But instead of quietly investigating the address to verify that it was indeed an indicator of Russian intrusion, DHS immediately informed The Washington Post. The result was a sensational story that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. power grid. In fact, the IP address in question was merely Yahoo’s email server, as Rob Lee told me, and the computer had not even been connected to the power grid. The threat to the power grid was a tall tale created by a DHS official, which the Post had to embarrassingly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-government-hackers-do-not-appear-to-have-targeted-vermont-utility-say-people-close-to-investigation/2017/01/02/70c25956-d12c-11e6-945a-76f69a399dd5_story.html?utm_term=.8697f0d3e351">retract.</a> </div>
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Since May 2017, DHS, in partnership with the FBI, has begun an even more ambitious campaign to focus public attention on what it says are Russian “targeting” and “intrusions” into “major, high value assets that operate components of our Nation’s critical infrastructure”, including energy, nuclear, water, aviation and critical manufacturing sectors. Any evidence of such an intrusion must be taken seriously by the U.S. government and reported by news media. But in light of the DHS record on alleged threats to election infrastructure and the Burlington power grid, and its well-known ambition to assume leadership over cyber protection, the public interest demands that the news media examine DHS claims about Russian cyber threats far more critically than they have up to now.</div>
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<i>Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. His latest book is Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.</i></div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-67421993049356558632018-07-14T10:14:00.001-04:002018-07-16T17:58:10.690-04:00Killing the Hog (VII): Close Air Support Fly-off Farce <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Ask any battle-hardened American soldier or marine what the best close air support airplane is -- especially if his unit is in close-quarters combat and in danger of being overrun -- and his most-likely response would be the Air Force's A-10 Warthog, affectionately known to grunts and pilots alike as the Hog.</div>
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Yet despite the nearly universal kudos from the grunts, the United States Air Force hates the A-10, with an enduring passion that dates from the A-10's birth in the 1960s. This is partly because the A-10 was midwifed in controversy by an amazing <a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2017/12/podcast-pierre-sprey-and-birth-of-a-10.html">alliance</a> of mid-level AF officers and Defense Department civilians, as well as a sense of urgency resulting from congressional investigations into complaints about the Air Force's support of grunts in Vietnam. But the hatred runs much deeper: More fundamentally, it is grounded in the fact that the A-10 represents a highly visible -- and painful -- contradiction in the Air Force’s founding ideology of precision strategic bombing. </div>
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This ideology shapes the Air Force's identity. It was born during the 25 year War of the Air Force Secession -- a rebellion that began when the Army Air Corps formulated its theory of strategic bombing in the 1920s and 1930s. Strategic bombing theory is based on a tautological <i>analogy</i> that claims any adversary is a web of "vital" nodes -- be it an industrial economy like that of Germany during WWII or a 21st Century terrorist organization like al Qaeda. It posits that a precision destruction of any adversary's vital "nodes" will cause him to collapse and, at least in theory, victory can be achieved thru airpower alone -- hence it is the justification for <i>institutional independence</i>. </div>
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Like all seductive analogies, Strategic Bombing Theory captures the imagination and encourages speculative, even wild, conclusions. The result in this case has been the emergence of an increasingly powerful seductive mentality; it not only led to the flawed prediction that destructive attacks on the Schweinfurt's "vital" ball-bearing works would inflict a decisive wound in 1943, it also seduced President Obama into believing that precision strikes on "vital" Taliban leadership "targets" would be decisive. That the cold evidence of history has repeatedly suggested otherwise has not diminished the analogy's seductive power.</div>
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Over time, airpower strategy has been reduced to a mechanistic formula of identifying an adversary's vital nodes, prioritizing their destruction, and executing precision attacks to destroy them. By definition, if one destroys a vital node, one inflicts a mortal wound. Hence the implicit logical corollary: in the unlikely event that any ground fighting becomes necessary, the attack would be reduced to simply mopping up disconnected remnants of the broken adversary. This was a particularly seductive ideology in the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s, because of the universal desire to avoid a repeat of the bloody pointlessness of trench warfare in WWI. But the theory’s main attraction was that it provided a <i>rationale for seceding from the Army</i> and becoming an independent service, a bureaucratic victory finally achieved in 1947. Perhaps more importantly, by focusing on a physical analogy, strategic bombing insensibly placed technology and hardware ahead of people -- i.e., the grunts on the ground. Thus, the AF ideology of precision strategic bombing also became a winning prescription for ever tighter alliances with the defense industry -- which proved to be a perennial winner in the see-saw battles for ever-increasing service budgets. </div>
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Which brings us back to the Air Force's ideological hatred of the A-10: The A-10 represents a glaring rejection of the Air Force's core identity. </div>
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Hog pilots work for and are closely integrated with the grunts on the ground. Their top priority is to become part of a combined arms team fighting in a fluid situation, not part of some sterile conception of an attack on a hypothetical "vital" node. To be effective, the mental Orientation of Hog pilots must be in harmony with the tactical and operational-level Orientations of the ground forces. Hog pilots must share a harmonious outlook with the grunts, whether tactical or operational -- and they have no pretense of adding an independent war winning capability. Hog pilots are simply soldiers expanding the concept of combined arms operations to three-dimensional space. </div>
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Even worse, from the Air Force's ideological point view, the Hog is technologically simple; it is also ugly, and worst of all, it is a low cost airplane. But, as the grunts will tell you, it is amazingly effective, especially when they are in extremis and about to be overrun.</div>
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So, the deeply rooted AF ideology of precision strategic bombing has been the source of its blind ambition to kill the Hog since its inception in the 1960s. Attached below is Dan Grazier's stunning exposition of the lengths to which the Air Force will go in this never-ending struggle. </div>
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Grazier is a former Marine who has smelled the cordite. In 2007 he commanded a tank platoon in Iraq, and in 2013 he served a staff officer with Regimental Combat Team 7 in Afghanistan. Today, Grazier is the <a href="http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/military-reform/2013/a-personal-remembrance.html">Jack Shanahan</a> Fellow at the Project on Government Oversight. Below, Grazier explains in mind-numbing detail how a grotesquely-biased fly-off "test" has been concocted to fraudulently demonstrate how the high-cost, super-complex, problem-plagued F-35 will out perform the A-1 in the Close Air Support mission. </div>
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As Grazier shows, the conditions that will be used to kill the Hog are so absurd as to be laughable, were the end not so obscene. Read it and weep.</div>
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Chuck Spinney</div>
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****</div>
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For interested readers, a partial history of the A-10's birth and its recent murder attempts can be found at these references:</div>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2017/12/podcast-pierre-sprey-and-birth-of-a-10.html">PODCAST: Birthing the Hog (I)</a> Pierre Sprey & the A-10, 20 December 2017</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><a href="https://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2003/05/why-does-air-force-hate-hog.html" target="_blank">Why Does the AF Hate the Hog?, 27 May 2003</a></li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2013/11/should-af-retire-a-10-seminar-on.html">Should the AF Retire the A-10? - A Seminar on a Seminal Question</a>, 11 November 2013</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2014/12/killing-hog.html">Killing the Hog (I)</a>, 2 December 2014</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2014/12/killing-hog-ii.html">Killing the Hog (II)</a>, 3 December 2014</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2015/01/general-posts-mexican-hot-platter.html">General Post’s Mexican Hot Platter</a>, 30 January 2015</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2015/02/killing-hog-iii.html">Killing the Hog (III)</a>, 8 February 2015</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2015/02/killing-hog-iv.html">Killing the Hog (IV)</a>, 9 February 2015</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/search/label/A-10%3A%20Killing%20the%20Hog">Killing the Hog (V)</a>, 11 February 2015</li>
<li style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><a href="https://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2016/08/killing-hog-vi.html">Killing the Hog (VI)</a>, 3 August 2016</li>
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<b>Close Air Support Fly-off Farce</b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><b><i>F-35 Versus A-10 Fly-off Tests Designed to Mislead</i></b></div>
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By: <a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pogo.org%2Fabout%2Fboard-staff%2Fstaff-profiles%2Fdan-grazier.html&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537560964116&sdata=UYK7%2FjrEddTVxRUXWYoSyVDMDUhRDY%2FQiattYJJ3jeQ%3D&reserved=0">Dan Grazier</a>, <a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2FPOGO.org&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537560964116&sdata=1aHaM50NjYNEWzsFbNaRiIl1gQoRt0E7ZSDoLhX66fA%3D&reserved=0">POGO.org</a>, July 10, 2018</div>
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<i>[Reposted with permission of the author]</i></div>
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<i>(Photos: F-35, left, </i><a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.af.mil%2FNews%2FPhotos%2Figphoto%2F2000762416%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537560964116&sdata=SKObhwz1%2F%2F4q1Nl9%2Fboe%2F58lsneCuL3rhgt%2FIjjyluE%3D&reserved=0"><i>USAF</i></a><i> / Senior Airman Christopher Callaway; A-10, right, </i><a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.stripes.com%2Fnews%2Fnavy%2Fthe-a-10-warthog-keeps-flying-1.290073%23gallery&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537561120360&sdata=hjRyw0cYNvdqjUvGHsKn4fPYflHHtlXejSFr%2BQOkRMk%3D&reserved=0"><i>USAF</i></a><i> / Dennis Brambl; Illustration by POGO)</i></div>
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The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is finally going up against the battle-proven A-10 close air support attack plane for the long-promised close air support fly-off. The unpublicized tests began on July 5, and will conclude on July 12, according to a copy of the testing schedule reviewed by the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight. But the tests, as designed, are unlikely to reveal anything of real value about the F-35’s ability to support ground troops in realistic combat situations—which the F-35, as the presumptive replacement for the A-10, must be able to demonstrate.</div>
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A close air support test should involve large numbers of ground troops in a highly fluid combat simulation in varied terrain, across many days. It should test the pilot’s ability to spot targets from the air in a chaotic and ever-changing situation. The test should also include a means of testing the program’s ability to fly several sorties a day, because combat doesn’t pause to wait for airplanes to become available.</div>
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But the Air Force scheduled just four days’ worth of tests at desert ranges in California and Arizona. And, according to sources closely associated with the fly-off, not a single event includes ground troops, or any kind of fluid combat situation, which means these tests are hardly representative of the missions a close air support aircraft has to perform.</div>
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These tests put Air Force leadership in a difficult position.</div>
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They want their largest and highest-priority weapons buy, the <a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pogo.org%2Fstraus%2Fissues%2Fweapons%2F2018%2Ff-35-still-no-finish-line-in-sight.html&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537561120360&sdata=UqQ8mmwN7VXHnwcH5%2BPv8ubVQ2CNw79GnzSQQzYiCSw%3D&reserved=0">troubled $400 billion F-35</a> multi-mission fighter, to quickly replace the A-10 close air support attack plane they’ve been <a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pogo.org%2Fstraus%2Fissues%2Fweapons%2F2018%2Fair-force-leaders-deliberately-slow-rolling-a-10-refurbishment.html&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537561120360&sdata=QlDfYS6cCabBUkK8y6ei%2Fl8UG0154TG8Hz1%2B7hkp6ek%3D&reserved=0">trying to get rid of</a> for over two decades. The now-former Pentagon weapons testing director, Dr. J. Michael Gilmore, <a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2016%2F04%2F28%2Fpolitics%2Fair-force-f-35-vs-a-10-showdown%2Findex.html&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537561120360&sdata=s7KwIWdl02nPcM%2FmAbKN9sj7A2j33HnSV4m%2FaGcGGJ4%3D&reserved=0">said in 2016</a> that a close air support fly-off would be the only way to determine how well the F-35 could perform the close air support role compared to the A-10—or whether the F-35 could perform that role at all. The testing office and the various service testing agencies had already meticulously planned comparative tests to pit the F-35 against the A-10, F-16, and the F-18, because the F-35 program is contractually required to show better mission effectiveness than each of the legacy aircraft it is to replace.</div>
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In other words, the test was designed by someone with a vested financial interest in the F-35 program, rather than by people whose primary interest is its performance in combat.</div>
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Many Air Force leaders <a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pogo.org%2Fstraus%2Fissues%2Fweapons%2F2015%2Flt-gen-bogdan-hedges-operational-testing.html&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537561120360&sdata=53hV43ZTpaqaxuN9s0TFil0CnBHdM5RNUv2KnDqDpFE%3D&reserved=0">strenuously objected to the fly-off</a>, claiming that the F-35 would perform the mission differently so it wouldn’t be fair to compare its performance to the A-10. These tests are only happening now—albeit in an inadequate form—because Congress mandated them <a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fnews%2Fcheckpoint%2Fwp%2F2015%2F08%2F27%2Fas-it-fights-for-its-life-the-a-10-will-face-off-against-the-f-35-in-close-air-support-test%2F%3Futm_term%3D.c3ab5fc4f6bd&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537561120360&sdata=iwIa3D5kikE%2F9GaVnNOSywImsNGbbUdIJP676KNtm0I%3D&reserved=0">nearly three years ago</a>. The Senate <a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.documentcloud.org%2Fdocuments%2F4587620-Senate-Report-2017-NDAA.html%23document%2Fp50%2Fa436252&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537561120360&sdata=l%2BNqzGhcN0CXMHNeoDfuw23t95JjdABovDZbhKJ%2FcTo%3D&reserved=0">established strict criteria</a> and specific scenarios for the tests. These include demonstrating the F-35’s ability to visually identify friendly forces and the enemy target in both day and night scenarios, to loiter over the target for an extended time, and to destroy targets without a joint terminal attack controller directing the strike.</div>
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The Congressionally approved plan includes a schedule for tests and funding for elaborate tactical test ranges with combat-realistic, hard-to-find targets defended by carefully simulated missile and gun defenses, and appropriate ground-control teams for the close-support portion of the test scenarios. Testing to date has revealed the <a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pogo.org%2Fstraus%2Fissues%2Fweapons%2F2018%2Ff-35-still-no-finish-line-in-sight.html&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537561120360&sdata=UqQ8mmwN7VXHnwcH5%2BPv8ubVQ2CNw79GnzSQQzYiCSw%3D&reserved=0">F-35 is incapable</a> of performing most of the functions required for an acceptable close-support aircraft, and it seems unlikely the criteria outlined by Congress and testing officials would have produced the results Air Force leaders wanted.</div>
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<b>The Air Force Solution: Designed to Mislead</b></div>
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Air Force leaders came up with a simple solution to this dilemma. They are staging an unpublicized, quickie test on existing training ranges, creating unrealistic scenarios that presuppose an ignorant and inert enemy force, writing ground rules for the tests that make the F-35 look good—and they got the new testing director, the retired Air Force general Robert Behler, to approve all of it.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dbHlI4Z9l6M/W0oCnCv35HI/AAAAAAAABiQ/LHY4R4WN4FodqT25Eqz9pLcg-iaD5uJewCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/A-10.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dbHlI4Z9l6M/W0oCnCv35HI/AAAAAAAABiQ/LHY4R4WN4FodqT25Eqz9pLcg-iaD5uJewCK4BGAYYCw/s400/A-10.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>(Photo: </i><a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fusairforce%2F5711148476%2Fin%2Fphotostream%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537561120360&sdata=VktMJU%2BTRslrO59YrLMGtoZ%2FWEA2LCS6%2FPl189q0rjk%3D&reserved=0"><i>USAF</i></a><i> / Master Sgt. William Greer)</i></div>
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According to sources closely involved with the A-10 versus F-35 fly-off, who wished to remain anonymous out of concerns about retaliation, this testing program was designed without ever consulting the Air Force’s resident experts on close air support, A-10 pilots and joint terminal attack ground controllers. The Air Force’s <a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.afhra.af.mil%2FAbout-Us%2FFact-Sheets%2FDisplay%2FArticle%2F433591%2F422-test-and-evaluation-squadron%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537561120360&sdata=qUkARZKKSgw4Y%2FBXYXtQI1%2BrCnnO85elAPiOPviONUI%3D&reserved=0">422 Test and Evaluation Squadron</a> at Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base maintains an A-10 test division. But no one from the operational test unit contributed to the design of these tests. Even more egregiously, no Army or Marine representatives participated. Since the services fighting on the ground have a primary interest in effective close air support, excluding them from this process borders on negligence. This testing event should have been designed by the Joint Strike Fighter Operational Test Team, which is charged with designing all tests for the F-35. Rather than going through the proper channels, design of these tests was outsourced to a consultant from <a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftacticalairsupport.com%2Faircraft%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537561120360&sdata=yCCIzy2BNMt53cyutgd4LpK33Nwh7l29TScFUeE%2BviE%3D&reserved=0">Tactical Air Support Inc.</a>, a company with a contract to provide adversary aircraft to serve as air-combat training opponents for the U.S. Air Force, especially for the F-35 squadrons, which it also does for <a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftacticalairsupport.com%2Faircraft%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537561120360&sdata=yCCIzy2BNMt53cyutgd4LpK33Nwh7l29TScFUeE%2BviE%3D&reserved=0">foreign air forces</a>. In other words, the test was designed by someone with a vested financial interest in the F-35 program, rather than by people whose primary interest is its performance in combat.</div>
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The testing schedule shows four days of actual testing: one at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma’s open-desert bombing training range, in southern Arizona, and three at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake’s electronic combat range, an open-desert facility in California primarily used for electronic countermeasure research.</div>
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<b>Day One at Yuma</b></div>
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The first day's test—July 5, at Yuma—scheduled one F-35 two-ship flight and two A-10 pairs. Each flight was to spend one hour making attack passes at highly visible, bombed-out vehicle hulks and shipping containers simulating buildings (plus one highly visible, remote-controlled moving-vehicle target), all in flat, open terrain near a large simulated airfield target. Each A-10 carried two laser-guided 500-pound bombs, two captive-carry Maverick guided missiles, a pod of marking rockets, and only 400 30 mm cannon rounds. The F-35s carried a single 500-pound laser-guided bomb and 181 25 mm rounds, the most each plane could carry. For the last 20 minutes of each one-hour target-range session, altitude was restricted to 10,000 feet, an alleged evaluation of each plane’s ability to operate beneath low cloud cover.</div>
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The first day’s attack scenarios called for “permissive” anti-aircraft defenses consisting of simulated shoulder-fired missiles and light anti-aircraft guns. A permissive environment is one in which there are few or no threats capable of shooting down an aircraft. Despite the “permissive” description, these are the anti-aircraft weapons that close air support planes will typically encounter while supporting our troops in battle against near-peer maneuvering enemy forces. However, the simulated defenses at Yuma had no precision instrumentation to track aircraft flight paths, gun aiming, or missile launch and homing. As a result, no quantitative data regarding the actual performance of the A-10 and F-35 will have been gathered. Rather than having charts of performance data, the evaluators will simply be able to report any results they want, without any way to verify the reports.</div>
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A close look at the first day’s test scenarios reveals numerous ways in which they were designed to favor the F-35 over the A-10, including the following:</div>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Both aircraft are given an equal one hour to attack targets, when in fact the A-10 has more than twice the F-35’s endurance over the battlefield, a key capability when friendly troops urgently need support in battles that last many hours, or even days.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Both aircraft are assigned an equal number of attack sorties—even though the A-10 has demonstrated in combat an ability to generate sorties at a rate three times greater than the maintenance-intensive F-35 has been able to demonstrate under far less demanding peacetime conditions.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Testing both planes’ critical ability to support troops under low cloud cover by imposing a 10,000-foot ceiling is irresponsibly unrealistic and clearly intended to mask the unmaneuverable and thin-skinned F-35’s inability to operate under the far lower 1,000-foot ceilings so common in Europe, Southeast Asia, Korea, Africa, and South America. The armored A-10 was specifically designed to be able to maneuver and survive the kind of ground fire expected during <a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dtic.mil%2Fdtic%2Ftr%2Ffulltext%2Fu2%2Fa530838.pdf&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537561120360&sdata=%2BoZrq1%2FmYWnV4eIMl9CxqtMUvzdEf16dZnRALKClYLo%3D&reserved=0">attacks under 1,000-foot ceilings</a>. A-10s have demonstrated this on numerous occasions in Afghanistan, even in dangerous mountainous terrain.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">The weapons load assigned to the F-35—a single 500-pound guided bomb instead of the (still inadequate) two it can carry—unrealistically lightens the F-35 in an attempt to give it a maneuverability advantage during these tests. At the same time, the 30 mm cannon, which is the A-10’s most effective weapon and the one most demanded by troops in close contact with the enemy, has been arbitrarily limited to 400 rounds instead of the 1,174 it actually carries in combat. Equally artificially, the testers loaded the A-10 with two unguided 500-pound bombs, weapons it never carries in combat because they are too inaccurate and too dangerous to friendly troops. In Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, the A-10 always carries a full complement of guided bombs instead of unguided ones.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">The absence of specialized testing equipment to determine the accuracy of anti-aircraft gun-aiming against the evasive maneuvering flight path of the attacking plane makes it impossible to gain useful insights about relative hits on the F-35 versus the A-10—and invites the use of highly biased, speculative figures to favor a predetermined outcome. Similarly, for the shoulder-fired small surface-to-air missiles, there was not instrumentation of the precise missile launch or guidance control, no precise tracking of the attacking aircraft’s trajectory, and no validated shoulder-fired missile simulation to determine the relative success of the A-10 and F-35 in defeating or surviving shoulder-fired missiles.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Using only uncamouflaged targets—usually painted dark military green and placed in flat, open, light-colored desert terrain and thus easily seen from 15,000 feet above—completely contradicts the stark realities of actual combat, in which the enemy always has a life-and-death motivation to do whatever it takes to remain unseen as long as possible. Anyone with access to Google Earth can quickly find dozens of these targets in satellite imagery.</li>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E6q5IjgUcRo/W0oC-lYP_pI/AAAAAAAABic/S7hw0127OwUlqlODsW2YYv3VpyKh37vgwCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/Targets.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="313" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E6q5IjgUcRo/W0oC-lYP_pI/AAAAAAAABic/S7hw0127OwUlqlODsW2YYv3VpyKh37vgwCK4BGAYYCw/s640/Targets.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i>China Lake Test Range. (Photo: Google Maps)</i></div>
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By testing only against highly visible targets, the test completely masks the much more restricted view out of the F-35 cockpit as compared to the A-10—along with masking the surprisingly poor video and infrared image resolution of the <a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pogo.org%2Fstraus%2Fissues%2Fweapons%2F2017%2Fdefense-contractors-holding-the-pentagon-hostage-with-service-contracts.html&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537561120360&sdata=Gsa9oiNWV%2BT%2BiTJ9rp8Qb3XK%2FkiFdIsssHeRSnhsZy8%3D&reserved=0">F-35 helmet’s display</a> compared to the high definition of the A-10’s instrument panel display when it’s coupled to the plane’s sniper and lightening pods. On a broader level, testing only against easy-to-see, static, non-reactive targets artificially confirms the Air Force’s delusional notion that future close air support can be successfully conducted by planes flying at 15,000 feet and 450 knots relying on supposedly accurate, digitally transmitted target coordinates.</div>
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Interestingly, the Congressionally approved full operational fly-off test plan, as designed in detail by the previous testing director and the service testing agencies, avoids every one of these F-35–slanted, highly unrealistic, test-scenario biases.</div>
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<b>Days Two, Three, and Four at China Lake</b></div>
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The day two schedule—July 9 at China Lake—calls for four F-35Bs to conduct a mission covering two Ospreys extracting a pilot downed in enemy territory for one hour, then four A-10s covering a similar extraction. A similar set of missions under night conditions is scheduled for the late evening of day three.</div>
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On the afternoon of day three, A-10 and F-35 pairs are to spend an hour and a quarter on the China Lake target range attacking static, visible targets similar to the Yuma targets—but these are even less realistic, as they are just simulated attacks, with no weapons released. The stated reason for moving to China Lake, despite the restrictions on actually firing weapons, is to test the A-10 and F-35 against the range’s “elevated” anti-aircraft defenses, which include simulated medium-range surface-to-air missiles, as well as shoulder-fired short-range missiles and light anti-aircraft guns.</div>
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On the afternoon of the final day, a pair of A-10s and a pair of F-35s will undergo tests to gauge their ability as airborne forward air controllers, directing the strikes of at least three sections of F-18Cs, which will simulate the bombing of more uncamouflaged targets, against the same medium- and short-range air defenses. In the late evening, a pair of F-35s and a pair of A-10s will conduct night close air support against the same targets and defenses.</div>
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These tests at China Lake show many of the same efforts to skew the events in the F-35’s favor as those at Yuma, but heavily amplified by the addition of the medium air defenses, for three main reasons:</div>
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1. Without instrumented test aircraft, the aircraft radar tracking at China Lake does not yield aircraft trajectories precise enough to accurately simulate a medium-range missile’s success or failure against the evasive maneuvers and countermeasures of an attacking A-10 or F-35. As in the first day of tests, this invites speculation supporting the favored outcome.</div>
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2. The medium-range missile defenses in this test do not incorporate the currently deployed Russian and Chinese stealth-defeating long-wavelength search radars now being used to cue their shorter-wavelength medium-missile radars. That means the F-35’s stealth will be much more effective against China Lake’s simulated medium missiles than against real-world missiles, thus severely skewing the test’s survival assessments in favor of the F-35 over the A-10.</div>
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3. The relevance of medium-range missile defenses to close-support scenarios is at best questionable, as previously discussed. Their significant logistical requirements and lengthy setup times make them an impediment to maneuvering units heavily engaged in combat and trying to move quickly. Medium-range missiles are far more suitable for protecting rear-area interdiction targets or the static targets seen in trench warfare. Attacking either of these target systems with close-support planes would be a waste of lives and resources.</div>
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The Way Close Support Really Works</div>
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The true challenge in performing close air support and battlefield air interdiction missions starts with locating targets. In real combat, these targets will be crewed by real people with a powerful wish to survive the war. They will be unlikely to simply park their vehicles or themselves in the open desert calmly waiting to be hit by bombs. Instead, they will work hard to either camouflage their positions, dig in, or hide their vehicles beneath trees, barns, or other cover to make it much more difficult for aircraft to find, identify, and track them. Even when troops on the ground locate targets for the close air support planes, the rules of engagement almost always require pilots to get “eyes-on” before they can drop a weapon, to avoid civilian casualties and the disastrous effects on morale of friendly fire.</div>
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Nor is just locating, transmitting, and verifying a valid set of coordinates the end of the close-support problem. Targets react, move, hide, and fire back their own urgent threats, all in a matter of seconds. Pilots must be in close enough contact with the troops they’re supporting to cancel or switch targets in the middle of a firing pass.</div>
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Rather than telling us whether or not the F-35 can actually provide the kind of close support our ground forces need to survive and prevail, this grossly inadequate test has been designed to mislead.</div>
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This brings up the most significant failing in these tests: The designers essentially created a laboratory demonstration to show how aircraft can hit non-moving targets in a sterile environment. This hardly represents the conditions when soldiers and Marines are locked in close combat with an enemy just yards away. In the worst-case, most urgent close-support scenario—the one in which these aircraft need to be tested—a small group of American soldiers are about to be overrun by a numerically superior enemy force with reinforcements too far away to help. Their only hope of survival is for an aircraft to appear overhead, raining deadly fire on the enemy soldiers, forcing them to take cover or retreat. Not one event during these four days of tests comes close to addressing or simulating this.</div>
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Equally important, that lifesaving support needs to show up, rain or shine. The fighting on the ground doesn’t stop because of a little rain. On the contrary, our enemies, in wars past and present, often choose to attack in bad weather just to offset American airpower advantages. There is no reason to believe they will not do so in future wars. Because of our desert wars, we’ve forgotten that low-hanging clouds and poor visibility are the conditions at least one day out of three in most parts of the globe that aren’t deserts, where we might have to face far bigger fights than we face today. It is a travesty to pretend that a simulated cloud layer at 10,000 feet in clear desert air in any way tests what our troops need from bad-weather support.</div>
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Air Force leaders are fond of saying the F-35’s stealth characteristics will allow it to perform close air support in situations with heavy air defenses in a way the A-10 cannot. They like to paint a picture of a close-support aircraft having to drop a bomb on a target surrounded by enemy surface-to-air missiles but strangely devoid of friendly soldiers. Such a scenario is manifestly not close air support—simply because close means close to our troops. Unlike the way this quickie test is being staged, close air support, particularly in the kind of high-intensity combat against the peer enemy Air Force leaders are so fond of describing, always involves significant friendly ground forces engaged in a combined-arms campaign. These tests won’t help determine whether or not the F-35 can hit moving targets that are actively trying to evade attack while also being accurate enough to avoid hitting friendly ground forces.</div>
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The very nature of combined-arms warfare means all arms mutually support one another so that the strength of one weapon makes up for the weakness of another. For example, an Army brigade combat team urgently needing close support will be employing artillery, mortars, rockets, and electronic countermeasure to suppress enemy air defenses in order to protect the aircraft providing them support. Additionally, if ground forces are doing their job correctly, they’ll be disrupting the enemy’s air-defense forces so much that their missile crews will be concentrating on evading attack rather than firing at our airplanes. It is difficult to aim any weapon properly when being shot at by a tank’s main gun. These ground-brigade measures to suppress air defenses, in turn, greatly increase the effectiveness of the close support that the brigade combat team needs.</div>
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Conclusion</div>
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Rather than telling us whether or not the F-35 can actually provide the kind of close support our ground forces need to survive and prevail, this grossly inadequate test has been designed to mislead. Air Force leaders, in lockstep with senior civilian appointees, will undoubtedly march up to Capitol Hill with results in hand, saying that they conducted the tests with great care and the F-35 performed brilliantly, thus justifying bigger buys and getting rid of the A-10 sooner.</div>
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Our troops deserve better than a surreptitious test rigged in favor of a weapon that can’t do the job and against the one that can.</div>
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By: <a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pogo.org%2Fabout%2Fboard-staff%2Fstaff-profiles%2Fdan-grazier.html&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc950314b0eb24a9cf6ea08d5e6a963fa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636668537561120360&sdata=cAO9ColQrQNe9WMQCCFYCCxr7EgYbsithWmsvwYzWEA%3D&reserved=0">Dan Grazier</a>, Jack Shanahan Military Fellow</div>
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Dan Grazier served as a Lieutenant and Captain in the Marine Corps. He commanded a tank platoon in Iraq (2007) and was a staff officer with Regimental Combat Team 7 in Afghanistan (2013). In civilian life now, he is now the Jack Shanahan Military Fellow at the Project On Government Oversight.</div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-31327753005225341342018-05-15T08:37:00.002-04:002018-05-15T09:01:07.623-04:00The Latest Act in Israel’s Iran Nuclear Disinformation <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b style="font-size: 13px;"><i>Benjamin Netanyahu’s stage performance about Iran seeking a nuclear weapon not only was based on old material, but evidence shows it was fabricated too, says Gareth Porter in this Consortium News exclusive report.</i></b></div>
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By Gareth Porter Special to Consortium News, May 3, 2018 </div>
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<a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2018/05/03/the-latest-act-in-the-israels-iran-nuclear-disinformation-campaign/">https://consortiumnews.com/2018/05/03/the-latest-act-in-the-israels-iran-nuclear-disinformation-campaign/</a></div>
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<i>[Reposted with permission by the author]</i></div>
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim in his theatrical <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/04/30/israeli_pm_netanyahu_reveals_proof_of_secret_iranian_nuclear_program.html">20-minute presentation</a> of an Israeli physical seizure of Iran’s “atomic archive” in Tehran would certainly have been the “great intelligence achievement” he boasted if it had actually happened. But the claim does not hold up under careful scrutiny, and his assertion that Israel now possesses a vast documentary record of a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program is certainly fraudulent.<br />
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Netanyahu’s tale of an Israeli intelligence raid right in Tehran that carted off 55,000 paper files and another 55,000 CDs from a “highly secret location” requires that we accept a proposition that is absurd on its face: that Iranian policymakers decided to store their most sensitive military secrets in a small tin-roofed hut with nothing to protect it from heat (thus almost certainly ensuring loss of data on CDs within a few years) and no sign of any security, based on the satellite image shown in the slide show. (As Steve Simon <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/opinion/benjamin-netanyahu-nuclear-nothingburger.html">observed</a> in The New York Times the door did not even appear to have a lock on it.)</div>
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The laughable explanation <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/01/israeli-spies-stole-half-tonne-secret-nuclear-documents-iran/">suggested by Israeli officials</a> to The Daily Telegraph– that the Iranian government was afraid the files might be found by international inspectors if they remained at “major bases” — merely reveals the utter contempt that Netanyahu has for Western governments and news media. Even if Iran were pursuing nuclear weapons secretly, their files on the subject would be kept at the Ministry of Defense, not at military bases. And of course the alleged but wholly implausible move to an implausible new location came just as Netanyahu needed a dramatic new story to galvanize Trump to resist the European allies’ strong insistence on preserving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Act (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3453072975598104338" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>In fact, there is no massive treasure trove of secret files about an Iran “Manhattan Project.” The shelves of black binders and CDs that Netanyahu revealed with such a dramatic flourish date back to 2003 (after which a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) said Iran had abandoned any nuclear weapons program) and became nothing more than stage props like the cartoon bomb that Netanyahu used at the United Nations in 2012.</div>
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<b>Disinformation Campaign</b></div>
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Netanyahu’s claim about how Israel acquired this “atomic archive” is only the latest manifestation of a long-term</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3453072975598104338" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/edited-netanyahus-cartoon-bomb.jpg" style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" class=" wp-image-27516" height="112" sizes="(max-width: 473px) 100vw, 473px" src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/edited-netanyahus-cartoon-bomb-300x168.jpg" srcset="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/edited-netanyahus-cartoon-bomb-300x168.jpg 300w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/edited-netanyahus-cartoon-bomb-768x431.jpg 768w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/edited-netanyahus-cartoon-bomb-160x90.jpg 160w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/edited-netanyahus-cartoon-bomb.jpg 1024w" width="200" /></a></div>
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<i>Netanyahu’s cartoon bomb.</i></div>
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disinformation campaign that the Israeli government began to work on in 2002-03. The documents to which Netanyahu referred in the presentation were introduced to the news media and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) beginning in 2005 as coming originally from a secret Iranian nuclear weapons research program. For many years U.S. news media have accepted those documents as authentic. But despite the solid media united front behind that narrative, we now know with certainty that those earlier documents were fabrications and that they were created by Israel’s Mossad.</div>
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That evidence of fraud begins with the alleged origins of the entire collection of documents. Senior intelligence officials in the George W. Bush administration had told reporters that the documents came from “a stolen Iranian laptop computer”, as The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/world/middleeast/relying-on-computer-us-seeks-to-prove-irans-nuclear-aims.html">reported</a> in November 2005. The Times quoted unnamed intelligence officials as insisting that the documents had not come from an Iranian resistance group, which would cast serious doubt on their reliability.</div>
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But it turned that the assurances from those intelligence officials were part of an official dissimulation. The first reliable account of the documents’ path to the United States came only in 2013, when former senior German foreign office official Karsten Voigt, who retired from his long-time position as coordinator of German-North American cooperation, spoke with this writer on the record.</div>
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Voigt recalled how senior officials of the German foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachtendeinst or BND, had explained to him in November 2004 that they were familiar with the documents on the alleged Iran nuclear weapons program, because a sometime source—but not an actual intelligence agent—had provided them earlier that year. Furthermore, the BND officials explained that they had viewed the source as “doubtful,” he recalled, because the source had belonged to the Mujahideen-E Khalq, the armed Iranian opposition group that had fought Iran on behalf of Iraq during the eight year war.</div>
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BND officials were concerned that the Bush administration had begun citing those documents as evidence against Iran, because of their experience with “Curveball” – the Iraqi engineer in Germany who had told stories of Iraqi mobile bioweapons labs that had turned to be false. As a result of that meeting with BND officials, Voigt had given an <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB110095892760179939">interview</a> to The Wall Street Journalin which he had contradicted the assurance of the unnamed U.S. intelligence officials to the Times and warned that the Bush administration should not base its policy on the documents it was beginning to cite as evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, because they had indeed come from “an Iranian dissident group.”</div>
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<b>Using the MEK</b></div>
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The Bush administration’s desire to steer press coverage of the supposedly internal Iranian documents away from the MEK is understandable: the truth about the MEK role would immediately lead to Israel, because it was well known, that Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad had used the MEK to make public information that the Israelis did not want attributed to itself – including the precise location of Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility. As Israeli journalists Yossi Melman and Meir Javadanfar observed in their <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A4JNJGE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">2007 book</a> on the Iran nuclear program, based on U.S., British and Israeli officials, “Information is ‘filtered’ to the IAEA via Iranian opposition groups, especially the National Resistance Council of Iran.”</div>
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Mossad used the MEK repeatedly in the 1990s and the early 2000’s to get the IAEA to inspect any site the Israelis suspected might possibly be nuclear-related, earning their Iranian clients a very poor reputation at the IAEA. No one familiar with the record of the MEK could have believed that it was capable of creating the detailed documents that were passed to the German government. That required an organization with the expertise in nuclear weapons and experience in fabricating documents – both of which Israel’s Mossad had in abundance.</div>
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<i>El Baradei: Didn’t buy it.</i></div>
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Bush administration officials had highlighted a set of 18 schematic drawings of the Shahab-3 missile’s reentry vehicle or nosecone of the missile in each of which there was a round shape representing a nuclear weapon. Those drawings were described to foreign governments and the International Atomic Energy Agency as 18 different attempts to integrate a nuclear weapon into the Shahab-3.</div>
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Netanyahu gave the public its first glimpse of one of those drawings Monday when he pointed to it triumphantly as visually striking evidence of Iranian nuclear perfidy. But that schematic drawing had a fundamental flaw that proved that it and others in the set could not have been genuine: it showed the “dunce cap” shaped reentry vehicle design of the original Shahab-3 missile that had been tested from 1998 to 2000. That was the shape that intelligence analysts outside Iran had assumed in 2002 and 2003 Iran would continue to use in its ballistic missile.</div>
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<b>New Nose Cone</b></div>
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It is now well established, however, that Iran had begun redesigning the Shahab-3 missile with a conical reentry vehicle or nosecone as early as 2000 and replaced it with a completely different design that had a “triconic” or “baby bottle” shape. It made it a missile with very different flight capabilities and was ultimately called the Ghadr-1. Michael Elleman, the world’s leading expert on Iranian ballistic missiles, documented the redesign of the missile in his <a href="https://www.iiss.org/en/publications/strategic%20dossiers/issues/iran--39-s-ballistic-missile-capabilities--a-net-assessment-885a">path-breaking 2010 study</a> of Iran’s missile program.</div>
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Iran kept its newly-designed missile with the baby bottle reentry vehicle secret from the outside world until its first test in mid-2004. Elleman concluded that Iran was deliberately misleading the rest of the world – and especially the Israelis, who represented the most immediate threat of attack on Iran – to believe that the old model was the missile of the future while already shifting its planning to the new design, which would bring all of Israel within reach for the first time.</div>
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The authors of the drawings that Netanyahu displayed on the screen were thus in the dark about the change in the Iranian design. The earliest date of a document on the redesign of the reentry vehicle in the collection obtained by U.S. intelligence was August 28, 2002 – about two years after the actual redesign had begun. That major error indicates unmistakably that the schematic drawings showing a nuclear weapon in a Shahab-3 reentry vehicle – what Netanyahu called “integrated warhead design” were fabrications.</div>
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Netanyahu’s slide show highlighted a series of alleged revelations that he said came from the newly acquired “atomic archive” concerning the so-called “Amad Plan” and the continuation of the activities of the Iranian who was said to have led that covert nuclear weapons project. But the single pages of Farsi language documents he flashed on the screen were also clearly from the same cache of documents that we now know came from the MEK-Israeli combination. Those documents were never authenticated, and IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, who was skeptical of their authenticity, had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/world/middleeast/relying-on-computer-us-seeks-to-prove-irans-nuclear-aims.html">insisted </a>that without such authentication, he could not accuse Iran of having a nuclear weapons program.</div>
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<b>More Fraud</b></div>
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<a href="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/shahab3-1.jpg"><img alt="" class=" wp-image-27518" height="223" sizes="(max-width: 473px) 100vw, 473px" src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/shahab3-1-300x210.jpg" srcset="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/shahab3-1-300x210.jpg 300w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/shahab3-1-768x539.jpg 768w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/shahab3-1-160x112.jpg 160w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/shahab3-1.jpg 1024w" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Shahab 3: Secretly got a new nose cone.(Atta Kennare,Getty)</i></div>
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There are other indications of fraud in that collection of documents as well. A second element of the supposed covert arms program given the name “Amad Plan” was a “process flow chart” of a bench-scale system for converting uranium ore for enrichment. It had the code name “Project 5.13”, according to a <a href="http://www.isisnucleariran.org/assets/pdf/IAEA_Briefing_Weaponization.pdf">briefing</a> by the IAEA Deputy Director Olli Heinonen, and was part of a larger so-called “Project 5”, according to an official IAEA report. Another sub-project under that rubric was “Project 5.15”, which involved ore processing at the Gchine Mine.” Both sub-projects were said to be carried out by a consulting firm named Kimia Maadan.</div>
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But documents that Iran <a href="https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/gov2008-4.pdf">later provided</a> to the IAEA proved that, in fact, “Project 5.15” did exist, but was a civilian project of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, not part of a covert nuclear weapons program, and that the decision had been made in August 1999 – two years before the beginning of the alleged “Amad Plan” was said to have begun.</div>
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The role of Kimia Maadan in both sub-projects explains why an ore processing project would be included in the supposed secret nuclear weapons program. One of the very few documents included in the cache that could actually be verified as authentic was a letter from Kimia Maadan on another subject, which suggests that the authors of the documents were building the collection around a few documents that could be authenticated.</div>
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Netanyahu also lingered over Iran’s denial that it had done any work on “MPI” or (“Multi-Point Initiation”) technology “in hemispheric geometry”. He asserted that “the files” showed Iran had done “extensive work” or “MPI” experiments. He did not elaborate on the point. But Israel did not discover the alleged evidence of such experiments in a tin-roofed shack in Tehran. The issue of whether Iran had done such experiments was a central issue in the IAEA’s inquiry after 2008. The agency described it in a <a href="https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/gov2008-38.pdf">September 2008 report</a>, which purported to be about Iran’s “experimentation in connection with symmetrical initiation of a hemispherical high explosive charge suitable for an implosion type nuclear device.”</div>
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<b>No Official Seals</b></div>
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The IAEA refused to reveal which member country had provided the document to the IAEA. But former Director-General ElBaradei revealed in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004H1TQ6M/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">his memoirs</a> that Israel had passed a series of documents to the Agency in order to establish the case that Iran had continued its nuclear weapons experiments until “at least 2007.” ElBaradei was referring to convenient timing of the report’s appearance within a few months of the U.S. NIE of November 2007 concluding that Iran had ended its nuclear weapons-related research in 2003. And the “MPI” document fulfilled precisely that political function.</div>
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Netanyahu pointed to a series of documents on the screen as well a number of drawings, photographs and technical figures, and even a grainy old black and white film, as evidence of Iran’s nuclear weapons work. But absolutely nothing about them provides an evidentiary link to the Iranian government. As Tariq Rauf, who was head of the IAEA’s Verification and Security Policy Coordination Office from 2002 to 2012, noted in an e-mail, none of the pages of text on the screen show official seals or marks that would identify them as actual Iranian government documents. The purported Iranian documents given to the IAEA in 2005 similarly lacked such official markings, as an IAEA official conceded to me in 2008.</div>
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Netanyahu’s slide show revealed more than just his over-the-top style of persuasion on the subject of Iran. It provided further evidence that the claims that had successfully swayed the U.S. and Israeli allies to join in punishing Iran for having had a nuclear weapons program were based on fabricated documents that originated in the state that had the strongest motive to make that case – Israel.</div>
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<i>Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and historian on U.S. national security policy and the recipient of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. His most recent book is Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, published in 2014.</i></div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-21994403745856038812018-04-12T11:25:00.000-04:002018-04-12T11:25:46.535-04:00How Can We Know If a Chemical Weapons Attack Took Place in Syria?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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by PATRICK COCKBURN, Counterpunch, 12 April 2018</div>
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<a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/12/how-can-we-know-if-a-chemical-weapons-attack-took-place-in-syria/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/12/how-can-we-know-if-a-chemical-weapons-attack-took-place-in-syria/</a></div>
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<i>[Re-posted with permission of Editor and Author]</i></div>
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Every atrocity in the Syrian civil war provokes a furious row about whether it happened and, if so, who was responsible for carrying it out. The merciless brutality of all sides combines with partisan reporting and lack of access for independent investigators to make it possible for doubts to be generated about even the most blatant war crime. One good rule is that participants in the war are often accurate about the crimes of their opponents while they invariably lie or are silent about their own.</div>
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This rule appears to hold good in the case of the poison gas attack on the city of Douma on 7 April, which killed at least 34 people and possibly twice as many. The Russian military claim that the attack was faked by pro-opposition activists and that samples taken from the site of where the civilians died were not toxic. The Syrian government issues blanket denials when accused of using poison gas.</div>
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But there is mounting evidence from neutral observers to confirm that chlorine was used last Saturday. The World Health Organisation says that local health authorities in Douma, with whom it is cooperating, confirm that on the day of the alleged bombing they treated 500 patients with the symptoms of exposure to toxic chemicals. It reports that “there were signs of severe irritation of mucous membranes, respiratory failure and disruption to the central nervous systems of those exposed”.</div>
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Other evidence for the gassing of civilians is cumulatively convincing: large gas cylinders, like those used in past chlorine gas attacks, were filmed on the roof of the building where most bodies were found. Local people report that Syrian government helicopters were seen in the area at the time of the attack. Such helicopters have been used in chlorine gas bombings in the past.</div>
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The Russian and Syrian government accounts of what happened, varying between saying there were no attacks or that evidence for them has been fabricated, are contradictory. A Russian spokeswoman said on Wednesday that the use of “smart missiles” on Syrian government forces could be an attempt to destroy the evidence.</div>
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The allegations of fabrication are generalised and non-specific and amount to a conspiracy theory for which no evidence is ever produced, other than to throw doubt on the partiality of those who say that chlorine was used. It is true that many of the sources cited by the Western media as if they were bipartisan eye-witness accounts are committed supporters of the opposition. But the Russian and Syrian governments have never produced any counter-evidence to give credence to the elaborate plot that would be necessary to fake the use of poison gas or to really use it, but put the blame on Syrian government air power.</div>
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The most convincing reason advanced by those who argue that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces did not carry out the attack is that it was entirely against their interests to do so. They have already won militarily in Douma and the second of two convoys carrying thousands of Army of Islam fighters and their families left for Turkish-controlled northern Syria today. And this latest success brings Assad with sight – though it is still a distant one – of a complete victory over his enemies.</div>
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For all the furore about the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/trump-russia-syria-us-missile-attack-putin-ready-latest-updates-a8299366.html">proposed missile strike on Syrian forces</a>– likely to happen in the very near future – it is difficult to see what it will achieve other than as a general sign of international disapproval of the use of chemical weapons. Hawks in the US and Europe may want to use the occasion to reopen the door to armed intervention in the Syrian civil war with the aim of weakening or displacing Assad, but the time for this is long past, if it was ever there.</div>
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There is a widely held myth that US air strikes against government forces in 2013, which President Barack Obama is blamed for not having carried out, would have brought the war to a different and happier conclusion. But such air strikes would only have been effective if they had been conducted on a mass scale and on a daily basis in support of ground troops. These would either have been Sunni Arab armed opposition forces, which were already dominated by al-Qaeda-type movements, or the US army in a rerun of the Iraq War of 2003.</div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3453072975598104338.post-40078276727631078212018-01-20T09:55:00.000-05:002018-01-20T09:24:14.759-05:00Boss Tweet’s Generals Already Run the Show<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/marshall-auerback-franklin-c-spinney/" style="font-size: 13px;">Marshall Auerback – Franklin C. Spinney</a></div>
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<i>Earlier versions of this essay appear in <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/19/boss-tweets-generals-already-run-the-show/" target="_blank">Counterpunch</a> and <a href="http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2018/january/19/boss-tweet-s-generals-already-run-the-show/" target="_blank">Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity</a></i></div>
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Photo by Jim Mattis | <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">CC by 2.0</a></div>
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Much has been written about our Twitterer-in-Chief and the tortured response to his presidency, particularly within the GOP. As a recent example, Frank Bruni of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/opinion/trump-lindsey-graham-shithole.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion&_r=0)">New York Times</a> lamented the fate of Senator Lindsey Graham, who has now become one of Donald Trump’s biggest defenders on mainstream shows such as “Meet the Press”. Bruni, however, reminds us that during the presidential campaign of 2016, Graham described then candidate Trump as the “world’s biggest jackass”, even as he now praises POTUS, thereby personifying “his party’s spastic, incoherent, humiliating response to Trump across time and its fatally misguided surrender.”</div>
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Appearances to the contrary, Bruni actually has got it “bass ackwards”. In reality, Trump is well into the process of surrendering his presidency to the GOP establishment and what one of us has termed the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex” (<a href="http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/search?q=MICC">MICC</a> ). It’s worth recalling that Senator Graham, along with his erstwhile colleague, John McCain, have consistently acted as leading supplicants for the Department of Defense, as well as staunch Cold Warriors who long opposed Trump’s attempts to shift US foreign policy in a more Russo-friendly direction. They (like Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign) also reacted with horror to the views expressed by Trump during the campaign when he questioned NATO’s eastward thrust, the power transformation in the western Pacific, Syria, Iraq, the Middle East altogether.</div>
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But for all of the talk of “Russia-gate” and collusion with Putin, Trump has in fact quietly been shifting US foreign policy in a direction which if anything is becoming decidedly more hawkish and militarized than has occurred under any American presidency since the early days of the Reagan Administration. Just last December, Trump Administration officials confirmed that the State Department approved a commercial license authorizing the export of Model M107A1 Sniper Systems, ammunition, and associated parts and accessories to Ukraine. These weapons were requested as early as 2014, but were long rejected by President Obama, who saw the sale as a needless risk elevation in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. (Ironically, Trump also initially resisted the inclusion in the GOP Platform of selling said weapons to the Ukraine, and this was subsequently cited by many as further “proof” of Boss Tweet’s collusion with Russia.)</div>
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More recently, the President directed the Department of Defense to conduct a new “Nuclear Posture Review January 2018” (NPR). The mission statement of the draft review, recently leaked to the <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-nuclear-posture-review-2018_us_5a4d4773e4b06d1621bce4c5">Huffington Post</a>, is:</div>
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<i>[T]o ensure a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent that safeguards the homeland, assures allies, and deters adversaries. This review comes at a critical moment in our nation’s history, for America confronts an international security situation that is more complex and demanding than any since the end of the Cold War. In this environment, it is not possible to delay modernization of our nuclear forces and remain faithful sentinel s of our nation’ s security and freedom for the next generation as well as our own.</i></div>
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The NPR draft, then, opens the door wider for using “precision” limited nuclear options in response to conventional and cyber threats. In effect, this NPR, if signed into policy by Trump, locks in Obama’s massive nuclear modernization program, as well as expanding it significantly by putting small “precision-guided” nuclear warheads on SLBMs, among other things.</div>
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If Boss Tweet signs the NPR, he also will be approving and entrenching the political engineering of new SLBMs and ICBMs, the new Bomber, a new missile launching nuclear submarine, a new nuclear cruise missile, a whole panoply of new nuke-hardened space-based C3ISR systems, a new family of nuclear warheads, the addition of precision guidance to the B-61 “dial-a-yield” bomb, a massive modernization of the nuclear lab infrastructure, and much more.</div>
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So much for being Putin’s poodle! The implementation will certainly formalize the restart of the Cold War by adopting the precision nuclear strike mentality envisioned in the January 1988 report entitled <a href="http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/CSI/docs/Gorman/06_Retired/01_Retired_1985_90/26_88_IntegratedLongTermStrategy_Commission/01_88_DiscriminateDeterrence_Jan.pdf">Discriminant Deterrence</a>, just as the Cold War was ending. This report was published by the Commission on Integrated Long Term Strategy, co-chaired by the noted Cold Warriors Fred Iklé and Albert Wohlstetter, and whose members have included, inter alia, the likes of Henry Kissinger (now apparently advising Jared Kushner after advising HRC during the 2016 campaign), Samuel Huntington, and the recently deceased Zbigniew Brezinski.</div>
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Once the <a href="http://pogoarchives.org/labyrinth/01/09.pdf">political engineers</a> are done spreading the nuke contract dollars to most, if not all, congressional districts, the whole program, currently estimated to be in <a href="https://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2017/02/sleepwalking-into-nuclear-arms-race.html" target="_blank">excess of $1 Trillion</a>, will be locked in for up to 50 years. Any attempt to reverse this will be met by the usual tricks of the Pentagon: selective leaks to sympathetic journalists at the NYT & WaPo, along with threats to cut back at domestic bases, as well as the contracts themselves, which will be important sources of employment and political patronage in local Congressional districts. If this was indeed Mr. Putin’s gambit in 2016, then he has seriously miscalculated.</div>
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About the only possible silver lining in the restart of the Cold War is that the MICC no longer needs to use the cover of the global war on terror to prop up its long term budgets. [see <a href="https://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/domestic-roots-of-perpetual-war.html" target="_blank">Domestic Roots Perpetual War</a>] The endless cycle of military budget one-upmanship which characterized most of the Cold War will reassert itself because both Moscow and Beijing are bound to respond, regardless of what Boss Tweet says his intentions are.</div>
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These are but a few examples of Trump’s policy reversals, along with the absurd notion that he would “drain the swamp”, introduce a “fantastic tax reform” that would largely benefit the middle class, give us a great healthcare system, and finally, develop a foreign policy that would allow the US to enjoy a closer and more collaborative relationship with Russia. Many of the very same people who once fretted about Trump and nuclear codes now applauding as he signs off on missiles and bombs and an escalation of the conflict in the Ukraine.</div>
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So to come back to Frank Bruni’s point: There is method to the apparent mad about-face by Graham and others in the GOP. As for the so-called #TheResistance, most are still so obsessed with the Mueller investigation that they have failed to see that a soft coup has already taken place under their collective noses (indeed, with their recent approval of the FISA courts, it appears that the Democrats’ cries of alarm about the fate of our Republic are but crocodile tears). Why impeach Boss Tweet when he is so good to the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex (MICC) and the economic Oligarchs, while providing distracting entertainment to the masses and the press? If it takes a new Cold War and a further subversion of our democracy to kneecap Donald Trump, well, one is all for it.</div>
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In short, Boss Tweet* has become the DC Swamp’s useful idiot and he will do as he is told with the help of Republicans in Congress, like Lindsey Graham (as well as many complicit Democrats – who have been sucked into the vortex of the renewed Cold War, in part by virtue of their opportunistic embrace of “Russiagate” – not to mention the corrupted intelligence community). Trump can eat all of the Big Macs he wants, release his inner Klansman to his heart’s content, amuse himself by watching “Fox & Friends”, and enrich his family, so long as he plays ball with “his generals”, the Koch Brothers, Wall Street, Big Pharma and the rest of the One Percenters. So long as James Mattis gets to feed the big bucks to the MICC unhindered, or Charlie Koch gets a free ride by the Environmental Protection Agency, life will remain good at the White House for the First Family. There will be no impeachment or invocation of Article 25, because the president has been neutered.</div>
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No doubt, the press will continue to express abhorrence with every new obscenity or controversial tweet, lament the decline of our political parties, and the Mueller investigation will continue to act as a major distraction. Meanwhile, the constitutional safeguards that have long been the bedroom of the republic will continue to be eviscerated. Welcome to Versailles on the Potomac!</div>
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* "Boss Tweet" is a term of art ingeniously coined by Paul Street in this article: <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/05/an-idiot-surrounded-by-clowns-why-trump-still-sits-in-the-white-house/">“An Idiot Surrounded by Clowns”: Why Trump (Still) Sits in the White House</a></div>
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Chuck Spinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08143661712034019820noreply@blogger.com