I’ll Take Things It Shouldn’t Take 30 Years To Do, Alex

Waaaaay back in 1990 a law was passed that required the Dept. of Defense to get its books in order so we can do a full financial audit, and yet even though their deadline isn’t until 2017 it seems they won’t be making that deadline. That would be 27 years to do a financial audit of the Pentagon.

And they can’t do it.

Whew. Okie dokie, well thank goodness we have a bipartisan group of Senators who have a little problem with that :

“Based on the findings of today’s FIAR Plan, it appears unlikely that the Department of Defense will be able to meet that 2017 requirement,” they said in the statement, obtained by POLITICO.

“Today’s report by the DOD’s comptroller shows that while a few small agencies within the department have reached the required financial audit level, the vast majority of the department had not,” the statement said.

“Further, while the report shows that DOD has a fairly complete road-map of how the Army, Navy, Air Force and other defense agencies will each reach the auditability requirement by 2017, implementation of these goals faces major challenges.”

Past GAO reports have found a high risk for waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement at the Pentagon. The senators want their new GAO report in time for a hearing on the subject in July.

Okay I get that the Pentagon is huge and might need a little more time to get itself audit-ready than, say, your typical ice cream stand. But 27 years? Areyoukiddingme?

But don’t worry!

In the progress report submitted Monday, Defense Department comptroller Robert F. Hale said audit readiness has been a goal for many years but has been difficult to achieve because of the department’s size and complexity.

Hale said American taxpayers should understand that “although the department does not yet meet commercial audit standards, their tax dollars are being managed responsibly.”

Ha ha ha! Nothing to see here, move along! Don’t worry, be happy! Government should operate like a business! Blargeddy blargh!

For example, by all means do not investigate Darpa:

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) asked for the inquiry after news reports that Darpa handed out $1.75 million in contracts to a company owned in part by agency director Regina Dugan and her relatives. What’s more, Dugan is owed $250,000 by her family firm, RedXDefense. POGO wants to verify that Dugan had nothing to do with the contracts, and to determine if “any Darpa employee” dealing with the company knew of its connections to the woman at the top.

In a letter to the Pentagon inspector general written on Monday, Danielle Brian, POGO’s executive director, calls for an investigation that goes beyond Dugan, who recused herself from any dealings with RedXDefense upon becoming director.

Brian cites recent comments from Kaigham “Ken” Gabriel, Dugan’s deputy, calling financial conflicts “prevalent” at the agency, since Darpa’s highly technical work requires it to recruit talent from many of the firms and researchers who bid on its contracts.

“We urge the DoD IG to immediately pursue an audit to ensure that Darpa selects and awards grants and contracts with integrity,” Brian writes in the letter to Inspector General Gordon S. Heddell. Perhaps “more  stringent measures” are needed to prevent potential conflicts of interest.

POGO also questions just how closely the Pentagon oversees Darpa. The Pentagon inspector general’s office hasn’t audited the agency’s contracting methods since 1997.

I realize $1.75 million is small potatoes but it's also the tip of the iceberg. The point is: fraud and waste are endemic throughout the Pentagon, not just in things like $700 toilet seats and building fighter jet engines the Pentagon doesn't even want but some Senator needs the factory to stay open or they'll face a tough reelection campaign.

No, this is the kind of shit that goes on under our noses while everyone has hissy fits over the "Muslim Brotherhood" donating to NPR. I wonder if any Breitbart acolytes have considered dressing up as pimped-out Raytheon execs seeking research money to finish work on their invisibility cloak and time travel machine? Of course not! Because in right-wing land, every penny spent on the Pentagon is honorable. There’s never any such thing as “government waste” when the Dept. of Defense does it.

With that in mind, this bit from the Politico article amused me:

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are divided between those who want to include deep defense cuts in any debt reduction plan and those concerned about the impact of such cuts on national security.

That’s hilarious. Yeah, you know, when your country spends at least five times more on defense than any other nation in the world, I’d say you’ve got nothing to worry about.

I really find it hard to believe that any Republican doesn’t think there’s waste and corruption at the Dept. of Defense. There’s a vast river of tax money flowing through the Pentagon, and you can bet your sweet bippy there are greedy, corrupt assholes trying to get their hands on it. But since the Pentagon still isn’t audit-ready after 27 years, I guess we’ll never know.

Instead, let's talk about how the budget deficit is forcing us to kill Medicare and Social Security.

A Funny Definition Of Victory, Part 2

The last time the government shut down, the time Newt Gingrich did it, I actually worked for the federal government at a national recreation area. That was interesting, to say the least.

Government shutdowns suck on a lot of levels, though one thing they do accomplish is make people aware of all the things our government does, things which should be obvious but which people are ridiculously oblivious to nonetheless. I’m thinking of the lady I saw on the news who was shocked to discover that the national Civil War battlefield she planned to visit today would be closed if a deal couldn’t be reached.

I mean, duh. But that attitude is extremely common. I remember way back when telling my dad I was off work and he's like "Why?" And I'm like, "The government shut down, you know ..." and he kept saying, "you're affected by that? Really? YOU? I had no idea!"

Le sigh. So, government shutdowns can be a teachable moment for a lot of mainstream Americans who take government for granted.

That said, I was not like Mike Pence leading the Teanutties in a chant of “Shut it down!” No, as I said, government shutdowns suck on a lot of levels, trust me, I know. They are a failure of our politics and a failure of democracy. If our government is forced to shut down over something like a budget impasse, it does not speak very highly of our system or our leaders.

So I’m glad we have a reprieve. But for crying out loud, please let’s not call this last-minute deal a victory. This is a tragedy, and it should be stated as such. Because I’m sorry, I just don’t see these things as wins:

1) $17 BILLION IN CHIMPS -- WE SPREAD OUT THE CUTS ACROSS OTHER PARTS OF THE BUDGET. We insisted that meeting in the middle on cuts would require looking beyond domestic discretionary spending—and we prevailed. More than half—or $17 billion—of the final round of spending cuts came from changes in mandatory programs, or CHIMPs. The emphasis on this part of the budget staved off severe cuts to key domestic programs like education, clean energy, and medical research.

2.) $3B IN PENTAGON SAVINGS -- WE PROVED DoD WASTE SHOULD NOT BE SPARED. We won the argument that waste at the Pentagon should not be immune from spending cuts. The final agreement eliminates nearly $3 billion in unnecessary Pentagon spending that was contained in H.R. 1. These reductions are supported by Secretary Gates.

3) TITLE X PRESERVED -- WE FOUGHT OFF ATTACKS ON WOMEN’S HEALTH. We fended off their highest priority among the riders by nixing their proposal to gut Title X funds that provide cancer screenings and other preventative health services for women. The Republicans’ overreach on this rider in the final days dramatically weakened their hand.

Yes, well, my uterus thanks you. But I’m sorry ... $3 billion in Pentagon waste while cutting $17 billion in Social Security and Medicare spending? That’s, what, basically that one redundant fighter jet engine that was already axed? I mean, really? That’s all the waste you can find at the Pentagon? Are they still giving $50 million to NASCAR? Just wondering.

I bring this up because last week David Sirota noted that the one-week continuing resolution would set our bloated Pentagon budget for the year, while leaving the rest of the budget open to negotiation. This means the burden of all that deficit-reducing everyone is yammering about will be borne by social programs. Or, as Sirota wrote:

....an even larger and more disproportionate amount of budget cuts will be focused almost exclusively on the relatively small portion of the discretionary budget that funds social programs.

Because there’s always money for war.

This is how Democrats cut deals with Republicans, and even worse they are trying to sell this to us as a win. And don’t give me that crap about fighting for women’s health when the deal that was struck banned locally-funded abortions in D.C. I guess some uteruses are more equal than others.

No, nothing pisses me off more than when Democrats try to sell me a shit sandwich. This happened last summer when the FMAP extension was passed by cutting food stamp benefits.

This shit happens all the time. The Claims Resolution Act of 2010 -- the settlement to 75,000 black farmers discriminated again in the case known as Pigford II -- was paid for in part with cuts to WIC funding.

Democrats need to realize that robbing Peter to pay Paul is not a “win” for liberals. And some of us actually are paying attention to this stuff.

So am I glad the government has not shut down (yet)? Hell yeah. But am I pissed the Pentagon budget got trimmed by a measley $3 billion and is now off-limits? You betcha.

When polls show Americans a) vastly underestimate how much we spend on defense, and b) support cutting the defense budget anyway, one has to wonder what the hell the Democrats in Washington are thinking. Maybe they’re too scared of looking “weak on defense” and like “cheese eating surrender monkeys” and like they “don’t support the troops” and all the other mean stuff the right will say about them. But guess what: they say that shit anyway!

So I guess we’ll just keep on being asked to accept winning these small battles while losing war after war, over and over again, until the end of time. I guess we’re supposed to be happy with that.

I dunno, doesn’t sound like a win to me.

Permanent War Economy Redux

[UPDATE]: Wow sure glad we're sending them $60 billion in weapons!

-------------------------

Just heard NBC’s financial spokes bubblebot extoll the economic bonanza which this deal represents:

The Obama administration is set to notify Congress of plans to offer advanced aircraft to Saudi Arabia worth up to $60 billion, the largest U.S. arms deal ever, and is in talks with the kingdom about potential naval and missile-defense upgrades that could be worth tens of billions of dollars more.

The administration plans to tout the $60 billion package as a major job creator—supporting at least 75,000 jobs, according to company estimates—and sees the sale of advanced fighter jets and military helicopters to key Middle Eastern ally Riyadh as part of a broader policy aimed at shoring up Arab allies against Iran.

Huzzah. Well, it’s good to know America still manufactures something!

Who wants to guess how this will end? Like this? America is a twilight empire. All we know how to do is build bombers for oppressive Middle Eastern regimes. Our only export is war. I know the corporate news media wants us to clap louder at the “75,000 jobs created” (really? Really? Did you check the numbers on that or are you just repeating the press release?) and my Democratic president is going to extoll the economic win this represents for people who are out of work. But I’m calling bullshit.

Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

For shame, America. For shame. These things never end well, people. One of these days we will learn our lesson. You don’t build an economy on war. You don’t arm a dictatorship in an unstable region of the world. You don't plant these seeds and expect to reap anything other than a bitter harvest down the road.

I wish America still made things that benefitted the human race, instead of destroyed it. Sadly, when you are an empire in twilight, the simplest most logical things are beyond anyone’s capabilities.

Because There’s Always Money For War

I love how everyone talks about cutting federal spending especially on things like healthcare and unemployment benefits, but there’s always money for war:

The House on Thursday voted to keep funding a second engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, defying the White House and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Gates has repeatedly threatened that he would personally recommend that President Barack Obama veto any defense bill containing funding for an engine made by General Electric-Rolls Royce that the Pentagon does not want. The Office of Management and Budget on Thursday followed up with its own veto threat in a statement of administration policy. 


Both GE-Rolls Royce and primary engine maker Pratt & Whitney mounted vigorous lobbying campaigns in recent weeks aligning congressional supporters on each side. But when the House cast a vote on an amendment to strike funding for the second engine, the supporters of a second engine prevailed by a vote of 231-193.

The Pentagon doesn’t want this engine but Congress is going to make sure it gets built anyway. Of course they will. The Penatgon, as Rep. Jim Cooper pointed out a year or so ago, has become a de facto hometown jobs program. Didn’t Eisenhower warn us about this a generation ago?

Never mind. Congress will continue to mouth platitudes about cutting the deficit while refusing to touch the second largest item in the Federal budget:

At over $700 billion this year, total military spending rivals Social Security as the largest item in the federal budget. We are spending more than at any time since World War II, yet our principal enemy has no multi-million person army, no air force, no navy, no sophisticated anti-aircraft systems – in short, none of the kinds of weapons our arsenal is best designed to fight against. And of that $700 billion per year, the vast bulk – over $500 billion – goes towards the Pentagon’s base budget, not the wars in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. A forthcoming report from the Sustainable Defense Task Force  – a group of defense and budget experts convened with the encouragement of Rep. Barney Frank – presents a menu of options for making cuts in the Pentagon budget without undermining our basic security. Look for details within the next two weeks.

There are plenty of savings to be had from eliminating unneeded weapons systems and cutting waste, fraud and abuse, but it is important to note that any substantial reduction in Pentagon spending will have to involve reducing U.S. global commitments. We can’t and shouldn’t continue to structure our forces as if they should be able to go anywhere and do anything. This is directly relevant to the new National Security Strategy.

$700 billion year, much of it devoted to weapons for fighting the Cold War which, last I checked, St. Ronnie won for us over 20 years ago. This makes no sense.

Time to turn our swords into plowshares. Instead of spending $485 million to build an engine the Pentagon says it doesn’t want, why can’t these workers be retrained and factories retrofitted to build things this country does want: things that are even more important to our national security than weapons for a war no one is fighting anymore? Things like components for wind turbines and solar panels and parts for electric vehicles and the like?

Why do we keep making the same mistakes over and over again? It boggles the mind.

The Permanent War Economy

[UPDATE]: Via ACK, my Congress Critter Jim Cooper's statement on the Pentagon budget:

“Congress will surely debate these recommendations, but let us debate them on their merits. America is fighting two wars and a recession; we no longer have the luxury of running the Defense Department as a hometown jobs program. That’s why, in the words of Secretary Gates, we must rise above parochial interests and do what’s in the best interest of the nation as a whole. I hope my colleagues will join me in accepting his challenge.”

Wow, it's nice to see someone in Congress admit that we've been operating the Pentagon this way. The "permanent war economy" has not been a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory of the progressive left after all. This is certainly encouraging.

Maintaining the F-22 purely as an economic stimulus exercise is immoral, and it doesn't make fiscal sense, either. At some point we will see the folly of waging war to create jobs. Could that time be now?

-----------------------

File this one under it’s about damn time:

In a blow to Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon has decided to end funding of the F-22 fighter jet. 

The decision by Defense Secretary Robert Gates will rouse widespread opposition in Congress and is likely to bog down the 2010 budget approval process, with F-22 supporters maneuvering to secure more money.

The Pentagon will fund four of the radar-evading stealth fighters in the upcoming 2009 emergency war-spending request, but those additional aircraft will do little to keep the production line in Marietta, Ga., open beyond 2011. Each F-22 costs about $140 million.

Gates announced the decision at a press conference on the Defense budget on Monday afternoon. He said the recommendations were his own and that he received no guidance from outside the Pentagon. But he did confer with military and civilian leaders at the Defense Department, he said.

Gates said he consulted closely with the president, but that he "received no direction or guidance from outside this department on individual program decisions."

The planes are outmoded; designed to fight Soviet jets, they’ve been useless in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

But Lockheed Martin argues that production of the F-22 employs 25,000 people (here they claim it’s 95,000, which may include Lockheed Martin’s suppliers). If the economic argument is the only one they’ve got, then by all rights they should lose this one hands down. For years we progressives have bemoaned the permanent war economy, which conservatives have pooh-poohed as a lefty tin-foil hat theory. But if you’re going to argue for keeping an outdated military fighter jet in production simply because it employs a bunch of people, what the hell do YOU call that, if not a war economy?

The Christian Science Monitor summed it up well back in March:

As a Democrat more interested in spending money on butter than guns, Mr. Obama does not see guns as butter. His priorities are healthcare, energy, and education. Some Democrats even want a 25 percent cut in defense spending.

But Obama may not win the coming political dogfight with Congress over reducing production of the F-22, which the Air Force sees as its crown jewel in commanding the skies in a conflict. The plane is manufactured by some 1,000 companies in 44 states. That's created a powerful lobby.

One thing to watch for in the coming weeks are some of these retired military "analysts" in the media. These are the folks who it was later discovered worked for lobbyists and military contractors. If retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales hits Fox News to warn about the surrender monkeys and liberal defeatocrats in Congress, I want to know about it.

If we do lose this battle and the military continues to manufacture the outdated F-22 purely to keep people employed, I will know that any hope we had of transitioning away from a war economy would be lost. And that would make me very sad, indeed.

And to the folks in Marietta who are worried about losing their jobs, you have my condolences. It would be nice if your Republican governor would not talk about turning down federal stimulus funds with a major employer losing a big government contract. Maybe you folks could follow Tennessee's lead and make, I dunno, solar panels or something.

Swords into plowshares, people.

John McCain’s Tanker Trouble

At tonight’s debate you may hear John McCain once again brag about how he went after government waste by blocking the Pentagon’s troubled Boeing tanker contract that ended with people going to jail. John McCain is very proud of this fact: he mentioned it at the last debate, and he keeps bringing up like it’s the crowning achievement of a mavericky taxpayer avenger.

Sure, when all was said and done, former Pentagon procurement officer Darleen Druyun was given nine months in prison, Boeing CFO Michael Sears went to prison for four months, Boeing’s CEO Phillip Condit was fired, and the Air Force cancelled the contract. But that's not the entire story.

I've blogged about this saga before, lots of folks have. But it's one of those things that seems to be fading from the collective memory. Because every time John McCain brings it up, you'd think someone would say, "hey, isn't that the deal where you ended up looking like a walking case of lobbyist intervention at the expense of American jobs?" The fact that no one does make me think it's time to send folks a little reminder about John McCain's real role in this whole thing.

So yes, McCain launched the Senate investigation that uncovered the fraud and shut the deal down, so kudos to him for that. But I’m not sure I’d be bragging about this when subsequent investigations have revealed a few disturbing facts.

Newsweek did an excellent story on this back in June. If you want to debunk the myth that John McCain single-handedly slayed the dragon of Pentagon waste by virtue of his mavericky-ness, give it a read. And you can start with the headline:

McCain’s Boeing Battle Boomerangs

Yes, it seems the Boeing tanker story did come back to bite McCain on the ankle, more than once. For one thing, when the Pentagon put the contract up for bid again, it got awarded to Boeing’s big rival, Northrop Grumman, and the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS).

So in other words, John McCain sent American jobs overseas and, as MarketWatch noted, gave a big wet kiss in the form of a $35 billion piece of America’s defense budget to a European firm.

This was back in June and even I remember the hullabaloo this created. Why would John McCain do such a thing? Doesn’t he love America and American workers? Funny thing:

The auditors' ruling has also cast light on an overlooked aspect of McCain's crusade: five of his campaign's top advisers and fund-raisers—including Tom Loeffler, who resigned last month as his finance co-chairman, and Susan Nelson, his finance director—were registered lobbyists for EADS.

Oh, say it ain’t so!

But it gets worse. John McCain personally intervened to ensure the bidding process was favorable to EADS:

Critics, including some at the Pentagon, cite in particular two tough letters McCain wrote to Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England in 2006 and another to Robert Gates, just prior to his confirmation as Defense secretary. In the first letter, dated Sept. 8, 2006, McCain wrote of hearing from "third parties" that the Air Force was about to redo the tanker competition by factoring in European government subsidies to EADS—a condition that could have seriously hurt the EADS bid. McCain urged that the Pentagon drop the subsidy factor and posed a series of technical questions about the Air Force's process.

"He was trying to jam us and bully us to make sure there was competition by giving EADS an advantage," said one senior Pentagon official, who asked for anonymity when discussing a politically sensitive matter. The assumption within the Pentagon, the official added, was that McCain's letters were drafted by EADS lobbyists.

"There was no one else that would have had that level of detail," the official said.

Of course, the uproar over awarding a defense contract to a European firm and the funny business with McCain’s advisors caused this deal to be cancelled, too. Back in September Defense Secetary Robert Gates passed the decision off to the next administration:

“We can no longer complete a competition that would be viewed as fair and objective in this highly charged environment,” Mr. Gates said in a statement. “The resulting ‘cooling off’ period will allow the next administration to review objectively the military requirements and craft a new acquisition strategy” for the tanker program.

If John McCain wins the election, three guesses as to who’s going to get that tanker contract.

Mr. Smith Went To Washington

... And got fired for questioning KBR’s accounting:

WASHINGTON — The Army official who managed the Pentagon’s largest contract in Iraq says he was ousted from his job when he refused to approve paying more than $1 billion in questionable charges to KBR, the Houston-based company that has provided food, housing and other services to American troops.

The official, Charles M. Smith, was the senior civilian overseeing the multibillion-dollar contract with KBR during the first two years of the war. Speaking out for the first time, Mr. Smith said that he was forced from his job in 2004 after informing KBR officials that the Army would impose escalating financial penalties if they failed to improve their chaotic Iraqi operations.

Army auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records for more than $1 billion in spending, so Mr. Smith refused to sign off on the payments to the company. “They had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn’t justify,” he said in an interview. “Ultimately, the money that was going to KBR was money being taken away from the troops, and I wasn’t going to do that.”

But he was suddenly replaced, he said, and his successors — after taking the unusual step of hiring an outside contractor to consider KBR’s claims — approved most of the payments he had tried to block.

Wow. So the Pentagon official in charge of oversight was fired for .... oversight!

According to a story in yesterday’s Houston Chronicle, Mr. Smith was right to question KBR’s charges:

KBR overcharged the U.S. Navy for providing meals to workers and service personnel in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, according to a Pentagon audit.

[...]

"The Navy paid approximately $4.1 million for meals and services we calculate should have cost $1.7 million, more than a $2.3 million difference," said the audit, signed by Assistant Inspector General for Acquisition Management Richard Jolliffe.

KBR paid for 227,500 meals over a 34-day period, yet the subcontractors served only 113,654, fewer than half, and the remaining meals were discarded, the audit said. It recommended the Navy demand a refund from KBR of at least $1.4 million.

The overcharges were one element of mismanagement by Houston-based KBR, of three Navy contracts valued at $229 million for cleanup and restoration of Navy facilities damaged after Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and Katrina in 2005, the audit said.

Altogether, the audit requested that the Navy seek refunds of at least $8.5 million for "inappropriate" payments to KBR.

But wait, I thought the private sector did everything so much cheaper/faster/better/shinier/happier than the government! Oh no, there goes another piece of conservative wisdom down the toilet.

KBR’s performance has been stormy, to say the least. There’s the unsafe electrical wiring they provided troops. They failed to take action when female employees were gang-raped, and covered up the story later. They even dodged social security and medicare taxes. Of course they did! Taxes are for the little people!

In any real world, KBR would have been put out of business long ago for these and a hundred other misdeeds. But because of their strong connections to Vice President Cheney, they keep racking up the government contracts and profits have tripled.

It’s wingnut welfare at its finest. Your tax dollars at work: going straight into KBR’s pockets. Mission accomplished!

Humiliation

[1 Update below]

In wading through one of the transcripts in the Pentagon’s document dump referenced here, I came across an intriguing passage. It’s from an April 18, 2006 briefing with then-Secretary Rumsfeld and General Casey.

The questioner is one of the military analysts connected with a broadcast network, though it’s difficult to tell exactly who it is. Since he’s later referred to as “Tom,” this leads me to believe it’s Retired Gen. Thomas G. McInerney, senior military analyst for Fox News. I am not sure of this but regardless, the quote is priceless:

QUESTION: So the fact is, I don’t think the American people, because the administration hasn’t explained it as well, understand why we’re forward, why we want to be there.

The other day I’m driving in and Chris Coor’s got a vote on do we need to bring the troops back to protect the border, or do we need them over there? I was amazed. People are talking about bringing them back. Two entirely different issues.

Islamic extremism is coming here like they did on 9/11 if we don’t have a forward strategy. It’s been very successful. Almost five years we’ve kept them away.

So I say you’ve got a brilliant strategy but I’m not sure we’ve articulated it in a way that every day it comes up.

Their strategy over there of Islamist extremism, and every day, as you know, it’s open source. Number one, it’s a crusade.

Number two, they want our oil. Number three, they want to humiliate us. If you stay with this we’ll bring victory and we will not let them humiliate us. Every day on the internet, every day in Al Arabiyah and every day on Al Jazeera they’re seeing that.

OK, pick your jaws up off the floor.

The notion that we are engaged in a “crusade” is inflammatory enough. But “our” oil? How did “our” oil get under “their” land to begin with? Who says it's “our” oil, anyway? And if you read the transcript, no one disputes this viewpoint, not even Gen. Casey.

But the kicker is that whole “humiliation” thing. The idea that we’ve got soldiers dying in Iraq and we’re spending billions of dollars a month just so we won’t be humiliated is nauseating. Again, no one corrects this military analyst for his twisted view of why we are in Iraq. Not Secretary Rumsfeld, or General Casey or any of the other retired generals in that briefing. It's as if they all agree with him.

Look, General Questioner, whomever you may be: we’re already humiliated. We were humiliated the moment the Pentagon hired you Kool-Aid gulping mouthpieces to drag this country into a war of choice. We were humiliated when your colleagues dreamed up modern-day torture chambers like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and the CIA’s extraordinary rendition flights.

Is that really what people are dying for? A bunch of military guys' fragile egos? I'll make you a deal: pop a few Viagra and see if that helps your humiliation problem. Feel better? Now can we bring the troops home?

[By the way, does anyone know who “Chris Coor” or “Chris Coors” is?]

[Update 1]:

Jim in comments writes: "The way I am reading his comments makes the bold remarks in reference to the Islamists' view of the war. I think his point was that we were not effectively countering that view."

This might be the case, at least in part. Remember, the context of this discussion is, how do we sell the war to the American public, not how do we get the Iraqis behind our presence in their country. General Questioner is not saying, how do we counter that view, but how do we do something similar here. The excerpt starts with this: "I don’t think the American people, because the administration hasn’t explained it as well, understand why we’re forward, why we want to be there."

That's what he's explaining. Feel free to read the transcript and share your thoughts with me, though. Forward strategy stuff is on Page 11.

How Dirty Is Our Media

Since the New York Times revealed the Pentagon’s propaganda campaign and use of “surrogates and message-force multipliers” to sprinkle fairy dust on our failed Iraq misadventure, we’ve been learning a lot about the astonishing breadth and depth of this misinformation campaign.

Most interesting is the Pentagon’s massive document dump, which through the miracle of the internet allows ordinary dweebs like you and me to read transcripts and e-mails between the Pentagon and these propaganda mouthpieces. Folks like ThinkProgress and Talking Points Memo are combing through these files and have posted some interesting things. For example, one military analyst who is also a radio host promised a “softball” interview of Gen. Casey on a right-wing radio show, prompting a Pentagon flack to warn:

Just fyi, probably wouldn't put "softball" interview in writing. If that got out it would compromise jed and general casey.

What’s astonishing to me is, despite the tremendous effort and energy put into this propaganda program, it’s been an utter failure. The Pentagon went all out to seed the news media with Iraq War boosters and friendly faces who promised to be “on message,” yet the majority of Americans still think the Iraq War was a mistake and the occupation has been mishandled. Truth wins out, people, every single time.

I spent a little time wading through the document dump today and really came face to face with evidence of our massively corrupted right wing media. Of course, we always knew the Fox folks were cheerleaders for the Bush Administration, but looking through these documents, we see Fox News and right-wing radio in deep collusion with the Pentagon propaganda machine. They were active, willing, knowing participants.

A favorite is this April 18, 2006 briefing with then-Secretary Rumsfeld and General Casey. At one point an analyst marvels to Rumsfeld:

“You go on O’Reilly and you’ve got him eating out of your hand.”

On page 14 of the transcript, Rumsfeld gloats about Gen. Russell Honore calling journalists stupid:

Question: Right. One of the things that impressed me about how the initiatives (inaudible) after the hurricane in New Orleans was when Honore chastised the press about getting stuck on stupid. [Laughter].

Secretary Rumsfeld: It was wonderful. Can you imagine? I’d like to think I was a genius and I had him located there to -- [Laughter] - just in case there was a Katrina. But it was just an accident. The guy is fabulous.

Actually, Honore was discussing Hurricane Rita, and chastising the media for having the temerity to ask what lessons from Katrina would be applied to the Rita evacuation effort (you can watch a YouTube clip of Honore here.) Right wing media pundits like Michelle Malkin ate it up. They love it when someone gets tough with CNN reporters because they see themselvs as perpetual victims in a world where their extreme views have them inreasingly marginalized.

This certainly doesn’t let the rest of the mainstream media off the hook, it does seem that the folks at CBS, CNN, etc. were at least for the most part sloppy and incurious, but not necessarily knowing participants in a government misinformation campaign. You can't say that for the right wing media, though.

60 Minutes Shills For Pentagon

Watching 60 Minutes National Security Correspondent David Martin introduce the Pentagon’s “Active Denial System” as the best life-saving advancement since the invention of Kevlar was nothing short of surreal. I actually had to watch the segment twice because I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears the first time.

You can read the transcript, or watch the video here:



The “Active Denial System” is a non-lethal “ray gun” which zaps its target with super high-frequency radio waves. In other words, it’s a crowd control device. Gee, now I wonder how the government would use something like that?

Perhaps we have a little clue in the Pentagon’s demonstration video, which they aired as part of last night’s segment. The clip shows a group of people carrying signs that read “Love For All,” “End The War” and “World Peace.”

Now check the transcript of Martin’s voice-over describing this scene:

The targets at the base are people, military volunteers creating a scenario soldiers might encounter in Iraq, like angry protestors advancing on American troops, who have to choose between backing down or opening fire. Off in the distance, half a mile away, the operator of the ray gun has the crowd in his sights.

David Martin and 60 Minutes Producer Mary Walsh must be either incredibly stupid or on the Pentagon’s payroll. “End The War” and “World Peace” placards are a scene from Iraq? Really? This looks less like a scene from Iraq than a scene from America.

This certainly tells us everything we need to know about who the Pentagon views as the enemy. And it speaks volumes about the incurious stenography offered by 60 Minutes reporter David Martin and producer Mary Walsh.

Martin and Walsh seem particularly clueless about any moral or ethical issues which a crowd control device of this type presents. They spin this story as a tale of government bureaucracy holding up a really wonderful life saving device. It’s the culture of the Pentagon, see, that just doesn’t understand something like this:

Pentagon officials call it a major breakthrough which could change the rules of war and save huge numbers of lives in Iraq. But it's still not there. That because in the middle of a war, the military just can't bring itself to trust a weapon that doesn't kill.

That’s nice spin. I guess we DFH anti-war hippies are supposed to embrace a weapon that doesn’t kill, seeing as how we love everybody. But here’s a clue to Martin, Walsh and the rest of the idiots at 60 Minutes who never looked deeper than the Pentagon’s press release before runnig this story: we just saw a clip of that weapon targeting people carrying signs that read “Love For All” and “World Peace.” So excuse me if we DFH anti-war hippies aren’t going to run to our Congress Critters and demand this weapon be deployed immediately in Iraq. Because it’s quite obvious this weapon is not designed for Iraq. It’s designed for America.

Thanks, 60 Minutes, for not digging any deeper than what “Pentagon officials” told you.

ADS was designed for America. It was designed for countries like Bolivia, where American corporation Bechtel tried to privatize the water supply, sparking massive revolts that sent Bechtel scurrying home with its tail tucked between its legs.

It was designed to quell popular uprisings, foreign and domestic. It’s to control the people. This is not a weapon to be used on insurgents in Iraq. It’s to be used on protestors at home and everywhere else where it’s awkward and inconvenient for masses of people to take to the streets and demand change:

One of the ray gun's biggest advantages is that it can stay out of harm’s way and still control a crowd.

That’s an “advantage” all right--for some folks, at least.

The Active Denial System might be useful in a situation like this:



And when it does, we can thank the idiots at 60 Minutes and in particular reporter David Martin for not asking any hard questions about who and what this device was designed for.