Can anyone say "mission creep"? The military always can, which is why a new initiative to give the Pentagon an ability to surge a combat-ready force for domestic security is so worrying.
The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist
attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.
The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.
There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement.
But the Bush administration and some in Congress have pushed for a heightened homeland military role since the middle of this decade, saying the greatest domestic threat is terrorists exploiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
They can say it all they want, but that doesn't make it so. And more to the point, the Bush administration knows it. Their analysts have already given them a half dozen scenarios involving WMD level casualties without actually using WMDs, exploiting LNG tankers, blowing up a big enough bomb next to an existing reactor or using other everday aspects of the nation's industry and commerce. All are easier to pull off than smuggling a bomb, or radioactives, into the country or than gathering a sizeable store of such material from domestic sources without discovery.
There's a rapidly developing consensus among Washington's Very Serious person set that Obama's plans to negotiate with Iran should get only one try, and if that fails then the bombing should begin.
Today Iran's parliamentary Speaker and the Ayatollah's most trusted negotiator, Ali Larijani, told the press that Iran's parliament is considering a request from the U.S. Congress to "parliamentary negotiations between the two countries". (And just wait till the wingnuts start howlking about a Dem Congress sidelining the Lame Duck In Chief!) Also today, France's President Sarkozy partly walked back his previous confrontational rhetoric on Iran and said that Obama's statements "reflect our shared views on the necessity of dialogue without concessions with Tehran as the only way to obtain a negotiated end to the crisis."
It would seem that prospects for an international consensus on negotiations, and prospects for Iran actually taking those negotiations seriously, are quite hopeful. Yet David Ignatius in today's WaPo leads the bellicose VSP charge to give Obama a very short timeline to make any diplomatic initiatives work, echoing the tack of more rightwing and neocon thinktanks.
He begins by lamenting the fact that the Bush administration's hawks appear to have failed in their push to attack Iran and then recapitulates hawkish hype over Iran's nuclear program, conveniently forgetting that both the IAEA and the last US intelligence community's NIE say there's no evidence Iran has a weapons program behind its civilian one. He then goes on to catalogue repeated Bush administration failures in the diplomatic arena, seemingly without irony, and to say that Obama must have a Plan B if his own venture fails at the first hurdle.
Other front-runners have emerged in recent days, including Adm. Dennis Blair, retired from the Navy, for director of national intelligence; Susan E. Rice, a former assistant secretary of state, for ambassador to the United Nations; James B. Steinberg, a former deputy national security adviser, for deputy secretary of state; and Thomas E. Donilon, a former chief of staff at the State Department, for deputy national security adviser.
Gates' deputy and heir-apparent will likely be Richard Danzig and Michele Flournoy will fill the highly important positionof DoD #3, undersecretary for policy.
It is, as just about everyone seems to be noting today, a very centrist team rather than a progressive one. Rice and Flournoy are the (partial) exceptions, rather than the rule. No surprises there to anyone who wasn't drinking the kool-aid that Obama was a very liberal person wholesale - perhaps not what we might have hoped for and looking set to perpetuate the pervasive VSP meme of American exceptionalism albeit in a gentler form, but still streets ahead of a Bush or McCain foreign policy.
And, despite the frantic attempts of the Cretindens of the Right to spin it otherwise, few left-of-centrists are going to be too upset about keeping Gates for a year or so when everyone saw (and the Right are hoping we've forgotten) that Gates was an adult imposed by Poppy Bush's realists to supervise the incompetent neocon kiddies of the Bush Junior administration in the first place. Progressives might not be ecstatic about keeping Gates, but we can see the point - and no, the point isn't praising Junior for his Babysitter. It's partly about stopping the military's desk-jockeys from whining, in Clinton era style, about a President and SecState who don't "get" them while much needed reforms are pushed through but mostly about a consensus that freezes outthe neocons and their Cheneyite fellow travelers.
Clinton, if anything, is more problematic than Gates and potentially the most trouble of all simply because there's little doubt that Gates knows how to subordinate himself to his President's overall direction while still keeping his own end of policy debates respectfully strenuous. Hillary...well, we'll see.
A year ago this month, armed raiders broke into the Pelindaba nuclear research facility in South Africa, where that nation stores its weapons-grade nuclear material, in circumstances that strongly suggest inside knowledge and even insider complicity in the raid. They shot an employee in the chest and made a clean escape from the supposedly high security facility, and still know one knows who they were and there aren't even any worthwhile leads to tracking them down.
The raiders had detailled knowledge of the security and layout of the plant.
They had breached and shut off a 10,000-volt barbed-wire fence and eluded security cameras and guards at one of the country’s most secure facilities.
As the attackers approached the door, Gerber called security and said they were under attack. "It shouldn't have taken more than three minutes to get there," says Gerber. He says it took 24 minutes to respond to his call. Gerber has filed suit against the Pelindaba facility for damages. Another fact he finds suspicious is that the police never questioned him until 60 Minutes began investigating the story. "It is strange," Gerber tells Pelley.
Theories have included a raid by terrorists, criminals and some kind of highly organised "lover's triangle" revenge attack on Gerber himself. But there have been no arrests, no suspects named, no clues. And what the 60 Minutes piece doesn't reveal is that the raiders almost got what they came for. The NYT, last year, reported:
when four gunmen burst into the room. Mr. Gerber pushed his fiancée under a desk. The attackers shot him in the chest, grabbed a computer and fled, but abandoned their booty as they came under assault by guards.
At no point did the raiders attempt to seize nuclear material - but that computer seems to have been important to their plans. They went right to it, grabbed it and ran. Perhaps it contained details of how South Africa built its nuclear weapons, perhaps incriminating details of their suspected partners in that bomb-building project.
But whatever the real motives and real identities of the raiders, Pelindaba underscored the harsh reality that in facilities across the globe nuclear material is secured, but not all that strongly. Plants in the former Soviet Union, in Pakistan and in South America are judged as especially vulnerable, and could hand a non-state actor - a terrorist group - the knowledge and materials for bomb making. It's a threat that the Nunn-Lugar Act of 1991 and the subsequent Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, focused on the former Soviet states, has tried to address even as the Bush administration has tried to underfund it and to use it as a bargaining piece in posturing over Georgia. It's a subject we know is close to Barrack Obama's heart, as he's seen for himself how loose the security at such facilities can be.
CAF's Research Director Eric Lotke discusses the "Investment Deficit" report.
On November 18th, the Campaign for America's Future, a progressive think-tank, launched a report that called for a massive investment to create jobs and restore America's neglected infrastructure. Now, President-Elect Obama has promised to deliver exactly that.
In launching their report, CAF authors Eric Lotke, Alex Carter, Brian Dockstader, Schuyler Beckwith and Molly Swartz wrote:
America is falling apart. Falling apart, and falling behind.
Previous generations of Americans built interstate highways and transcontinental railroads. Now we sit in traffic.
Americans from an earlier era pioneered universal primary education and chartered great universities on public land. They enacted the G.I. bill to give the greatest generation the access to college that helped build our modern middle class. Nowadays American students toil in overcrowded classrooms with leaky roofs, while the cost of college soars out of reach.
America grew up investing in its land and its people. Historically, we directed roughly 8 percent of our gross domestic product to long-range investments, and the investment paid off. Now we are down below 4 percent. Our post World War II infrastructure is starting to decay, and we aren’t replacing it. We are lamenting the loss of jobs rather than hiring people to renew and rebuild.
Other countries are racing past. China spends 9 percent of its GDP on infrastructure investment and opens a new subway system every year.
...As this report is released, America’s economy is in a deep downturn, which is now spreading across the globe. A major recovery program is essential to lift this economy from what is likely to be the worst recession since the Great Depression. Direct public investment—in new energy and conservation, in modernizing our infrastructure, in education and training, and research and development—should be the centerpiece of any recovery plan. That is not only necessary to lift the economy in the short run; it is a vital down payment on the sustained public investment that we need to sustain a competitive and decent society in a global economy.
Today, Obama announced what will doubtless be one of his centerpiece domestic policies for his first term, along with healthcare reform.
I have already directed my economic team to come up with an Economic Recovery Plan that will mean 2.5 million more jobs by January of 2011 — a plan big enough to meet the challenges we face that I intend to sign soon after taking office. We’ll be working out the details in the weeks ahead, but it will be a two-year, nationwide effort to jumpstart job creation in America and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy. We’ll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels; fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.
These aren’t just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis; these are the long-term investments in our economic future that have been ignored for far too long. And they represent an early down payment on the type of reform my administration will bring to Washington — a government that spends wisely, focuses on what works, and puts the public interest ahead of the same special interests that have come to dominate our politics.
On domestic issues, at least, Obama seems prepared to listen to - and act upon - the ideas of his progressive base. A big commitment to a minumum baseline of infrastructure spending seems far more reasonable and rational than the same idea being applied to military spending. And given the economic situation right now, it would seem impossible to do both without the kind of massive deficit spending Obama has already said he won't enter into. That's something that gives me hope that Obama's foreign and national security policies won't end up quite as hawkish as the seem to be tending right now.
The United States is projected to spend more on defense in FY 2009 than the next 45 highest spending countries combined, yet a push by conservatives and the military, backed by arms companies, is trying to lock the defense budget at 4% of GDP.
The unholy triumvirate of Pentagon deskwarriors, arms manufacturers and conservative fans of defense pork are ramping up a pressure campaign right now designed to inflate the military's budget requirements and thus provide a cushion for what they believe will be an Obama administration's pullback from record defense spending levels under Bush. By January, that campaign will be in high gear, with lobbyists and pundits enlisted to push for money to fund everything from missile defense plans against non-existant threats to stealth jets as counter-terrorism platforms against small groups of men with improvised bombs.
The centerpiece of their pressure plan is “Four Percent for Freedom” - a notion that defense spending should be pegged at a baseline of four percent of national GDP, forever amen. It's a dishonest and misleading slogan invented by the neoconservative Heritage Foundation but pushed by Dubya, John McCain, Republican lawmakers, CJCS Admiral Mullen and SecDef Bob Gates - one which if turned into policy will hamstring Obama's budget options, perpetuate a massive world of pork and undermine civilian control of the military. In this quarter's Parameters, the journal of the Army War College, Travis Sharp of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation lays out the reasons why Obama and the nation should say "No" to the triumvirate's lobbying.
So Tom Daschle is going to be Health and Human Services Secretary. Even the Republicans agree that it's a brilliant choice, since it will take someone with real knowledge of how to get things done in Congress to be an effective secretary here.
It's a key position because it means Daschle is going to be the point man on Obama's plans for health-care reform. Daschle already has laid out where he's going, and it's a decidedly progressive direction -- though, notably, it still falls short of a single-payer system.
Last May, White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten instructed federal agency heads to make sure any new regulations were finalized by Nov. 1. The memo didn’t spell it out, but the thinking behind the directive was obvious. As Myron Ebell of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute put it: “We’re not going to make the same mistakes the Clinton administration did.”
... But that strategy doesn’t account for the Congressional Review Act of 1996.
The law contains a clause determining that any regulation finalized within 60 days of congressional adjournment — Oct. 3, in this case — is considered to have been legally finalized on Jan. 15, 2009. The new Congress then has 60 days to review it and reverse it with a joint resolution that can’t be filibustered in the Senate.
In other words, any regulation finalized in the last half-year of the Bush administration could be wiped out with a simple party-line vote in the Democrat-controlled Congress.
Given how often the Bush administration have sidelined Congress to push their own policies, the notion that a majority of Congress can so easily sideline Bush's last six months in office has a delicious sense of karma about it.
From January 12, 2009, citizens from such infamous terrorist hotbeds as New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Western Europe and several other nations around the world ordinarily covered under the Visa Waiver Program will be required to submit an application for authorization via the Internet before they will be allowed to enter the United States.
Bad enough the Brits and European nationals have been compelled to disclose sensitive data when flying into the United States, i.e., personal information about their racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, and data concerning the health and even sex life, to the Department of Homeland Security which ‘may be used by the DHS in exceptional cases.’ And we’ve recently seen examples of what the NSA has considered to be ‘exceptional cases’, swapping recordings of intimate phone calls between innocent Americans around the office canteen like you and I might share an Internet joke.
Bad enough that even travelers in transit who are not even stopping in the US are treated like potential criminals and terrorists by airport security. Even worse that passenger’s laptops, mobile phones or any other data storage device can be confiscated indefinitely by federal agents without any suspicion of wrongdoing, the information copied and shared with other agencies or even ‘private entities’ for language translation, data decryption or any other reason. Business travelers in particular, rather than dark skinned young men from unfriendly Middle Eastern countries, seem to be the main targets of confiscation.
There's little doubt that General David Petraeus is a smart cookie whatever you think about his political loyalties, and quite a few people I respect highly as foreign policy reporters and analysts have good opinions of his military abilities. But when did a four star general get handed the authority to act as if he were Secretary of State?
Gen. David H. Petraeus has launched a major reassessment of U.S. strategy for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and the surrounding region, while warning that the lack of development and the spiraling violence in Afghanistan will probably make it "the longest campaign of the long war."
The 100-day assessment will result in a new campaign plan for the Middle East and Central Asia, a region in which Petraeus will oversee the operations of more than 200,000 American troops as the new head of U.S. Central Command, beginning Oct. 31.
The review will formally begin next month, but experts and military officials involved said Petraeus is already focused on at least two major themes: government-led reconciliation of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the leveraging of diplomatic and economic initiatives with nearby countries that are influential in the war. [Emphasis Mine - C]
All of this seems like a good idea to me. But, crucially, neither of those themes are military ones and the military shouldn't be leading the way on them. It's about seperation of power and having the military subordinate to civilian policymakers rather than the other way around.
... deep inside an 86-page supplement to United States export regulations is a single sentence that bars U.S. exports of vaccines for avian bird flu and dozens of other viruses to five countries designated "state sponsors of terrorism."
The reason: Fear that they will be used for biological warfare.
Under this little-known policy, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria and Sudan may not get the vaccines unless they apply for special export licenses, which would be given or refused according to the discretion and timing of the U.S. Three of those nations — Iran, Cuba and Sudan — also are subject to a ban on all human pandemic influenza vaccines as part of a general U.S. embargo.
Even Bob Gates thinks it's "the nuttiest thing", when Indonesia does the same thing in reverse.
Democratic lawmakers are planning a massive infrastructure package as an economic stimulus after the November elections.
"Not only is Wall Street frozen, but Main Street is in real trouble. A stimulus aimed at Main Street makes sense," New York Sen. Charles Schumer told CNN.
He said the plan should "get into the guts of the economy" by boosting spending on infrastructure such as roads, sewer and water projects.
Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who served under President Bill Clinton, told CNN that an infrastructure plan that could quickly pump money into the economy was the most important action that U.S. authorities could take to help deal with the current economic crisis.
"I would put in place an infrastructure piece... bridges, water systems roads, highways, but not new projects that are going to take a long time to set up," Rubin said. "There are a lot of existing projects where states and cities are having a hard time finding a lot of financing where you could funnel that money right into existing activities where you would be able to act very very quickly."
Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told ABC he'll be spearheading the House version of the package.
Meanwhile, Republicans are apparently set on "staying the course" on tax cuts, which have failed to prevent the economy getting into such dire straits in the first place.
McCain and Obama debate the economic crisis' effect on national security.
We're already in a situation that no matter what gets done, the economic meltdown is going to drag a lot of people worldwide under. We're in the same situation with global warming - in that case quite literally. Now Republicans and their energy lobbyist friends are saying we're going to have to choose which one sinks most.
As one Republican senator put it, the green bubble has burst.
"Clearly it is somewhere down the totem pole given the economic realities we are facing," said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy Corp., an electricity producer that has supported federal mandates on greenhouse gases. Duke is a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an association of businesses and nonprofit groups that has lobbied Congress to act.
What they have the axe out for is "Cap and Trade", a policy plan whereby companies either reduce emissions or pay to pollute. The energy industry, of course, hates it - and now wants permits to pollute to be free. Their vest-pocket representatives on the Hill already have such a bill in the works and it's sponsored by two Dems - Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va and of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich. Even that's not good enough for House Republicans. Oklahoman wingnut Inhofe says "The current economic crisis only reinforces the public's wariness about any climate bill that attempts to increase the costs of energy and jeopardizes jobs," while Texan Joe Barton says even the Boucher-Dingell bill could lead the country "off the economic cliff."
Other Democrats, however, see a cap-and-trade bill — and the government revenues it would generate from selling permits — as an engine for economic growth. Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama supports auctioning off all permits, using the money to help fund alternative energy.
"If you see this as a job creation opportunity for the U.S. to develop the products that are then sold around the world, then you should be optimistic about what the impact of passage would mean for the American economy," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass.
The energy lobby is apparently quite willing to cynically sacrifice lives to its members own pocketbooks, just as the financial sector is. Both are also willing to sacrifice national security on the altars of their own greed too. It's not too long since a Republicans were trying to sink the production of an NIE on the national security implications of gobal warming - even after a Pentagon report in 2003 (PDF) and a government-funded thinktank of retired military leaders in 2007 both called climate change a pressing threat to national security. More recently, even once-was-neocon Francis Fukuyama admits that the financial meltdown will have massive negative implications for America's place in the world and governments worldwide are publicly worrying about its effects on geopolitical stability.
Of course, we've seen this kind of corporate selfishness before - from the military/industrial complex Ike warned about so accurately. It's become obvious that the problem is any too cozy corporate/government symbiosis. Such relationships are bad for We The People, end of story.
Investigative journalist Gareth Porter, a smart guy and a friend of mine, gave an interview to "The Real News" on Sunday on the topic of foreign policy directions under a McCain or Obama presidency. Gareth's opinion is that, contra McKinney and Nader, there is a qualitative difference between McCain, a died-in-the-wool neoconservative, and Obama's more pragmatic approach to American superpowerdom - but that even Obama wouldn't make a clear break with the past 50 years of American power projection, instead repurposing it away from the Bush Years with less violently militaristic expressions. So that although both would to a continuation of one or other of the Bush terms, just as Bush followed the last 50 years, McCain would hyper-extend the first term's Cheney-esque bellicosity while Obama would emphasise and amplify the pragmatic policies of the likes of Secretary of Defense Bob Gates.
One of the major points Gareth makes in his interview is that, from everything McCain has said about Iraq during his campaign, it isn't impossible to believe McCain would keep the occupation of Iraq going even over the wishes of the Iraqi people and government, perhaps even arranging a coup to unseat Prime Minister Maliki. I think it would certainly be interesting to see how he would respond if asked about this outright by the establishment press.
Obama however, while he'd be likely to hurry withdrawal even beyond the Maliki-approved timetable if he thought it could be done, is just as inextricably committed to staying in Afghanistan and to using military force as the main effort there as McCain is - perhaps even more so when you consider what he has said about the Pakistan border area. McCain, as a paid up neocon, would doubtless be saying "faster please" on war with Iran, which Obama seems to realize would be a disaster.
As to Russian relations, while Gareth doesn't address those in his interview, it seems unlikely that neither Obama nor McCain would depart greatly from the underlying concept of American foreign policy for five decades - that the US is allowed a sphere of influence, the whole world, but no-one else is and certainly not Russia. The question is, can the US maintain that position any longer?
Obama has a lead in all the national polls and has made significant progress in the battleground states at this point. So I think if he wants to cement his run to the White House, he should come out with an updated version of an economic recovery plan that further illustrates his leadership abilities. With his constant call for bipartisanship, he can summon the Republicans to join him for the good of America or he'll be able to paint them as ideologues hellbent on retaining their power in Congress instead of trying to use their authority to help the American people.
It's a simple strategy that could resonate with voters and also knock the Newt Gingrich-led Republicans back on their heels---painting them at obstructing the American dream.
I've never been a fan of calling for bipartisanship because there are no moderate Republicans left in DC since the "Southern strategy" was launched by Gingrich in '94. They've attacked Democrats and liberals at every turn, but as I've said, Obama can use that now to his advantage and it would also finally lead the country in a progressive direction.
The fruits of Conservatism have been finally realized and we can all see that its end game has led this country into ruin so now is the time for a left-wing agenda to guide the country. It will be a difficult task; the Conservatives will continue to kick and scream, but playing the obstructionist game may not help their cause. In any case, if Obama comes out strong and leads with a firm hand he can grab the White House and give us a legitimate shot are restoring America to the promised land.
The ball is in your court now, Obama, will you take it?
From January 12, 2009, citizens from such infamous terrorist hotbeds as New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Western Europe and several other nations around the world ordinarily covered under the 
