The Government's FAQ on WMD and NBC Terrorism
One of my favorite government reports, an alphabet soup of acronyms, organizations and bullet points that barely pass for English, was released this week. One can only decipher it by reading between the lines with a bureaucratic magnifying glass.
And what does it say? The "Report on Activities and Programs for Countering Proliferation and NBC Terrorism" (see what I mean about the acronyms? NBC stands for nuclear, biological and chemical) shows mostly how the government R&D establishment and the nuclear priesthood use the nuclear threat to get more money.
The United States will spend more than $20 billion this year on research and development to "combat" weapons of mass destruction and prevent "NBC terrorism," a program that the report calls the highest priority national security objective. That $20 billion doesn't include a similar amount the U.S. will spend on the nuclear arsenal and the weapons laboratory and production complex.
This effort isn't oriented toward Russia or China, America's nuclear rivals. The program is aimed primarily on a newly nuclear capable North Korea, Iran and on terrorists hoping to obtain WMD. Given the program's dazzling failure with North Korea, I guess we should expect al-Qaeda to have the bomb soon.
Just joking. But it's a serious problem that this effort to "combat" WMD is all hardware, all databases, all after-the-fact. This program is a bottomless pit of unaccountable spending.
The report -- thanks to Steve Aftergood of FAS for bringing it to my attention -- is filled with details about what the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, the CIA, the Missile Defense Agency, U.S. Strategic Command, special operations forces, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Army Nuclear and Combating WMD Agency, the Underground Facility Analysis Center (to name just a few of the organizations it mentions) are doing. And yet, every year when I read it, it becomes painfully obvious that there's no there there: Even if Osama bin Laden tests a nuclear device in some Pakistani cave next year, these guys are going to get their billions. In fact they'd probably get even more money.
For those who think the government may be planning a strike on Iran, the report should be sobering in a kind of comforting way. The intelligence, we are told, is not quite complete -- nor are the databases, the models, the plans, the weapons, the organizational structure, the paperwork, and on and on. Nothing is ever just right. In short, the report makes clear that combating WMD is such a complex task that, ahem, more money is needed.
When one scratches the surface of the $20 billion-plus budget of the defense, energy and intelligence communities, it is clear that the bulk of this money is spent to help the government prepare for failure. The "consequence management" empire, now extending to the Department of Homeland Security, is all about post-incident cleanup.
The only elements of the program that are oriented toward "combating WMD" (as most people would interpret the phrase) are those oriented toward "interdiction" of nuclear materials and trade, and "offensive operations" oriented toward preempting WMD activities. Even here, we get a lot of reorganization. I guess we should all be happy to know that STRATCOM has established a Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction.
If there is one positive message in the report, it is its plea for greater conventional-weapons capabilities. "Current options for prompt global coverage are limited to nuclear-armed ballistic missiles of intercontinental range, and, to some extent, cruise missiles," the report says. In other words, if the United States got warning that North Korea or Iran was preparing a nuclear attack on us, the president would have few options to respond other than a nuclear weapon.
The conventional Trident missile, which I've written about, is the "only near-term, low-risk option for a prompt conventional global strike capability." Other conventional options, the report says, won't be ready "until 2015 at the earliest." Aren't you glad to know that, eight years from now, we'll have an effective weapon against Iran?
This is what is so depressing about this report. It fails to take into account American power, diplomacy or history, or the motivations of our adversaries and their own WMD pursuits. It just portrays the scientists and war planners doggedly pursuing a better way to get their weapon to the designated target in the allotted 30 minutes. They satisfy their part of the equation, and we live with the illusion of security.
I can't wait for next year's update.
By William M. Arkin |
August 10, 2007; 7:29 AM ET
Previous: Pakistan's Nukes: Worry or Excuse? |
Next: Obama and Clinton Go Nuclear
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Posted by: 2ts2sx019z | August 27, 2007 1:55 AM
Mr. Arkin says: "...Even if Osama bin Laden tests a nuclear device in some Pakistani cave next year .."
OBL is probably dead or seriously ill, we have not heard from him for a long long time. Even if he is alive and hiding in a deep cave there is not even one chance in a billion for him to make a nuclear bomb, yet Mr. Arkin exploits this bugaboo to prepare an atmosphere for the next move in the perpetual war. Making a Nuclear bomb is no joke, many countries have tried but failed and only eight or nine have succeeded, this with the full backing of a state's power. How much did the Manhattan project cost us? How many highly qualified professionals were involved? Can OBL muster same kind of resourcess? Our esteemed journalists are turning OBL into a superhuman. Why? Just to scare us into another war.
He could have used some more respectable adversaries, Chavez can probably make it, even, perhaps, Castro if he tries hard, but since these are not on Bush Administration's target list at this time there was not much point in mentioning them. He also mentions Iran and North Korea, now everyone knows that North Korea has given up the Nukes, and Iran is nowhere near making one. In fact Iran has signed all the NPT protocols, and has explicitly said that she does not want to make Nukes. Yet the drumbeaters keep beating the drum of war.
Do not beat drums of war. Vote for Ron Paul.
Posted by: masmanz | August 15, 2007 11:37 AM
OK. Everyone cool down and take a deep breath. Put your political agendas aside and think of the welfare of the US. Thanks. If you go to the website Mr. Arkin references in his article and read the CPRC report, you'll discover that the intent of Congress when they established the CPRC in 1994 was the coordination of Federal combating WMD efforts. Congress wanted to eliminate overlaps and duplications as well as plug gaps in research and develop efforts. Participants in the CPRC include not only the Dept of Defense, but also the Dept of Homeland Security. The ultimate goal is the protection of US citizens from WMD. Is this such a bad thing - protect people from poison gas and germ warfare while getting the most from our research and development money?
Posted by: Jeff Adams | August 14, 2007 7:29 AM
Join us now. Create a (Cabinet-level) Department of Peace.
D. Kucinich
Thank you very much!
Posted by: The Rev | August 11, 2007 11:51 AM
Why hasn't the Post fired Arkin?
Posted by: RJ | August 11, 2007 12:49 AM
For *actual* uncensored news:
Citizens for Legitimate Government
http://www.legitgov.org/
Posted by: Lori Price | August 10, 2007 7:47 PM
For uncensored news please bookmark:
www.wsws.org
www.takingaiminfo.com
www.onlinejournal.com
otherside123.blogspot.com
www.globalresearch.ca
US turns U-2 spy planes on itself, raising specter of broader surveillance
John Byrne
Published: Thursday August 9, 2007
In a striking but unnoticed extension of domestic surveillance, the little-known National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency deployed a U-2 spy plane on the region affected by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to track hazards to public health.
In an article Thursday, Salon's Tim Shorrock explores the emergence of the NGA, born in 1996 from a partnership between the CIA, the Pentagon and the agency that maintains America's spy satellites.
The single-seat high-altitude plane, originally designed for CIA spy missions -- remembered perhaps for a 1960 mission where a plane was shot down over the Soveit Union -- is a key element of the US arsenal in collecting intelligence overseas. Its high-resolution imagery is critical for examining nuclear and other weapons sites.
In a way, Shorrock suggests the visible mission of the U-2 over New Orleans is akin to the visible mission of the U-2 over the Soviet Union -- a tip of the iceberg in a much larger program that most of America knows nothing about.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/US_turns_U2_spy_planes_on_0809.html
Posted by: che | August 10, 2007 3:57 PM
This is but a page of one chapter of the book---THE LARGEST ROBBERY IN HISTORY of your taxpayer dollars, your children's taxpayer dollars, and your grandchildren's taxpayer dollars. Yes, the Fascist's are guaranteeing a rosy future for them and theirs. How does it feel to have your family economically enslaved to the Fascist's? How does it feel? PS-The traditional Republican Party is all but dead!
Posted by: ghostcommander | August 10, 2007 2:01 PM
Posted by: The | August 10, 2007 01:03 PM
"Perhaps we need to create another branch of government...
...a new civilian government, with power..."
Participate in an historic citizen lobbying effort to create a U.S. Department of Peace. There is currently a bill before the U.S. House of Representatives (HR 808). This landmark measure will augment our current problem-solving options, providing practical, nonviolent solutions to the problems of domestic and international conflict.
Domestically, the Department of Peace will develop policies and allocate resources to effectively reduce the levels of domestic and gang violence, child abuse, and various other forms of societal discord. Internationally, the Department will advise the President and Congress on the most sophisticated ideas and techniques regarding peace-creation among nations.
Learn more... http://www.thepeacealliance.org/
Join us now. Create a (Cabinet-level) Department of Peace.
Posted by: D. Kucinich | August 10, 2007 1:16 PM
Perhaps we need to create another branch of government...
...a new civilian government, with power, that will coincide with the military form of government that will apparently be with us for a long time to come, no matter who is President.
Thank God that the uncelebrated leaders in government during the Vietnam war, finally had the foresight and the gumption to end it - and Vietnam is better off today as a result (communist or not).
If the leaders that we have in place today in Washington, were in place then, I suspect that we would still be in Vietnam, fighting their neighbors in Cambodia and receiving a phalanx of newer and more sophisticated government reporting.
Posted by: The | August 10, 2007 1:03 PM
Speaking of OUR "Nuclear Priesthood"; here is a historical reminder of the 'fall-out' we sowed and reaped when last on that path...
-------------------------------
The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Untold Story
By Gary G. Kohls
08/09/07 "Lew Rockwell" --- 62 years ago, on August 9th, 1945, the second of the only two atomic bombs (a plutonium bomb) ever used as instruments of aggressive war (against essentially defenseless civilian populations) was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, by an all-Christian bomb crew. The well-trained American soldiers were only "doing their job," and they did it efficiently.
It had been only 3 days since the first bomb, a uranium bomb, had decimated Hiroshima on August 6, with chaos and confusion in Tokyo, where the fascist military government and the Emperor had been searching for months for a way to an honorable end of the war which had exhausted the Japanese to virtually moribund status. (The only obstacle to surrender had been the Truman administration's insistence on unconditional surrender, which meant that the Emperor Hirohito, whom the Japanese regarded as a deity, would be removed from his figurehead position in Japan - an intolerable demand for the Japanese.)
The Russian army was advancing across Manchuria with the stated aim of entering the war against Japan on August 8, so there was an extra incentive to end the war quickly: the US military command did not want to divide any spoils or share power after Japan sued for peace.
The US bomber command had spared Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Kokura from the conventional bombing that had burned to the ground 60+ other major Japanese cities during the first half of 1945. One of the reasons for targeting relatively undamaged cities with these new weapons of mass destruction was scientific: to see what would happen to intact buildings - and their living inhabitants - when atomic weapons were exploded overhead.
Early in the morning of August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress called Bock's Car, took off from Tinian Island, with the prayers and blessings of its Lutheran and Catholic chaplains, and headed for Kokura, the primary target. (Its bomb was code-named "Fat Man," after Winston Churchill.)
The only field test of a nuclear weapon, blasphemously named "Trinity," had occurred just three weeks earlier, on July 16, 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The molten lavarock that resulted, still found at the site today, is called trinitite.
With instructions to drop the bomb only on visual sighting, Bock's Car arrived at Kokura, which was clouded over. So after circling three times, looking for a break in the clouds, and using up a tremendous amount of valuable fuel in the process, it headed for its secondary target, Nagasaki.
Nagasaki is famous in the history of Japanese Christianity. Not only was it the site of the largest Christian church in the Orient, St. Mary's Cathedral, but it also had the largest concentration of baptized Christians in all of Japan. It was the city where the legendary Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, established a mission church in 1549, a Christian community which survived and prospered for several generations. However, soon after Xavier's planting of Christianity in Japan, Portuguese and Spanish commercial interests began to be accurately perceived by the Japanese rulers as exploitive, and therefore the religion of the Europeans (Christianity) and their new Japanese converts became the target of brutal persecutions.
Within 60 years of the start of Xavier's mission church, it was a capital crime to be a Christian. The Japanese Christians who refused to recant of their beliefs suffered ostracism, torture and even crucifixions similar to the Roman persecutions in the first three centuries of Christianity. After the reign of terror was over, it appeared to all observers that Japanese Christianity had been stamped out.
However, 250 years later, in the 1850s, after the coercive gunboat diplomacy of Commodore Perry forced open an offshore island for American trade purposes, it was discovered that there were thousands of baptized Christians in Nagasaki, living their faith in a catacomb existence, completely unknown to the government - which immediately started another purge. But because of international pressure, the persecutions were soon stopped, and Nagasaki Christianity came up from the underground. And by 1917, with no help from the government, the Japanese Christian community built the massive St. Mary's Cathedral, in the Urakami River district of Nagasaki.
Now it turned out, in the mystery of good and evil, that St. Mary's Cathedral was one of the landmarks that the Bock's Car bombardier had been briefed on, and looking through his bomb site over Nagasaki that day, he identified the cathedral and ordered the drop.
At 11:02 am, Nagasaki Christianity was boiled, evaporated and carbonized in a scorching, radioactive fireball. The persecuted, vibrant, faithful, surviving center of Japanese Christianity had become ground zero.
And what the Japanese Imperial government could not do in over 200 years of persecution, American Christians did in 9 seconds. The entire worshipping community of Nagasaki was wiped out.
The above true (and unwelcome) story should stimulate discussion among those who claim to be disciples of Jesus. The Catholic chaplain for the 509th Composite Group (the 1500-man Army Air Force group, whose only job was to successfully deliver the atomic bombs to their targets) was Father George Zabelka. Several decades after the war ended, he saw his grave theological error in religiously legitimating the mass slaughter that is modern land and air war. He finally recognized that the enemies of his nation were not the enemies of God, but rather children of God whom God loved, and whom the followers of Jesus are to also love. Father Zabelka's conversion to Christian nonviolence led him to devote the remaining decades of his life speaking out against violence in all its forms, especially the violence of militarism. The Lutheran chaplain, William Downey, in his counseling of soldiers who had become troubled by their participation in making murder for the state, later denounced all killing, whether by a single bullet or by a weapon of mass destruction.
In Daniel Hallock's important book, Hell, Healing and Resistance, he talks about a 1997 Buddhist retreat led by Thich Nhat Hanh that attempted to deal with the hellish post-war existence of combat-traumatized Vietnam War veterans. Hallock said, "Clearly, Buddhism offers something that cannot be found in institutional Christianity. But then why should veterans embrace a religion that has blessed the wars that ruined their souls? It is no wonder they turn to a gentle Buddhist monk to hear what are, in large part, the truths of Christ."
As a lifelong Christian, that comment stung, but it was the sting of a sad and sobering truth. And as a physician who deals with psychologically traumatized patients every day, I know that it is violence, in all its myriad of forms, that bruises the human psyche and soul, and that that trauma is deadly and contagious, and it spreads through the families and on through the 3rd and 4th generations - until somebody stops continuing the domestic violence that military violence breeds.
One of the most difficult "mental illnesses" to treat is combat-induced posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In its most virulent form, PTSD is virtually incurable. It is also a fact that whereas most Vietnam War recruits came from churches where they actively practiced their faith, if they came home with PTSD, the percentage returning to the faith community approached zero.
This is a serious spiritual problem for any church that (either by the active support of its nation's "glorious" wars or by its silence on such issues) fails to teach its young people about what the earliest form of Christianity taught about violence: that it was forbidden to those who wished to follow Jesus.
If a Christian community fails to thoroughly inform its confirmands about the gruesome realities of the war zone before they are forced to register for potential conscription into the military, it invites the condemnation that Jesus warned about in Matthew 18:5-6: "And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."
The purpose of this essay is to stimulate open and honest discussion (at least among the followers of Jesus) about the ethics of killing by and for one's government, not from the perspective of national security ethics, not from the perspective of the military, not from the perspective of (the pre-Christian) eye-for-an-eye retaliation that Jesus rejected, but from the perspective of the Sermon on the Mount, the core ethical teachings of Jesus in Matthew 5, 6 and 7.
Out of that discussion (if any are willing to engage in it) should come answers to those horrible realities that seem to immobilize decent Bible-believing Christians everywhere: Why are some of us Christians so willing to commit (or support and/or pay for others to commit) homicidal violence against other fellow children of a loving, merciful, forgiving God, the God whom Jesus clearly calls us to imitate? And what can we Christians do, starting now, to prevent the next war and the next epidemic of combat-induced posttraumatic stress disorder?
What can we do to prevent the next round of these atrocities, all of which have been perpetrated by professed Christians: the My Lai Massacre, Auschwitz and the other Nazi death camps, Dresden, El Mozote, Rwanda, Jonestown, the black church bombings, the execution of innocent death row inmates, the sanctions against Iraq (that killed 500,000 children during the 1990s), the military annihilation of Fallujah and much of the rest of Iraq and Afghanistan, the torturing of innocents at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay plus the many other international war crimes (albeit un-indicted to date) perpetrated by the current "Christian" administration of the United States. And what is to be done to prevent the next Nagasaki?
A large portion of the responsibility for the prevention of military atrocities like Nagasaki lies within the organized Christian churches and whether or not they soon start teaching and living what the radical nonviolent Jesus taught and lived.
The next Nagasaki can be prevented if the churches finally heed Jesus' call to nonviolence and refuse their government's call for the bodies and souls of their sons and daughters.
Gary Kohls, MD [send him mail], an associate of Every Church a Peace Church, is a practicing physician in Duluth, MN.
Copyright © 2007 Gary G. Kohls, MD
Source:Information Clearinghouse; Click for comments: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18149.htm
Posted by: zz ziled | August 10, 2007 12:37 PM
Proof of America's penchant for gratuitous violence:
1,000,985 Dead Iraqis (Lancet methodology]
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html
But who's noticing...
[August 10 2007] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The Trouble With War... It Dehumanizes... Everybody... Including The People Who Make The Decisions... And The Casual Observer
Posted by: The Buffalo In Da' Midst | August 10, 2007 11:42 AM
Ya' know, people don't just hate us and build NBCs and all that other alphabet soup because we're beautiful (as the advertisement used to say).
It's because, and I quote: MY COUNTRY is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today:
(MLK jr.)
190,000 AK 47 machine guns and pistols the US gave Iraqi security forces in 04 and 05 vanished, courtesy of a Bosnian air shipper run by a Russian fugitive mobster and employed indirectly by the Pentagon.
We may not know for certain where all those AKs went, but I CAN show you where they USED TO GO... and how they got there...
Here is one of the questions I posed in a earlier blog posting on the topic:
"Could these folks have been involved with running Osama bin-Laden's KLA buddies around Central Asia at the CIA's behest just a decade or so ago?"
I found this Wikipedia entry to be quite informative, and brings me MUCH CLOSER to "Yes":
Posted by: I'd Rather Talk About American Terrorism | August 10, 2007 9:50 AM
The comments to this entry are closed.
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