Right Wing Nut House

Watching the beginning of Fox’s Over There last night, I was struck by how much TV had changed since I was growing up.

We were allowed a limited number of hours to watch TV during the week - 10 hours in 5 days as I recall - and every Sunday night as we ate our graham crackers in milk, we would have to decide among the 5 of us what shows we would be watching for the entire week (day and night). Note: The strictures applied during the summer months as well with the exception that Cubs and White Sox games were not counted against the total.

Because of this, it wasn’t until years later that I saw The Andy Griffith Show, Green Acres, Gunsmoke, and a host of others. But there was one show that all of us in the family couldn’t wait to watch; a show whose gritty realism (we thought) made our wargames that much more compelling to play. Combat, starring Vince Morrow was always on the list.

Looking at the re runs today, I see how jaded we’ve become. Unless there are the sickening sounds of heads exploding like a ripe melons or torrential blood flows gushing from gaping wounds along with huge explosions that send people flying through the air, it just ain’t war. Nevertheless, Combat managed to hold our attention through what passed for action sequences as well as some characters that everyone who has seen a John Wayne war movie can relate to.

There was the tough, no nonsense Sarge who cared about his men more than himself. The soldiers were usually a colorful lot drawn from all corners of the country. There’s usually the street smart city guy, the farm boy, the quiet intellectual, and the one who always sasses the higher ups. Combat had all of this plus war on a much more personal level than John Wayne movies which were usually about grand themes like courage and patriotism. The men in Combat were always tired, always hungry, never took showers, and nervous about the enemy. To us, it was as real as it got.

I wonder if the kids today will take away a similar impression of Stephen Bochco’s Over There? Hell, do kids today still play “war?” The drama seems to have many stock elements of a war drama - the big change being a welcome addition of different skin colors and gender. And there’s actual foul language and lots of blood (a round from a grenade launcher hits a terrorist in the chest and blows the top half of his body to smithereens while his legs take a few extra steps). But at bottom, all I could think of while watching it was Combat for the 21st century.

I have no clue as to how realistic it was so I decided to gather some reaction for our best and bravest in the Shadow Media - the Milbloggers as well as some thoughts from a few non military types.

Blackfive checked out the website and found the characters “cartoonish” so he didn’t watch. But he opened the linked post to comments on the show, many of which are very interesting.

Charmaine Yost actually liveblogged the darn thing and has some comments both perceptive and snarky.

The Air Force Pundit saw it and had this to say: “Oh, did I mention this show sucks from a military perspective? I know in the USAF we don’t do alot of close in battle drill, but it would take a 4 year old to figure out we don’t all hide within 15 feet of each other, and then walk SLOWLY toward the enemy in a STRAIGHT LINE. Uh, didn’t we pretty much give that up about 1864?”

The Word Unheard couldn’t bring himself to watch for this reason: “Now, there are two things that the ‘Hollywood / television’ industry is incapable of doing with very few exceptions, and those are 1.) removing politics from any subject and 2.) accurately portraying any aspect of military life, the military experience or understanding anything accurately ‘through the eyes’ of military personnel.”

A Healthy Alternative to Work has some thoughts about past war dramas and this one:

In the movie M*A*S*H, and basically any other movie about wars set in Vietnam or before, one of the boons given to writers was the fact that the draft was in place. You could include a definitively non-military character like Donald Sutherland’s Capt. Hawkeye Pierce and explain his presence away by saying, “Oh, he was drafted.”

This forces the writers to answer an important question for each character - Why is this person in the military?

Alarming News has something positive to say:

I highly recommend the show. I was pleasantly surprised to find that politics are kept to a minimum. The show focuses on the personal and daily lives of the soldiers, and the realizations they come to while fighting on the front lines. The battle scenes are done very well, and the small things that we don’t think about very often are brought to light in several aspects. Like what the heck you do when you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the desert.

Argghhh has a great roundup both pro and con from milbloggers and adds this:

As for going down in flames… if the combat scenes and characters can suck you in, I suspect people will watch it. It plays to the low expectations people set for stuff like that. The more interesting part will be… does this set the Zeitgeist for the war… as M*A*S*H kind of did for Korea (and Vietnam, too)? The characters of M*A*S*H were generally likable, and we military types all knew Burn’s and Houlihan’s… but did the show represent Korea? Not really. Does it in the communal mind… arguably.

Interesting question - and I suspect this audience isn’t going to be diverse enough in outlook and opinion (no slam guys, but on things military and the war, we’re pretty much a cluster, it’s on things social where we have our spread) to answer this question well… but how many people’s perceptions of Vietnam are shaped by Platoon… or by We Were Soldiers?

Finally, Ace didn’t like it AT ALL:

Steven Bochco can suck my c**k.

Well, no I wouldn’t. But I’d promote it.

Generally then, it would appear that our military for the most part doesn’t take to the show and righty bloggers ditto.

Me? I’m going to withhold judgment for a few more weeks before I declare the show a lost cause. I found the combat scenes compelling (if not realistic) and I’m curious to see if they’ll continue portraying the enemy as fanatics.

When advancing toward our heroes who have taken cover behind a berm, you can hear the enemy saying “Allahu Akbar!” Nice touch and one of the only times I’ve seen terrorists portrayed as religious fanatics. So for the time being, I’ll continue watching.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

Admiral Bobby Inman is known as one of the most brilliant men who ever worked in the intelligence game. His service as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence under William Casey as well as his stint as Director of the National Security Administration was legendary for the breadth of intellect and experience he brought to the job. Here’s how one writer put it:

One doesn’t have to be around Bob Inman long to realize that one is dealing with a different type of brain, a type not shared by many. He is the intersection of micro and macro, at once displaying an insane head for details, and in the next sentence, an awe-inspiring grasp of the big picture, seeming to see the dominoes and dynamics of world events at a glance. Omni called him “simply one of the smartest people ever to come out of Washington or anywhere,” and Newsweek dubbed him “a superstar in the intelligence community [and] a tough-minded administrator.”

He is also a recipient of the DIA’s Defense Superior Service Medal for “achievements unparalleled in the history of intelligence.”

Kinda makes Valerie Plame’s #1 defender Larry Johnson look like a fool. Of course, Johnson doesn’t need to be compared to Inman for that to happen. Admiral Inman didn’t say that ” terrorism is not the biggest security challenge confronting the United States, and it should not be portrayed that way,” 60 days before 9/11. Johnson did.

Also unlike Larry Johnson, Admiral Inman is truly non-partisan. He was named to replace that fumbling bumble of a Defense Secretary under President Clinton Les Aspin in January of 1994. But then less than a week before his confirmation hearings started, he withdrew his name. At the time, Inman claimed he was the victim of a conspiracy hatched by Bill Safire of the New York Times and Senator Robert Dole. That charge was widely derided in the mainstream press as a fantasy. This didn’t stop many of those same pundits and reporters from starting a whispering campaign about his sexuality. Inman said enough is enough and left Washington for good.

And while the conspiracy charges against Safire and Dole were never proven, Safire did in fact have a long standing grudge against Inman:

In early 1981, Israel suddenly bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor. Puzzled, Inman, then deputy head of the CIA, realized that Israel could only have known where the nuclear reactor was located by having gotten access to U.S. satellite photographs. But Israel’s access was supposed to be limited to photographs of direct threats to Israel, which would not include Baghdad. On looking into the matter, furthermore, Inman found that Israel was habitually obtaining unwarranted access to photographs of regions even farther removed, including Libya and Pakistan. In the absence of Reagan’s head of the CIA, Bill Casey, Inman ordered Israel’s access to U.S. satellite photographs limited to 250 miles of its border. When Casey returned from a South Pacific trip, his favorite journalist and former campaign manager, Bill Safire, urged Casey to reverse the decision, a pressure that coincided with complaints from Israeli Defense Minister General Ariel Sharon, who had rushed to Washington to try to change the new policy.

Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberger, however held firm, supported Inman, and overruled Casey, and from then on Safire pursued a vendetta against Bobby Ray Inman.

I bring all this up only to shine a light on the difference between an honorable, non-partisan intelligence professional like Inman and the partisan hacks and leakers who have crawled out of the woodwork not so much to support Valerie Wilson but rather to attempt to politically harm the President of the United States.

In an interview with Stephen Spruiell of the Media Blog at NRO, Inman had this to say about the Rove-Plame-Wilson Affair:

I was utterly appalled during the 2004 election cycle at the number of clearly politically motivated leaks from intelligence organizations — mostly if not all from CIA — that appeared to me to be the most crass thing I had ever seen to influence the outcome of an election. I never saw it quite as harsh as it was. And clearing books to be published anonymously — there was no precedent for it. I started getting telephone calls from CIA retirees when Bush appointed Negroponte, talking about how vindictive the administration was in trying to punish CIA, and I was again sort of dismayed by the effort to play politics including with information that was classified. What is the impact on younger workers who see the higher-ups engaged in this kind of leaking?

(HT: The New Editor)

Inman was not saying that revealing Valerie Wilson’s name was right:

[The leaking of Plame's identity] is still one I would rather not see, but she was working in an analytical organization, and there’s nothing that precludes anyone from identifying analytical officers. I watch all the hand-wringing over the ruining of careers… there are a lot of operatives whose covers are blown. It doesn’t mean the end of their careers. Many move to the analytical world, which is where she already was. It meant she couldn’t deploy back off to Africa, but nothing I’ve seen indicated that was possible in the first place.

Spruiell asks an excellent question: “Where was all the liberal outrage over the leaking of classfied information when the leaks were designed to hurt the Bush administration?”

This is where the scandal’s focus should be; the deliberate and selective leaking of classified information by unelected bureaucrats in the months leading up to the election for the purpose of swinging the contest against the President. And this is the context in which the White House had begun to “push back” as Tom Maguire puts it against this cabal of CIA officials both in and out of government who for a wide variety of reasons were trying to sabotage the Administration. The push back by the White House may have included Rove and Libby having a role in writing Director Tenet’s statement of July 11 in which the CIA took responsibility for the questionable use of the Iraq-Niger yellow cake story in the President’s state of the union address as well as the attempt to discredit Wilson’s trip by trying to highlight his wife’s role in getting the Counter Proliferation Department at CIA to send him to Africa in the first place.

The point is that the leak that outed Valerie Wilson did not take place in a vacuum. The White House was under attack by our own CIA.

Inman points to disatisfied former agents who were accusing the Administration of “punishing” the agency by the selection of John Negroponte as Director of National Intelligence. The DNI was created in response to recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission and was vigorously opposed by the CIA. And if the appointment of Negroponte wasn’t bad enough, the President then chose Porter Goss to succeed George Tenet as DCIA and within weeks Goss had begun to clean house. He quickly forced out the Chief of Operations as well as his Deputy and sent out a memo (leaked to the New York Times the next day) informing agency personnel that further leaks would not be tolerated. Both the press and agents whined that this would destroy their “independence.” What Goss was trying to do was get a handle on what Senator McCain had called a “rougue agency.”

All of the events I’ve described overlap to form something of a confused muddle. Christopher Hitchens clears things up a bit with regard to the intentions of the leakers:

The CIA in general is institutionally committed against the policy of regime change in Iraq. It has also catastrophically failed the country in respect of defense against suicidal attack. (”I wonder,” Tenet told former Sen. David Boren on the very first news of 9/11, “if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training.” Wow, what a good guess, if a touch late. The CIA had failed entirely to act after the FBI detained Zacarias Moussaoui in Minnesota in August.)

Could it be that there is an element of politicization in all this? That there is more to Mr. Wilson’s perfunctory “no problem” report from Niger than first appears? I would describe this as a fit, if not indeed urgent, subject for public debate. But the CIA has a reserve strength. It can and does leak against the Defense Department. But if anyone leaks back at it, there is a nutty little law, passed back in 1982, that can criminalize the leaker. Karl Rove is of course obliged to observe this law and every other one. And it appears that he did, in that he did not, and did not intend to, expose Valerie Plame in any way.

But who is endangering national security here? The man who calls attention to a covert CIA hand in the argument, or the man who blithely says that uranium deals with psychopathic regimes are not in train when they probably are? And we cannot even debate this without the risk that those who are seeking the true story will end up before a grand jury, or behind bars!

Despite all the speculation, no one really knows what Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is investigating at this point. But one thing is clear; the least understood aspect of this scandal - the war between the White House and the CIA - is also the least covered by the press. Whether the reason is it’s too complicated or whether it’s because the issues between the Administration and the CIA are too arcane to pique the interest of news consumers, it doesn’t matter. The result is the same; ignorance.

It may be up to those of us in the new media to push this aspect of the story to the front so that it gets the recognition it deserves.

UPDATE

Baseball Crank links to the NRO piece and has this to say:

It’s actually amazing - at least if you’re not familiar with how politics works - how much heat has been expended on the issues of who can be prosecuted and what regulations require and what the president said he should or should not do, as opposed to the central question of what is bad enough conduct to justify firing someone in the first place. And to me, if somebody was just negligent with the identity of a non-covert agent and accidentally revealed that she’d been covert in the past, that’s a blunder, but it’s not something you organize a lynch mob over.

Crank, of course, is correct. The problem is the lynch mob has had a rope in its hands for 5 years just waiting to use it.

Joshua Sharf:

The Post, in trying to hold journalists to be above the law, has systematically ignored facts, reprinted lies, drawn false dichotomies, sought to deny others due process, and misunderstood the intelligence world to a degree even they should find embarassing.

Yep…I think that just about covers all the bases.

Tom Maguire makes an interesting point. If the CIA knew that Novak was going to print Mrs. Wilson’s name in connection with the agency, why didn’t they try to stop him?

I know some fans of spy fiction are under the impression that if the CIA press flack had told Novak not to publish because Ms. Plame was covert, the CIA would then have been obliged to send a hit squad into the night, tires squealing, to silence Novak.

So, as of July 8, Wilson knew that Novak was telling strangers on street corners that his wife was covert, news that would, per Wilson, endanger her networks, her life, her friendships, her kids - and he figured the CIA would handle it? Do tell. Did he tell his wife? Did she notify her superiors? Presumably Fitzgerald knows.

We can only hope Fitzgerald knows. Or that he’s even concentrating on that end of the investigation; what did the CIA know and when did they know it regarding Novak’s column?

A few months ago, I did a post on Avian Flu and how international health officials were keeping a close eye on the disease that at the time, showed no ability to jump from human to human. People who got sick from the disease got it by handling infected domestic fowl. Back then, I pointed out some of the consequences of a pandemic:

This is what’s giving the folks at CDC nightmares. If Bird Flu were to mutate into a strain that could easily be spread by casual contact among humans, it could wreak havoc on the world’s population and the economy. Why the economy? Here’s a look into a possible future where a Bird Flu pandemic is already a reality in the United States. It’s from a mythical blogger: (Hat Tip: Instapundit)

The United States is battened down before the storm. The government has outlawed all gatherings in public places. In past pandemics that never worked. But epidemiologists say that if we do it early on, it might slow the spread. Modelling also suggests that closing schools and universities is especially important as teenagers and young adults are among the worst hit. We just need to stop them from hanging out elsewhere. Stay at home, is the message blaring from every TV screen.

There’s a possibility that the disease in fact may have mutated to the point where human to human contact is possible. And that could mean by late fall, the world may be in the throes of a truly frightening pandemic which could kill up to 300 million people worldwide.

The culprit for allowing the disease to get out of control could be China. I found this via Winds of Change:

I’ve been following this for some time, basically the World Health Organization is doing everything NOT to raise the alert level from stage 3 to stage 5 or 6, and has tried to explain away clear cases of human-to-human transmission (these cases mean we’re at Stage 5 at least). There are also LOTS of rumors China is covering up an outbreak of Stage 6 human-to-human bird flu. China has been completely uncooperative with the WHO, refuses to let out most medical samples, and has even threatened epidemiologists. Nevertheless, the few published samples available from China (obtained from dead birds in Qinghai) all have genetic traits of strains that infect mammals, including humans. The worry is that these samples come from a major nexus in bird migration routes, meaning that this dangerous virus will soon be dispersed throughout Eurasia (it’s already popping up in Russia).”

The secretive way in which the Chinese government handled the SARS epidemic illustrates the problems totalitarian societies can cause the rest of us. By first denying there was a problem with SARS, then minimizing it, then underreporting the number of victims of the disease, and finally obstructing the activities of the World Health Organization before giving in and asking for help, China kept the epidemic alive. From China, SARS spread to Hong Kong, Viet Nam, and several other countiries in Asia. The disease made it to Toronto where an interesting dichotomy could be observed between the reaction of a totalitarian state to crisis and the efforts of a democratic society to deal with the same threat.

Thanks to a strategy that included public information about symptoms of the disease, close cooperation between government and health officials, and strict and effective quarrantine procedures, the Toronto outbreak of SARS was limited to 345 cases, 44 of which were fatal. It could have been much worse.

And now there are indications that once again, China’s secretive society may trigger another epidemic. This time, however, the results could be catostrophic. It’s estimated that between 1 and 3 million Americans would die in a Bird Flu pandemic. As Joe Katzman points out, the effects of the pandemic would be similar to those of a biological weapons attack:

In many ways, a pandemic isn’t really all that different from a major bioterrorism scenario. Winds recommendations #2-9 from my June 2002 Bioterror Readiness 10-Point Platform for Change still apply, for instance. So, unfortunately, do the comments in Bill Quick’s bioterror readiness post re: why the USA isn’t farther ahead in 2005. There’s a lot of heavy lifting to do, in order to change that picture. We may not have that time.

If we really want to “plan” for a dynamic scenario like this and get a fast fix out there, there’s a simpler way: don’t depend on a huge, elaborate system, but on fast point defense and overlapping measures. Spend about $1 million, and ship copies of SimOutbreak to every key official all around the country. In a scenario like this, fast and informed local reaction will be worth hundreds of millions in backup infrastructure. Include law enforcement and first responders in the distribution - they’ll probably be the first to see the signs. Have cities like my Toronto, hit hard by SARS, share plans and lessons learned.

Mr. Katzman has some good advice that I personally plan on following:

Spend a bit of time following this yourself, on a personal level, and think about what your contingency plans might be re: your family. Spread the word. Write your representatives. Point out that the WHO is soft-pedaling this, and may fail entirely.

In other words, begin building little islands of understanding and capability. Eric says “start planning!” I say “Plan less. Experience and communicate more. Become a pack in motion, not a herd in wait.”

In other words, don’t panic but monitor the situation. I’m not one of those people who plans for the worst but I’m definitely going to make some plans just in case things get out of control.

And I’m going to continue publicizing this. Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for pointing me toward the the WoC post.

NASA has fallen a long way since the heady days of the 1960’s when budgets were fat and it seemed that the space agency could do nothing wrong in the eyes of the American people. Of course, a large part of that was politics. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all found it politically useful to garner some reflected glory from NASA’s towering achievements by being chummy with astronauts. That and naked cold war power politics which turned the space race into an exercise in chest thumping, nationalistic one upsmanship allowed NASA considerable leeway in its budgetary priorities.

Alas, nothing lasts forever and by 1975, NASA had fallen victim in part to its own success. Promising the shuttle miracle - a craft that could not only take off and land but also allow the agency to turn a profit - NASA ended up delivering what was essentially an Edsel. The high expectations NASA engendered for the shuttle turned out to be wildly unrealistic. Instead of flying 30 to 35 times a year as originally planned, that number has now been reduced to 6 or less. And the corporations that were supposed to line up for space on the shuttle to deploy their satellites have mostly found better, cheaper alternatives. NASA now competes with not only American companies to launch payloads, but also the European Space Agency, the Japanese, and soon the Chinese will throw their space helmets into the ring.

What happened?

A major lack of leadership both in the executive branch and at NASA itself is mostly to blame. The agency was allowed to deteriorate from a program that embodied the highest hopes and biggest dreams of the American people into just another ossified government bureaucracy. The Challenger disaster exposed the agency’s weaknesses as well as a callousness that shocked those of us who had followed the program from its inception. And NASA’s most recent catastrophe - the Columbia disaster - revealed the agency to be a rudderless ship, unable to make the necessary changes to both hardware and procedures to get the Shuttle flying again in a timely manner.

Part of the problem is NASA’s budget and the priorities the agency sets every year. The Shuttle should be seen as a vacuum cleaner, sucking money away from programs that actually advance scientific discovery. Flying below the public’s radar are a host of NASA successes that have transformed everything from physics to engineering. NASA missions in the last decade have opened up brand new scientific vistas using space based gamma ray and x-ray telescopes, rovers on Mars, a probe to Saturn’s moon Titan, and most recently, the extraordinary achievement of the Deep Impact probe. This is what NASA does best - build and launch probes that private industry wouldn’t touch.

But the agency’s manned program is a different story. To put it bluntly, it’s just too damned expensive. Yesterday’s launch cost NASA about $10,000 per pound to put the astronauts in low earth orbit. Even with the next generation of reusable launch vehicles (RLV), the agency is shooting to only lower that figure to $1000 per pound and most engineers think that number unattainable. The problem is that human beings need to be kept alive in space which has turned out to be an extraordinarily expensive undertaking.

Some of the difficulties may be overcome by using different kinds of boosters with different ways to propel the craft into space. Hybrid engines currently under development use different propellants than the standard mixture of liquid oxygen and hydrogen. Rockets using nuclear power have been tested successfully but are unlikely to be built due to environmental concerns. The next generation will use a mixed fuel booster with solid propellant rockets used at liftoff. Still expensive but it might halve the cost of putting man in space.

This begs the entire question of why NASA should be putting men in space in the first place. The “Space Station” is another NASA project that promised much and has been both oversold and is now over budget. The Russian contribution has been consistently late and not up to specs. I have to add that Moscow did us a huge favor by ferrying people back and forth to the station using their good old fashioned Soyuz spacecraft. And we’re using their good old fashioned Progress rockets for resupply missions.

For the foreseeable future, NASA is stuck in low earth orbit. Although Congress has just approved initial funding for a planned moon landing in 2015, and a Mars landing a decade or so beyond that, the proof for Congress will be in NASA’s ability to operate efficiently with the funds that are appropriated. Watching NASA’s performance over the last months, I don’t have much confidence in the agency’s ability to convince Congress that it’s wasteful ways have changed.

Scientist James Van Allen who discovered the band of radiation that encircles earth and protects us from cosmic rays thinks that NASA’s time has passed:

My position is that it is high time for a calm debate on more fundamental questions. Does human spaceflight continue to serve a compelling cultural purpose and/or our national interest? Or does human spaceflight simply have a life of its own, without a realistic objective that is remotely commensurate with its costs? Or, indeed, is human spaceflight now obsolete?

I am among the most durable and passionate participants in the scientific exploration of the solar system, and I am a long-time advocate of the application of space technology to civil and military purposes of direct benefit to life on Earth and to our national security. Also, I am an unqualified admirer of the courageous individuals who undertake perilous missions in space and of the highly competent engineers, scientists, and technicians who make such missions possible.

In a dispassionate comparison of the relative values of human and robotic spaceflight, the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure. But only a tiny number of Earth’s six billion inhabitants are direct participants. For the rest of us, the adventure is vicarious and akin to that of watching a science fiction movie. At the end of the day, I ask myself whether the huge national commitment of technical talent to human spaceflight and the ever-present potential for the loss of precious human life are really justifiable.

Van Allen is correct in his assessment as far as it goes. Perhaps it is time for governments to get out of the business of putting human beings into space. The aforementioned ISP was supposed to be completed by 2000. Instead, it may not be finished until 2010 at a cost of some $80 billion which is overbudget by a factor of 5. Could such an endeavor be done more cheaply?

The answer is absolutely yes. There are about a dozen corporations that are vying to ferry human beings into space. The suborbital flight last year of Spaceship One is just the first step. Plans are afoot by several companies to develop orbiting spacecraft as well as build their own space station. Originally for the super rich who would be willing to pay the hefty $20 million to go into space, as more companies become involved and competition heats up, that price will come down considerably.

And then there’s the space elevator.

A space elevator is a physical connection from the surface of the Earth, or another planetary body such as Mars, to a geostationary Earth orbit (GEO - In the case of Earth) above the Earth at roughly 35,786 km in altitude.

It is hoped that someday a space elevator would be utilized as a transportation and utility system for moving people, payloads, power, and gases between the surface of the Earth and space. It makes the physical connection from Earth to space in the same way a bridge connects two cities across a body of water.

NASA is looking very seriously at such a project as are a half a dozen private companies. An elevator from earth’s surface to a space hotel for tourists may be a lot closer to realization than some think. The technology is there. All that’s needed is the will and the funding.

The fact is that alternatives to NASA’s manned space program will be commonplace in a decade. I wouldn’t be surprised if when this next generation of RLV’s was retired in 2025, NASA will get out of the business of putting people in space entirely. By then, I have no doubt that spaceflight will be much closer to being available to anyone of a little more than modest means.

UPDATE

No sooner had I finished writing this article than NASA discovered a rather large chunck of insulation had fallen off the booster during liftoff of the orbiter. Thankfully, it didn’t smash into the Shuttle and damage any of the tiles that protect the spacecraft on re-entry. But since this was one problem that NASA thought it had solved, the Shuttle fleet will be grounded until they figure out how to fix the problem.

Officials do not believe the foam hit the shuttle, posing a threat to the seven astronauts when they return to Earth on Aug. 7. But they plan a closer inspection of the spacecraft in the next few days to be sure.

“You have to admit when you’re wrong. We were wrong,” Parsons said. “We need to do some work here, and so we’re telling you right now that the … foam should not have come off. It came off. We’ve got to go do something about that.”

The loss of a chunk of debris, a vexing problem NASA thought had been fixed, represents a tremendous setback to a space program that has spent 2 1/2 years and over $1 billion trying to make the 20-year-old shuttles safe to fly.

“We won’t be able to fly again,” until the hazard is removed, Parsons told reporters in a briefing Wednesday evening.

The forces at work during a Shuttle lift off are simply awesome. The vehicle generates 6 million pounds of thrust when both the solid rocket boosters and external fuel tank are ignited. No matter how well the systems are designed, there are going to be unforseen stresses on different areas of the spacecraft. And travelling at several thousand miles per hour through the atmosphere under a “Max-Q” of nearly 7 G’s also makes trying to predict stress points exactly an almost insurmountable problem.

My guess would be that NASA will spend 6 months in meetings and in typical fashion will declare that the insulation falling off will be “an acceptable flight risk.” Like the “O” Rings that caused the Challenger disaster and a half dozen other problems NASA has examined in the past, when no solution presents itself they simply lower the safety bar. They really have no other choice except to ground the Shuttle altogether. And given the investment the government has in the International Space Station and the Shuttle’s vital role in ferrying supplies and personnel to that boondoggle in the sky, that won’t happen.

Kevin at Wizbang offers this thought:

Much as you wouldn’t keep pouring cash into a clunker automobile, it’s time to admit that the shuttle fleet is end-of-life and start work on a new space vehicle design.

They already have started work. The problem is it won’t be ready for at least 5 years. And unless we want to swallow our pride and admit our incompetence entirely be continuing to depend on Russians to get us poor Americans back and forth from the Space Station, we have no alternative but to continue holding our breath every time the Shuttle launches or re-enters.

UPDATE II

Rand Simberg offers some interesting thoughts:

I think that it’s most likely that they will decide to come home with it as is. And if they do, I also think that they will undergo a great deal of ignorant criticism for this decision, because they’ve “lost their safety culture,” just one flight after they killed all those astronauts, and now they’re recklessly gambling their lives again (disregarding the fact that throwing away a two-billion dollar vehicle, and a third of the remaining fleet, is not a decision to be taken lightly either).

It’s not a question of NASA “losing” their safety culture as much as it is raising the bar of “acceptable risk” which I suspect Rand would agree with. Whether that’s a good thing because of past over cautiousness or whether it’s not a good thing is a moot point. Prior to launch, NASA said that there was a 1 in 100 chance the Shuttle would be destroyed. I don’t think there are too many people who would accept those odds and go into space.

Patrick Ruffini has been conducting a poll of possible Republican Presidential candidates over the last few days and the results so far are, to me, more than a little surprising.

The leader as of today is Senator George Allen, Jr. of Virginia with 37.7% followed closely by Rudy Guiliani with 34.4% with Romney, Frist, and McCain trailing far behind.

Ruffini has gone further and broken down the results by blog links so that it’s possible to get a grasp of what types of conservatives support the frontrunners. For instance, Allen enjoys a 17 point edge from readers referred by Hugh Hewitt but trails Guiliani by more than 20 points among Instapundit’s referred readership. And readers who voted at Pat’s site give Allen a slight 8 point advantage.

What does it mean and does it really matter?

Of course, it doesn’t matter a whit. And trying to glean too much meaning from this kind of an on-line poll is a pretty useless exercise. But beyond the lack of utility in such polling, I found this kind of support for George Allen more than a little surprising.

I knew that Allen was head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee which under his leadership the party picked up 4 seats in this last election cycle. But as far as leadership in the Senate, he seemed to be pretty much in the background on most of the big issues, although I did see him on Hardball giving a spirited defense of the President’s energy policies.

In short, Senator Allen was something of a cipher to me. So, I decided to do a little research and try and judge what kind of a candidate he’d be in 2008 if he decided to run for President.

DOWN AND DIRTY BIO

Birth date: 03/08/1952
Birthplace: Whittier, CA
Home City: Mt. Vernon, VA
Religion: Presbyterian

Education:
J.D., University of Virginia Law School, 1977
B.A., History, University of Virginia, 1974.

Political Experience:
Member, United States Senate, 2000-present
Governor, Commonwealth of Virginia, 1994-1998
Member, United States House of Representatives, District 7, 1991-1993
Member, Virginia House of Delegates 1982-1991

POLITICAL SKILLS

Allen defeated two term incumbent Chuck Robb in 2000, no small feat but running behind President Bush considerably. Also, it can fairly be said that Virginia is now pretty much a reliable state for the GOP in federal elections with both Senators and 8 out of 11 Congressmen being Republican. That said, Allen may have a tough re-election fight on his hands if popular Democratic governor Mark Warner decides to run. Warner however, may have bigger fish to fry as he’s been mentioned as a possible Democratic presidential candidate in 2008 himself.

A breakdown of Allen’s 2000 support by county reveals some interesting tidbits. Virginia is pretty much divided into three major battlegrounds; northern Virginia which encompasses the Washington, D.C. suburbs, the coastal and river cities of Richmond, Norfolk, Newport News, Portsmouth, and Roanoke, and the rural interior that includes the Shenendoah Valley and a slice of Appalachia.

Allen did extremely well in the interior running up double digit margins of victory in the Valley as well as Appalachia in the southeast. He lost big to Robb in the liberal D.C. suburbs of Alexandria and Arlington, as well as getting slaughtered in Falls Church. What piqued my interest was how strong Robb ran in two Virginia counties that previously voted for Bill Clinton. Allen narrowly lost Fairfax county that borders liberal Arlington County and carried nearby Stafford County. Whether these results represent a general Republican trend in the state or whether Allen appeals to a certain kind of Clinton Democrat is unknown. But it is interesting.

In his two races for governor, he proved that he can both raise money run a campaign efficiently. His style, according to this article in Richmond.Com appears to be low key but effective.

I’ve seen a few of his floor speeches and he always impressed me as earnest but bland. Perhaps that’s why his present popularity surprises me a little.

ISSUES

This is where Senator Allen surprised me and where he might raise a few eyebrows on the Christian right if he runs.

I would characterize Senator Allen as a moderate conservative on social issues, a mainstream conservative on economic issues, and a hawk on foreign policy. In short, he’s no ideologue. Recently, he’s shown he can be a good partisan as he was one of the few Senators from either party to openly criticize Dick Durbin’s idiotic remarks comparing our servicemen to Pol Pot’s henchmen. And he’s emerged as a strong supporter of the President’s choice for UN Envoy John Bolton.

Whether he’s just now starting to feel comfortable in the Senate or whether he realizes he’s got to throw some red meat to the party faithful if he wants the nomination is hard to say. His interest group ratings reveal a mainstream Republican with some surprising positions on social issues.

For instance, on abortion, the Senator does not favor an outright ban on all abortions but would allow abortion to save the life or health of the mother, in cases of rape or incest, and in cases involving fetal deformity. This flies in the face of most of the Christian right groups who oppose abortion in all instances. It could be why he received only a grade of 67 with Dr. Dobbs Family Research Council. He did, however, receive a perfect 100% from Pat Robertson’s Christan Coalition.

He appears to be something of a federalist with regards to transferring welfare responsibilities to the states in the form of block grants. He has a mainstream Republican view of tax policy, opposing a flat tax while supporting elimination of the marriage penalty. He’s a free trader supporting NAFTA, GATT, and CAFTA. One thing that should please Glenn Reynolds is that he has a seat on the Congressional Nanotechnology Caucus. He opposes internet taxation and would seem to have a healthy interest in high tech issues of all kinds.

On immigration, he’s still something of a cipher. He gets a zero from both the liberal American Immigration Lawyers Association as well as the non-partisan Americans for Better Immigration. Since immigration could be the hot domestic issue of 2008, it should be interesting to see where he comes down on protecting our borders.

Interesting tidbit: He was an original co-sponsor with Mary Landrieu of the resolution apologizing for the government not doing anything about lynching for 100 years.

PLUSES AND MINUSES

On the plus side he’s young, attractive, from a southern state, not a fire eater, popular with his fellow Senators, appears to be capable of raising lots of money, and projects a moderately conservative image.

The biggest minus is that he’s an unknown quantity for both conservatives and the rest of the country. I’m also not enamored with his speaking style which at this point is conversational rather than inspiring. And he just hasn’t done enough to separate himself from the crowd. Also, he’s a sitting Senator which as we’ve seen, has historically been a detriment to running for President. In other words, he just hasn’t made a big impression on even a political junkie like me.

Since I think that the GOP’s best hope for ‘08 lies in nominating a southern or western conservative, Allen bears watching.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

“Success has a thousand fathers while failure is an orphan” applies to just about every human endeavor with the exception of war. War usually has one father while making orphans galore.

In our current situation, the father of this war is international Islamism and its adherents who seek to reestablish a Muslim Caliphate from the Middle East to Indonesia. They wish to bring the world’s one billion Muslims under one roof and impose Islamic law (Shai’ria) on everyone - Jewish, Christan and Muslim alike.

Only the willfully self-deluded deny this. To them, the War on Terror is a gigantic conspiracy of George Bush who seeks dictatorial powers on behalf of his friends - multi-national corporations and shadowy Christian fundamentalists.

What these fools will do when George Bush gives up his “dictatorial powers” and leaves office in 2008 is open to question. Will they admit they’re wrong? Or simply transfer their unreasoning hatred to the next occupant of the oval office whoever he or she may be?

I can guarantee that it won’t matter one wit to the jihadists. They’re in this war for the long haul and any temporary setbacks in Afghanistan and Iraq matter little to them. The west is the enemy tangentially because of who we are and what we stand for but they really seek to destroy us for a far more simple and basic reason.

We’re in the way.

We are an impediment to their goals. They know we will not sit idly by while several billion people (half of whom would be women) come under the harsh dictums of Shai’ria law with its unyielding strictures against human liberty, its treatment of women as chattel, and its nightmarish transformation of Jews, Christians, and people of other faiths into slaves under the governing system of dhimmitude. We in the west must then be eliminated or neutralized.

Terror, as has been said often but needs to be repeated, is a tactic used by our enemies in this war. This tactic has been most effective not in a military sense but in getting us to question the underlying belief in our civilization. For in order to counter the murderous intentions of our enemies, western countries have had to resort to undemocratic and, in some cases, dictatorial methods in order to avoid the worst that our enemies can do. And that worst is what keeps our leaders awake at nights; the use of a weapon of mass destruction that would quite literally bring western civilization to its knees.

This is not hyperbole. This is a statement of fact. Anyone who has contemplated what would happen with the detonation of a nuclear device in a large American city realizes that the fragile threads that bind our economy, our citizenry, and our government would snap the moment the mushroom cloud blossomed. And the interconnectedness of the world’s economy would spell doom for most of the rest of the planet after the certain collapse of the American economy following such a disaster.

To keep this from happening, western governments have been forced to curtail some liberties and use methods and enact procedures that in peacetime would be grounds for revolution. Unfortunately as is wont to happen in war, innocents get caught in the middle, hemmed in between our necessary desire for security and the free exercise of our liberties.

Recently, we’ve had a horrible example of this “collateral damage” with the tragic death of 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes whose inexplicable flight from authorities resulted in an incident that will cause Great Britain to question some basic assumptions regarding civil liberties in an age of terror.

Mr. Menezes, a Brazilian immigrant, was shot dead by police when, after repeated orders to stop, he jumped the turnstile at an underground station and ran into a crowded subway car. Since he was dressed in a fleece jacket in 80 degree weather, police suspected he was a suicide bomber and felt they had no choice but to “shoot to kill.”

Were the officers justified? The fact is that if Mr. Menezes was a suicide bomber, dozens perhaps hundreds of lives were saved. But since he wasn’t, Mr. Menezes ends up a victim of terrorism as much as anyone who died in the London bombs of 7/7. When police have only seconds to make that determination, mistakes are going to be made. And the fact that they will probably be more careful next time may mean that a suicide bomber will succeed in his murderous intent. When that happens, do you think all of the critics who have been so vociferous in their protests over the last 24 hours will praise the police for their restraint? Or, for that matter, if Mr. Menezes had been a suicide bomber, what would their response have been?

I feel for the Muslim community in Great Britain who perhaps for the first time, realize the deadly serious nature of the threat they face. Will they draw the correct conclusions? Or will they continue to condemn terrorist incidents in general terms while playing politics with their supposed victimization? It’s time for them to put up or shut up. If, as a recent poll suggests, 25% of British Muslims sympathize with what the 7/7 bombers were trying to accomplish, then additional tragedies will occur including the very real possibility that they will find themselves even more ostracized and isolated than ever. And in extreme circumstances, their status as citizens could be at risk. How tolerant will the majority of Britains be if a wave of suicide attacks send casualty figures skyrocketing? Anything is possible when fear takes hold in democratic societies - just ask Japanese Americans.

The bottom line is that this tragedy would not have occurred but for the War on Terror. When police shoot first and ask questions later it is right that we ask ourselves how far we’re willing to go in giving up our liberty in order to be safe. The banal quotation from Benjamin Franklin “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security” is totally inappropriate for any argument in the War on Terror. For it’s not a question of “security” we’re talking about but rather a question of “survival” - something Old Ben never had to face and couldn’t possibly understand.

There will be an investigation and debate in Great Britain over this tragedy. This is what democratic societies do and should be viewed in that light. It is one of our strengths that we can discuss these matters and refine and redefine if necessary the basis on which our societies operate. The important thing is that trust be maintained between the governed and the governors. This trust or “consent” is vitally necessary if government is going to be able to take the steps necessary to both protect us from the terrorists and yet allow the exercise of the very freedoms the terrorists seek to take away.

There will never be a definitive answer to the questions posed by the needless death of Mr. Menezes. Rather, like freedom itself, the answers will continue to evolve in response to specific situations as the free peoples of this earth seek to fend off the murderous advances of an enemy that seeks to take our lives, our freedoms, and our way of life. They can’t defeat us on any battlefield. They can only win if we allow their threats to cow our resolve to maintain both security and liberty. For if we give in to the temptation to favor one at the expense of the other, something vital will have been lost that we may find impossible to retrieve; the trust that exists between us all which allows our freedoms to flourish.

Maybe its the heat.

Record temps across most of the country seems to have brought the cluebats - both right and left - out of hiding. Like roaches scurrying hither and yon who are flushed from underneath the floorboards by applying liberal doses of smoke, the clueless have emerged this week into the light of day, coughing and hacking up their bilious rants and stumbling into one faux pas after another.

My personal favorite would have to be the Lieutenant Governor from the state of Pennsylvania who, not content to waste away in her office enjoying her golden years of senility, wandered the small towns and villages until she found herself at the funeral of a Marine killed in Iraq. Mistaking the gathering of grieving relatives for a Democratic fundraiser celebrating her party’s prospects to maintain control of the state house, she handed out her business card hoping to corral some of the largess being dispensed by the usual suspects at any Democratic party event; mobbed up unions, crooked trial lawyers, and washed up Hollywood actors.

Knowing the best way to get ahead at any event featuring more than two Democrats, she let it be known that the Kingdom of Pennsylvania opposed the war in Iraq. It’s unclear if she ever did figure out that she was at a funeral. She was heard to complain before leaving that the buffet could have been more expansive.

To be fair, she has issued an apology…of sorts. As one wag put it: “When the first words of a personal message are FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, you know it’s a poll-felt communication from a politician.”

Indeedy do.

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
(Albert Einstein)
“Hey Al! You forgot about Michael Moore’s appetite!”
(Me)

Cao of Cao’s Blog (pronounced “key”) sends us something from her “Only in America” department. One of her moonbat commenters, a Stephen Pearcy, has recently received national recognition for one of his less than inspirational pieces of art which depicts a map of the USA and superimposed flag being flushed down a toilet. This “artwork” was not graffiti in some public restroom but rather hung in the cafeteria at the California Department of Justice. Cao has a link to a contest for some counterprotest art in response.

Mr. Satire has done it again. In a definitely not safe for work post (nice pics though) Mr. S. takes a hilarious look at Roman Polanski’s recent libel suit against Vanity Fair. A snip: “After reading the article, I had to re-live the horrible sexual orgies and the decadent culture of sex, drugs and rock’n'roll in the good old days,” said Polanski.

The Peoples Republic of Seabrook gives us our first post about that truly clueless Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo who fancies himself something of a strategic thinker in the War on Terror. How nuking Mecca qualifies as thinking at all escapes me.

More Tancredo from AJ at The Strata-Sphere who wonders whether giving the cluebat this kind of recognition bestows a certain status on his ridiculous comments. Given that most disagree with his sentiments, I have to agree with AJ about his reasons for posting.

The Right Place has a wickedly funny take on a secret meeting held at DNC headquarters last week regarding the nomination of Judge Roberts to the Supreme Court. It’s worth reading if only to hear our illustrious minority leader: NANCY PELOSI: (Steps forward dressed in a ceremonial black robe and holding a tambourine) There is but one “Supreme” power, and SCOTUS is Her Name! {Shakes tambourine}

Don Surbur has some laugh out loud idiocy from his local government. Reading about this kind of cluelessness makes the old saw “He that governs best, governs least” resonate with meaning.

Mark Nicodemo has the honor of being the first to send us a post on Cluebat Hall of Fame member and Special Lifetime Achievement Award winner Jane Fonda whose anti-war “Crisco Tour” of America in a bus that runs on vegetable oil is a joke waiting for a punchline.

Searchlight Crusade has a truly frightening piece on the number and frequency of air space violations since 9/11. Dan Melson takes Congress and the Bureaucracy to task for this failing. Read it and get educated.

The lovely and talented Pamela, the “grrrlll blogger” from Atalas Shrugs wonders what the Iranian Thuggycrats are up to this week and then, in a stroke of inspiration, decides to see what the State of Israel has been up to during the same period. Um…guess who comes out looking like a grown up civilized society and which one looks like a mental institution for paranoids.

The Maryhunter is back from Hoboken and blogging about People for the American Way and their cluelessness about the Roberts nomination. He asks “If not Officially Opposing Roberts, then surely…”
The answer is yes they are opposing Roberts…AND DON’T CALL ME SHIRLEY!

The aforementioned Katherine Baker Knoll, Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania, is the target of Van Helsing’s wooden stake this week. What better site to highlight this kind of stupidity than one named “Moonbattery?”

More Knollology from More Than Loans. Tony B. has an excellent riposte to the left who are constantly complaining why Bush never attends the funerals of the fallen.

Flight Pundit has an eye opening blurb on John McCain’s cluelessness regarding the definition of “negligent.” Now if John could only learn how to spell “R-E-P-U-B-L-I-C-A-N and look up in a dictionary what it means he might have a shot in ‘08.

Giacomo of Joust the Facts is in high dudgeon over the way President Bush has been portrayed in a winning entry to a faux William Faulkner contest. Hey! I thought the left didn’t read anything by dead white, anglo-saxon men!

He’s baaaack! Hall of Famer John Kerry is back and Palmetto Pundit has him! In what can only be called a supremely ironic twist of fate, Klueless Kerry is demanding that someone else release documents.

Freedom is busting out all over - and in some of the most unlikely places. Take Yemen for example. Willisms shows why Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh , like most dictators, doesn’t have a clue as to why people should be revolting against his benevolent rule.

Quick! Stop the ACLU! Jay reminds us how this once respected rights group has now degenerated into partisan hackery and support for the enemies of civilization. Does anyone remember Kerensky?

Mean Ole Meany is being…well, mean. To lefties. To “Splodeydopes.”Strike three! Now sit down and shut up.” Yep…that just about covers it.

Parrot Check has a post on some real classy war protesters. Well at least they weren’t dressed in pink underwear while protesting the funeral of a fallen hero. Sayeth Duncan: “And may God convict the souls of those ignorant protesters who, like a flock of vultures, swooped down on a solemn and holy occasion honoring a fallen warrior.” Amen, bruddah.

Mark Coffey at Decision ‘08 has a post about apologists for terror such as Ali Kazak, the head of the General Palestinian Delegation to Australia & New Zealand and Palestinian Ambassador to Vanuatu and East Timor. I think this particular Palestinian has been sipping some of that beetle nut flavored Koolaid.

Minh Duc at State of Flux has a very personal and extremely well written response to John Derbyshire of NRO’s The Corner and his cluelessness about the Army of the Republic of South Viet Nam. Mr. Minh would seem to know of what he speaks. Too bad Mr. Derbyshire doesn’t.

Harvey at Bad Example has a really good example of hate mail gleaned from Blackfive’s site. Harvey: I’m tempted to put a Drink Alert on it - though whether because it’s so funny or because it’s so pig-ignorant, I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader. Grab a brew and enjoy!

Josh Cohen at Multiple Mentality has some ideas for the cluebats who are launching the shuttle today at NASA. Would you go up in a vehicle that had a 1 in 100 chance of blowing up? God how our once mighty space program has fallen!

Finally, here’s my post on the Pentagon’s refusal to turn over Abu Ghraib photographs and tapes to the ACLU and other moonbats.

UPDATE

Don’t forget the Carnival of the Vanities hosted this week at Partie Place.

This article in yesterday’s New York Times mirrors what I’ve been saying for more than two years; the biggest failure of George Bush’s presidency has been his failure to lead the American people as if there’s a war on.

Here’s what I wrote on 5/27/05:

My criticism, however, went back to early 2003 when it became clear that war with Iraq was a necessary adjunct to the war on terror.

The President’s failure to rally the people and instead, depend on the 50% of us who couldn’t stomach the idea of Kerry’s wishy-washy internationalist approach to the conflict was the biggest mistake of his Presidency. He could have done better.

As this article points out, at least some in the military feel exactly the same way:

From bases in Iraq and across the United States to the Pentagon and the military’s war colleges, officers and enlisted personnel quietly raise a question for political leaders: if America is truly on a war footing, why is so little sacrifice asked of the nation at large?

There is no serious talk of a draft to share the burden of fighting across the broad citizenry, and neither Republicans nor Democrats are pressing for a tax increase to force Americans to cover the $5 billion a month in costs from Iraq, Afghanistan and new counterterrorism missions.

There are not even concerted efforts like the savings-bond drives or gasoline rationing that helped to unite the country behind its fighting forces in wars past.

“Nobody in America is asked to sacrifice, except us,” said one officer just back from a yearlong tour in Iraq, voicing a frustration now drawing the attention of academic specialists in military sociology.

The question is why this should be so?

Surely one of the reason’s is the very nature of the war we’re fighting. If we were to overturn our lives too much, the terrorists could claim a victory of sorts. This was a fine rationale as far as it went.

But I submit that things have changed to the point that only a Presidential call to arms can now reverse a situation that many whose opinion we should respect are saying includes problems such as military recruitment, our occupation isn’t succeeding fast enough in turning over security responsibilities to the Iraqis, and our enemies are gathering strength to not only hit us again but also take the fight successfully to our allies.

MILITARY PROBLEMS

The fact that army recruiting goals have been met for the last two months cannot hide some alarming trends that, if not fixed, could inhibit our ability to project our power in the near future to places where our national security is threatened.

While recruitment is actually up for the Marine Corps, and the Navy and Air Force are easily meeting their goals, army recruitment is down significantly and worse, enlistment in National Guard units has also fallen off precipitously. And while it’s encouraging that re-enlistment rates among troops serving in Iraq is very high, this doesn’t help if a crisis develops in either Iran or North Korea. The fact is, more than 45% of our combat troops are engaged in Iraq. What would this mean for both the near future and long term?

In order to maintain the current high level of overseas activity many of the previous guidelines and “rules of thumb” for limiting overseas deployments have been set aside. Thus, combat assignments for Army troops have been extended from six months to a year or more, and average time between deployments has been cut. Guard and reserve tours have been extended, too.

Generally speaking, service leaders have sought in the past to routinely deploy one-third or less of warfighting forces overseas at any one time, while permitting relatively brief and infrequent surges to higher levels, such as during Operation Desert Storm. (One-third of the fighting force equals about 20 percent of active personnel overall). This pacing was meant to sustain morale and ensure that training, repair, and modernization cycles could be completed. The point of such guidelines was to strike a balance between current and future requirements.

Recent practice raises the prospect of two types of problems: first, a near-term decline in force cohesion and combat effectiveness while the military is still engaged in current operations; and, second, a long period of force recovery after current operations conclude. During this strategic “reset period” the capacity for large-scale military operations would be lower - perhaps significantly lower - than it was during the pre-war period. According to the Chief of the British Defence Staff, Sir Michael Walker, Great Britain already faces the second of these problems. In March 2004 he reported to the House of Commons Defence Committee that “[w]e are unlikely to be able to get to large-scale [operations] much before the end of the decade, somewhere around 08 or 09.”

With the election in Iran of a hard line ideologue who has already indicated that he wants to go forward with unranium enrichment regardless of what deal he strikes with the EU Three of Great Britain, France, and Germany, and with Israel poised to take military action in the event the enrichment programs are resumed, the middle east is a powder keg ready to explode. And as it stands now, we just do not have the forces available if the region becomes unstable to both police Iraq and protect our vital interests.

Currently (as much as I hate to admit it), the only realistic plan I’ve seen has been proposed by Hillary Clinton to increase the size of the army by 80,000. In order to fill that kind of order, the President is going to have to come before the nation and issue a call for volunteers. And while some would see Hillary’s sponsorship of this measure as her trying to move toward the middle as she prepares to make a presidential run in 2008, it’s still a good idea.

More troops wouldn’t solve all of our problems, but it could be a stop gap measure as we move into the fall and early winter which is when some experts believe the crisis with Iran could come.

THE PACE OF IMPROVEMENT IN IRAQ

As far as Iraqi politics, things are going remarkably well, better than anyone had a right to expect from a country that had never had representative government. However, several recent trends reveal some weaknesses in our strategy that are being exploited by our enemies.

First and foremost is the problem with the number of “boots on the ground.” As it stands now, we’ve painted ourselves into a corner by refusing to up the number of combat personnel in country. It’s clear that the pace of training for the Iraqi military and police is not proceeding as planned. And while the numbers of recruits are encouraging, the fact is that unit cohesion, developing competent officers, and deploying battle ready units is lagging.

This puts us in an almost impossible position. If we increase our troop strength to more effectively fight the insurgency, we undermine the training of the Iraqis. But we can’t draw down our strength because the Iraqis are not coming along fast enough. And since the insurgency is now changing and adapting to new realities, we’re hindered from doing the same. In short, the terrorists are trying their best to keep one step ahead of us.

The biggest change by the terrorists has been the increase in targeting Iraqi civilians on a sectarian basis hoping to ignite a civil war. So far, Shia moderates such as Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani have done a remarkable job of restraining the Shia’s but things are starting to deteriorate. Just a few days ago, we heard this from a close associate of al-Sistani:

“What is truly happening, and what shall happen, is clear: a war against the Shias,” Sheikh Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a prominent Shia cleric and MP, told the Iraqi parliament.

Sheikh al-Saghir is close to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme Shia spiritual leader and moderate who has so far managed to restrain powerful Shia militias from undertaking any outright attack on Sunni insurgents. His warning suggests that the Shia leadership may be losing its grip over Shias who in private often call for an armed backlash against their Sunni assailants.

A civil war between the Sunnis and Shias would be a nightmare for our forces. One encouraging development has been the inclusion of the Sunnis in drafting the new constitution. It’s devoutly hoped that if the Sunnis feel they have a political stake in the future of a democratic Iraq, that part of the insurgency could subside.

The problem with Zarqawi and al Qaeda is totally separate but once agian reveal a big weakness. Those foreign fighters are still infliltrating through Syria and Iran and we just don’t have enough forces for effective border control. And al Qaeda is playing our national media like a violin, making sure their attacks are spectacular in the numbers of innocent civilians killed which guarantee coverage in our press.

From August.2004 through May, 2005 Iraqi civilian casualties have been estimated at 800 a month. These include several thousand police and army recruits who are routinely attacked as they line up outside recruiting stations. This has had a deterimental effect on Iraqi civilian morale as the people lose faith in the new government to protect them.

AL QAEDA REORGANIZING

While some are saying that the London attacks prove al Qaeda’s reduced operational capabilities, they may also point to a reorganization of the terror network that relies more on small cells for execution while using a top level al Qaeda “overseer” to help plan the attack and be in charge of logistics.

The problems associated with ferreting out these small cells in a free and open democratic society have been demonstrated both here and in Great Britain. But the nightmare scenario is one of these small cells getting a hold of either dangerous chemicals or even a small amount of deadly biologicial material. This is what keeps policy makers awake nights.

But what of the organization’s strategic goals?

Al Qaeda sees the United States not as the primary focus of its long-term goals, but as a challenger to its ultimate goal: the establishment of a pan-Islamic state stretching across the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Al Qaeda’s aims are political, and it sees the United States not only in military or ideological terms, but also as a tool to be manipulated to help achieve a desired end.

To build a pan-Islamic state and re-establish the caliphate, al Qaeda requires a social/revolutionary movement stretching across several Muslim states. Stirring such a revolution is not easy, given the fractious nature of the Islamic world and the strength of many of the key Muslim regimes. To bring about a general uprising, al Qaeda needs to produce two initial elements — a common enemy against which to rally the people and a prospect for success. To some degree, the United States serves as the vehicle for both.

By striking at the United States, the security guarantor of many of the Muslim states, al Qaeda can show that Islamist militants are anything but impotent, even when facing down the world’s sole superpower. This, in turn, shows that the United States is vulnerable — and by extension, that the Muslim regimes backed by Washington are equally vulnerable, if not more so.

Using this rationale, al Qaeda wouldn’t have to carry out another 9/11 style attack. But can you imagine a series of bombings in various cities throughout the country on a scale of the London bombings of 7/7? If it’s a strategic goal of the organization to make the United States look impotent, such a demonstration could in fact embolden others to carry out attacks against American interests and our allies in the middle east.
*******************************************
I realize much of this article has been of the “glass is half empty” variety but I did it for a purpose. Too often those of us who support the President automatically reject any bad news coming out of Iraq or the War on Terror as being biased baloney from a bunch of Bush hating reporters and columnists. While this is true some of the time - and goodness knows I’ve debunked enough articles and columns over the last year - the problem as I see it is approaching crisis proportions. Not today. Not next week or month. But certainly within the year as threats materialize elsewhere and perhaps our luck runs out as far as avoiding a terrorist strike here.

Our military is doing a heroic job under extremely trying circumstances in Iraq. And they’re wondering what we here are doing besides giving lip service to their effort.

It’s long past time for the President to put this country on a war footing regardless of what the terrorists, his political opponents, the press, or anyone else may think. There are several things he could do to help our military and I’ve highlighted some of them in this article.

1. He could increase troop strength which would ease both our recruitment woes and shore up our strategic needs for the longer term.

2. He could increase pay and benefits so that the hardships suffered by soldiers families at home would be lessened.

3. He could make a constant effort to remind Americans of the suffering and sacrifices of our military and their families. He could ask Americans to help the families in the hundreds of ways to be found on the americasupportsyou.mil website.

4. He could get more outfront on the war. The President’s speech of June 28 was the culmination of a 10 day media blitz on Iraq. We don’t need media blitzes. We don’t need token references to the war scattered throughout speeches. We need leadership.

5. Raise taxes across the board to pay for the war. No one - not you, not Rumsfeld, not your OMB director - not anyone believed that 2 1/2 years after the cessation of major combat operations that we would still be paying $5.8 billion per month to fund the war. There is no shame in admitting you miscalculated. And such a proposal would wake this country up and let them know there’s a war on.

6. Scale back your reform plans for taxes, social security, and other domestic concerns. Cut entitlement programs while at the same time encouraging young people to enroll in Americorp and other volunteer organizations. Increase funding for your faith based initiative program. Get out front and lead!

These are just a few things the President can do to wake this country out of the slumber we’re in and help us all recognize there’s a war on - a war that will probably get worse before it starts getting better.

Our men and women in uniform deserve no less. And the President is the only one who can lead us in this effort.

The votes having been counted, Gates of Vienna won the latest Watcher’s vote with a thoughtful piece entitled Is Britain too Decadent to Survive? Finishing second was “In for the Long Haul: What Needs to Happen in the War on Terror” from The Glittering Eye. Nice chart Eye!

In the non Council category Norm Geras won for his Apologists Among Us while Stephen Green’s “Not Getting It Department” finished in the runner up spot.

If you’d like to participate in this week’s Watcher’s vote, go here and follow instructions.

Several former CIA officers - many of whom worked in counterintelligence - have recently come out and lambasted the White House for outing Valerie Wilson as an employee of the CIA. And while it’s undeniable that taking Mrs. Wilson’s identity from the routine gossip of Washington cocktail parties and publicizing it in the pages of America’s newspapers is a despicable act deserving of censure and punishment, it may be well to examine the motives of the CIA officers who are the most vociferous in their outrage at the scandal.

These three former agents signed a letter “begging” Congress not to play politics with the identities of intelligence agents. The letter fairly reeks of hypocrisy and hyperbole. Not only are the agents profiled below playing partisan politics as much as the Bush Administration is in this matter, it’s apparent from what these individuals have said in the past that their agenda goes far beyond “protecting” little Mrs. Wilson’s good name and in fact, goes to the heart of the bureaucratic war going on between the unelected government employees who worked or are working for the CIA and the White House.

MELVIN GOODMAN

On the surface, Mr. Goodman has an impressive resume. He was a senior analyst in Soviet affairs at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he worked for two decades (1966-1986). He later served as a Soviet analyst at the State Department, and he currently is professor of international studies at the National War College and a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. He is the author of three books on Soviet and Russian Affairs.

But dig a little deeper and what you find is someone who worked in a section of the CIA - Soviet Affairs - that got it more wrong, more often, with the subsequent effect on policy that was nearly ruinous. When some intelligence reports from that era were declassified in 2001, it was discovered in a 8 year period between 1978 and 1985 the CIA consistently overestimated the nuclear threat the Soviets posed. From 1982 until 1987 CIA estimates regarding Soviet economic strength were also grossly exaggerated. And in the area of Soviet intentions, we were virtually blind thanks to this attitude Mr. Goodman describes in an interview with CNN:

I think, in looking back at the work of the CIA, we’ve seen the exaggeration of the value of clandestine reporting. … I think the Cold War would have evolved no differently whether we were doing clandestine reporting or not — that there were no overwhelming successes with regard to clandestine reporting. You can’t say that about satellite photography, and you can’t say that about signals intelligence. Satellite photography and signals intelligence really gave us a means of understanding what the Soviets were doing with very scarce resources in the way of military deployment.

Mr. Goodman’s love affair with satellites and signals intel is admirable except for one small detail. Both the Senate Intelligence Report on Pre-War Iraq Intelligence and the 9/11 Commission excoriated the CIA for their lack of human intel. These two intelligence failures - arguably the biggest failures since Pearl Harbor - along with missing the fall of the Soviet Union, would be puzzling except for this statement by Mr. Goodman that reveals a mindset prevelant at the time in the Soviet Affairs section at CIA about being able to glean Soviet capabilities from satellite and signals intel:

This was extremely valuable material to all American negotiators and policymakers who had any interest in arms control whatsoever. … [I think this] worked to lessen tensions, because it’s given the United States a very good idea, at the highest levels, of what is actually in the Soviet inventory.

This was the basis for the “war” the CIA waged against the Reagan Administration. To be fair, it was a war that raged across the entire national security establishment; arms control or military build up? There was a suspicion among the William Casey faction at the CIA that people like Mr. Goodman were overstating Soviet nuclear capabilities to push the Administration towards arms control. As we now know, Casey shared President Reagan’s belief that the whole rotten edifice would come crashing down if pushed hard enough.

Guess who was right.

Curiously, Goodman also seems to have joined the tin foil hat brigade on 9/11. Appearing at Rep. Cynthia McKinney’s hearing on Friday that featured panelists who posited theories on 9/11 ranging from the Twin Towers coming down as a result of a “controlled demolition” to the Pentagon being blown up deliberately and not partially destroyed by a hijacked aircraft, Goodman was quoted as saying about McKinney that… “I hope someday her views will be considered conventional wisdom.”

LARRY JOHNSON

Claiming to be a “registered Republican who voted for Bush in 2000,” Johnson has emerged as Valerie Wilson’s #1 defender. His bio is also impressive; CIA, State Department, teacher, analyst, and businessman.

But it appears Mr. Johnson is living proof that brains doesn’t always equal judgement. Here’s what he wrote in July, 2001:

Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popular entertainment, Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism.

None of these beliefs are based in fact.

I hope for a world where facts, not fiction, determine our policy. While terrorism is not vanquished, in a world where thousands of nuclear warheads are still aimed across the continents, terrorism is not the biggest security challenge confronting the United States, and it should not be portrayed that way.

This was written 60 days before 9/11. Is it any wonder that committee after committee and commission after commission have called our intelligence gathering capabilities dysfunctional?

It’s almost as if our policy makers would be better off without these analysts and pontificators. What’s at work here is institutional blindness brought about by the bureaucrat’s preconcieved notions that when challenged, cause a retreat into a shell of platitudes and conventional wisdom. The fact is that if you hold contrary views to those in ascendancy at the CIA you are punished. People like Johnson represent why the United States government has been surprised so many times in so many parts of the world over the last 50 years.

RAY MCGOVERN

To put it bluntly, Ray McGovern is a moonbat.

A 30 year man at CIA, McGovern has gone off the deep end on the Iraq war. Despite not being in the CIA for nearly 15 years, he has taken the hard left talking points on the reasons for going to war with Iraq and run with them.

In an interview with the Atlanta -Journal, McGovern had this to say about the lead up to the war:

A: We’re trying to spread a little truth around. I’ve just been watching very, very closely how intelligence has been abused in the lead up to the Iraq war and, now, after the war. I fear for what this will mean for a very crucial part of our government. If the president can’t turn to the CIA for straight answers, whether he knows it or not, he’s in bad shape. He has nowhere to turn for a straight answer. He can’t expect [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz or [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld to tell him, “Sorry boss, we didn’t think of A or B or C. We thought it would be a cakewalk.” He’s getting slanted advice from the people running the policy toward Iraq.

Sounds like he’s concerned for the President. Guess again:

Q: Do the American people care that they were misled on Iraq? Does Congress? The press?

A: There’s still a lot of torpor, but there are two new elements now. No. 1: The men and women who are being killed every day in Iraq. No. 2: The fact that no one — not even the press — likes to be lied to. I’m an American, and I never thought the president would lie so often and so demonstrably.

Which is it? Is the President being ill served or is he lying through his teeth?

Mr. McGovern also has this to say about Iraq and al Qaeda:

The other main thing, of course, was the alleged tie between Iraq and al-Qaida. CIA analysts spent a year and a half poring through each and every report and found none to be persuasive or reliable. Then [Secretary of State] Colin Powell made his speech to the United Nations on Feb. 5, where he produced some cockamamie evidence suggesting that al-Qaida types were roaming around Iraq with Saddam Hussein. In the period leading up to the war, the president would say that we have to go after Iraq because of 9/11. That is the way that the president played on the trauma of 9/11 to persuade the American people that we couldn’t take a chance on Saddam Hussein.

Stephen Hayes has done the best work on this subject and gives the lie to McGovern’s ridiculous assertion there was no Saddam-al Qaeda connection.

McGovern also gave an interview to Alexander Cockburn’s moonbat rag Counterpunch in which he talked about the forged document that outlined the Iraq-Niger yellowcake connection:

In retrospect, the train of thought in the White House at the time is clear: How long can we keep the forged documents from the public? A few months? In that case we can use the documents to get Congress to endorse war with Iraq and then wage it and win it before anyone discovers that the “evidence” was bogus.

The problem for Mr. McGovern is that the Butler Review discovered that the forged memo was not the entire basis for the intelligence estimate regarding Iraq and Niger. In fact, that body found that the President of Niger admitted that representatives from Iraq met with Niger government officials to seek access to yellowcake supplies. And of course, Bush never said that Iraq had purchased yellowcake, only that they “sought” the mineral. This was 100% true as confirmed by both the British and Niger governments.

In recent years, McGovern has worked for a radical left Christain group known as the ecumenical Church of the Saviour. Here’s a recent bio:

Ray McGovern’s 27-year career as a CIA analyst spanned administrations from John F. Kennedy to George H. W. Bush. Ray is now co-director of the Servant Leadership School, which provides training and other support for those seeking ways to be in relationship with the marginalized poor. The School is one of ten Jubilee Ministries, not-for-profit organizations inspired by the ecumenical Church of the Saviour and established in an inner-city neighborhood in Washington, DC.

The department Ray heads at the School deals with the biblical injunction to “speak truth to power,” and this, together with his experience in intelligence analysis, accounts for his various writings and media appearances over the past year. His focus dovetails nicely with the passage carved into the marble entrance to CIA Headquarters: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”—the ethic mandating that CIA analysts were to “tell it like it is” without fear or favor.

McGovern is also a founder of the radical group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIP) whose Op-Ed’s, articles, and interviews have been featured in every far left magazine imaginable and who demanded in a “Memorandum to the President” that Bush fire VP Cheney.

These are just three of the former intelligence agents who are agitating against the Administration with regards to the Plame leak. These are not non-partisan casual observers; they are people with an agenda. And that agenda includes not just principled opposition to the Iraq war but unprincipled political opposition to the President. They are part of a group of agents both in and out of government who are at war with the Administration for a wide variety of reasons, not the least of which is the effort by the new DCIA to “clean house.” A good analysis of that effort by Porter Goss can be found here.

It is terribly unfair for the MSM not to give a little background on these agents while lionizing them. But, in this case, it appears that perspective is the last thing the MSM wishes to give to the motives of the opponents who flog the Administration on a daily basis.

UPDATE

Q & O also takes note of the Goodman-McKinney connection as well as his being a signatory of the Plame letter. They also have an interesting unrelated story on what Ted Turner has been up to lately.

UPDATE II

Pat Curley at Brainsters sent me this link to an LA Times article detailing Larry Johnson’s radio address on Saturday.

Oh…did I mention it was the Democrat’s response to the President’s address? Ach! So much for “non-partisan” critique of the Administration’s actions on Nadagate.