Raising our eyes to the stars

Happy Moon Day!  On this day, in 1969, people first set foot on the surface of the moon.  I was nine years old.  The computer in the Apollo spacecraft had less computing power that the cheap digital watch you might get today in a Happy Meal.  There was a lot of math involved, of course, but it was generally done on the ground, and much of it with slide rules.  It's hard to remember, sometimes, just how much has changed.

Apollo was a decade-long, incremental, and monumental project.  Only two countries could have assembled the raw power necessary to get to the moon, and one of them pushed so far past the limits of their capabilities that their best minds died in an explosion linked directly to the politics of an arbitrary deadline.  Today there are billionaires in the process of building orbital hotels.  Some are making plans to skip the moon entirely and head directly for Mars.

It was, in many ways, the equivalent of building the pyramids.  It was a contest for bragging rights with the USSR, and when it was done it rolled on by inertia for only a few more missions.  But it was also an achievement "for all mankind."  This was a day for every person on Earth to be proud.  How many of those have there been?

It was the dawn of a new age.  And then we paused to catch our breath and lower our sights.  Leave it to government to make the world's greatest adventure boring.

But maybe we are waking up again.  Today, more people are coming to wrap their heads around the fact that we must go and live (and yes, die) out there.  This planet is too small.  Too vulnerable.  We are still in a race, not just of nation versus nation or corporation versus corporation, but as a species against time.  To survive, we have to become a multiplanetary civilization.  And today, forty-nine years ago, was the first step.

Photo taken from the Moon.  July 20, 1969.

A realist critique of Romney's foreign policy

Where is Prince Bandar?

English: President George W. Bush meets with Saudi Arabian Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan at the Bush Ranch in Crawford, Texas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here's what we know.  On July 18th a bombing in Damascus killed several senior officials in Syria, including the Minister of Defense and a brother-in-law of President al-Assad.  On July 19th, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, long associate of the Bush family, former ambassador to the US, famous for his role in getting Saudis out of the US in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and in relative eclipse the past few years, was appointed President of General Intelligence for the government of Saudi Arabia.  On July 22nd a bomb detonated in the headquarters of Saudi intelligence, killing the deputy Chief of Intelligence.


There are no reports of Prince Bandar being seen since the explosion.


There are no reports indicating that he was killed or wounded.


There are no statements from the Saudis or the White House refuting rumors of his death.


There are no reports on his location or status, period.

Bandar bin Sultan, Secretary-General of the National Security Council of Saudi Arabia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now we get into speculation.  It's not like there aren't a number of people who would like to plant a bomb in Saudi intelligence HQ.  The coincidence with the Syrian operation is probably, in fact, a coincidence.  Besides, they have enough going on at home to stretch their capabilities past the point where they could do something like this (especially on such short notice).  If the bomb could be tied to Iran it would be an act of war, so even if there are indirect connections it's unlikely we'll find anything substantial.  Besides, it's probably not in Iran's interests to take that kind of risk, and it would take time to set up.  There have been successful attacks on Saudi intelligence in the past, but these have usually been attributed to internal dissidents, with general support from the Syrians and/or Iranians.


Yet another possibility:  perhaps factions of the Saudi elite are in conflict with one another. It wouldn't be the first time, although usually without open violence.  At the very least, an internal opponent to Bandar--a man who has made some enemies--could have looked the other way, leaving the door open to an attack by one of several groups. 

The first task, of course, is to confirm what has happened. 

How odd, though, that so little has been made of this in the press. Bandar was/is a "rock star" in the Saudi establishment with long and substantial ties to the US. The silence is almost deafening.


There's nothing like the politics of the Middle East to lend itself to conspiratorial thinking.  The fact is, however, there's still a lot that we simply don't know.


For an excellent overview, see NightWatch 20120801 - KGS.

Related articles

• Prince Bandar Bin Sultan: Is The Saudi Spy Chief Dead Or Alive?
• Assassination of an important Saudi Prince! By Syria. Or Iran. Or both. Or it might be a fake story.
• If This Story Is True Saudi Arabia Could go To War With Iran
• Did Washington Kill Its Favourite Saudi Prince, Bandar Bush?

Stuxnet and Flame

Depiction of a compartmented "Behind the Green Door" US secure communications center (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cyberwarfare is getting interesting, and not just because of what it means for "traditional" international relations.  Increasingly, it looks like anyone can run a serious cyber-espionage operation.  How long until these tools are in the hands of more non-state actors?  When do they become a major tool in domestic politics?  IntelNews reviews the situation.  Excerpts:

Stuxnet, which caused unprecedented waves of panic among Iranian cybersecurity experts, was 500 kilobytes in size. Flame is over 20 megabytes in size, consisting of 650,000 lines of code; it is so complex that it is expected to take programming analysts around a decade to fully comprehend. The two are different, of course. Stuxnet was an infrastructure-sabotaging malware, which destroyed hundreds —maybe even thousands—of Iranian nuclear centrifuges. Flame, on the other hand, appears to be an espionage tool: it aims to surreptitiously collect information from infected systems.

Both, of course, were directed against Iran.  But they don't end there.

...there is no little doubt that Flame’s handlers have collected massive amounts of intelligence for at least two years. The program was apparently able to record conversations conducted over Skype; take desktop snapshots every 15 seconds or so; and collect usernames and passwords, among other capabilities. And all that while circumventing even the strongest antivirus software. But there is also the other side of the equation: as in the case of Stuxnet, Flame is now effectively freeware. Anyone can ostensibly access it, copy it, modify it, and re-launch it against his or her target of choice...

Cover via Amazon

Over 100 Israeli systems are already reported to have been infected by Flame, as well as systems in several other countries in the region.  The United States?  I have found no conclusive reports one way or another.  And even then, we'd have to distinguish between government and corporate and other systems.  But the "freeware" aspect intrigues me.  How much trouble would it be for the next PFC Manning to insert a version of Flame into SIPRNet?  Or something more restricted?  I can't help but wonder how many cyberactivsts are pouring over the code.

Are we approaching the land of "No More Secrets"?  Is this The Transparent Society discussed by Brin?  Not really, if only for the reason that those who uncover secrets may not be able to understand what they have, or may choose not to share it with the world.  But it does raise the prospect that while the NSA plugs away at monitoring everything we do, there might be a lot more states and non-state actors doing the same to them.  How will that change the game?

Comment: Who authored computer virus that ‘dwarfs Stuxnet’? « intelNews.org

Related articles

• Sworn Declaration of Whistleblower William Binney on NSA Domestic Surveillance Capabilities

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• Experts: U.S. Cyber War on Iran Has Just Begun

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• Confirmed: Flame created by US and Israel to slow Iranian nuke program

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• Development timeline key to linking Stuxnet, Flame malware

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Altruism and deterrence

Alice Krige as the Borg Queen in First Contact (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I'm talking to some people about getting involved in an institute exploring global catastrophic risk.  What they do fits in with the textbook (still in progress), and with my next conference paper (working title: "Captain America Meets the Borg").

An interesting question came up regarding the promotion of altruism and deterrence as strategies to reduce global risk.  I hope they don't mind if I recycle some of my comments here.  I suspect my approach may be a little different than most, although to me it seems natural.  In fact, I'd characterize it as, in many ways, classically liberal.  I think James Madison in particular would approve.

I hate to admit it, but I’m something of a cynic on many of these issues.  Promoting altruism is a good thing in general, but I’d rather find a way to take advantage of selfishness, using personal payoffs to result in public goods.  For one thing, in a system where strong altruism is the norm, a selfish minority (if not so large that it is more advantageous to prey on one another instead of on the altruistic minority) has some structural advantages.  There’s a reason why some of the most successful people are clinical sociopaths: sane people are at a disadvantage when competing in stock markets, or as generals, or in presidential elections.  People who empathize too much hesitate and lose. 

(This is not to say you can’t have sane and caring success stories in these kinds of competitive areas, but they require special circumstances and/or compensatory talents.)

So the trick, much as Montesquieu observed, is to take advantage of those rare moments and set up a system where the predators are so busy contending with one another that they need to constantly curry the favor of the majority in order to  succeed, and where it is in the interest of most of the sociopaths to tolerate the long-term empowerment of the majority.

Of course, we might want to get rid of the sociopaths completely.  But sociopathology isn’t either/or.  It’s a continuum, and whoever is sitting in the long tail (whether Genghis Kahn or Bernie Madoff) is still in an advantageous position.  Besides, there will always be “mutations.”  And worst of all, since power accumulates around the sociopaths they are, in the long run, the ones who will be doing and implementing most of the designing.  The regulators get co-opted.  It’s built into the structure of the game.

Deterrence has a better chance.  Although there’s still the chance of suicidal decision-makers, one of the useful things about sociopathology is that people who value nothing over their own lives and profit can be risk adverse—if they can accurately calculate the probability and penalties for failure.  Thus one of the things we can do is increase transparency to the point that they can’t delude themselves that they are untouchable, and another is to encourage a balance of power in which those who can do harm are also subject to the greatest risk of retaliation.

So I guess I have more faith in selfishness than in altruism, IF the selfishness is enlightened self-interest, in a system where the desire for personal gain leads to the provision of public goods, and transparency is great enough, and the most potentially dangerous members of the group have the most to lose from actions that threaten the system as a whole.

Meanwhile, fragment power and disperse populations and encourage local resilience--because there will always be disasters and we need to plan to rebuild when they occur—while not allowing those preparations to encourage overconfidence and the “moral hazard” phenomenon. 


To steal a line from Robert Gilpin, I guess I'm a liberal living in a realist universe.  I'd like to rely on the goodness of man, but it seems to me the track record (and the structure of the system) makes that a sucker bet--especially when there can be so many lives on the line.  Better to encourage a system that can encourage and profit from the better elements of our nature, but doesn't rely on them so much that it can't survive disappointment.  

Related articles

• Selfless Genes: A New Revolution in Biology

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• Not all altruism is alike

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The Iranians are rational

At least as much as most people.

(And probably more than some of the Republican presidential candidates, if we are to judge them by their rhetoric.)

First of all, the "Iranians" are not a monolithic group, any more than "Americans" or "Israelis" or "Muslims" or "Science Fiction Geeks."  The fact that so many commentators seem to present them as speaking with a single voice is suspicious in itself.

Image via Wikipedia

Second, not all voices are equally authoritative.  President Ahmadinejad, despite the title, is no where near the summit of Iranian power.  I'd put him around number thirteen (or less) on a list of politically influential Iranians.  If you want to talk to the real power, find Ayatollah Khamenei.  And his statements are a lot less scary.  In 2009 the supreme leader said

They falsely accuse the Islamic republic’s establishment of producing nuclear weapons. We fundamentally reject nuclear weapons and prohibit the use and production of nuclear weapons. This is because of our ideology, not because of politics or fear of arrogant powers or an onslaught of international propaganda. We stand firm for our ideology.

So what--that was 2009.  How about 2010?

We have said repeatedly that our religious beliefs and principles prohibit such weapons as they are the symbol of destruction of generations. And for this reason we do not believe in weapons and atomic bombs and do not seek them.

Ok, ok.  But that was still years ago. How about last month?

The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.

Does this sound like madness? 

So how do we make sense of the Iranian program?  In part, it may be just what they say it is, a program to develop their energy infrastructure.  The fact that they can be harmed by an embargo on gasoline sales (the Iranians have little ability to refine their own oil) is reason enough to persue this.  Besides, they know better than most what their future oil production is likely to be, and what the global market will look like.

Do I buy that?  Not entirely.  I suspect they want the ability to produce a bomb quickly, as a deterrent, without actually producing or deploying the weapons that might trigger Israeli premption. And it's not just me, sitting in Pennsylvania.  More and more Israelis are willing to come out with a similar view.  Mier Dagan, the head of the Mossad for eight years, has described the regime in Iran, including Ahmadinajad, as "a very rational regime."  The fact that he talks in public at all is impressive.  That he came out to say that is remarkable.

So why the drum-beats for war?  Is it simply the obsessions of Netanyahu and some personalities?  American campaign rhetoric?  A chance to manipulate oil prices?  Or to sell advanced weapons?  To be sure, these are governments that are not going to be friends any time soon. Khamenei still refers to Israel as a "cancerous tumor."  All of this is probably part of what's going on, but in the final analysis it doesn't matter: the picture of the Iranians and the Iranian program does not reflect reality, and a policy based on those illusions is an invitation to failure.  Maybe catastrophic failure.

Related articles

• Israel And America To Iran: Stop Your Nuclear Weapons Program, Which We Know Doesn't Exist, Or We'll Attack You And Say You Started It (disquietreservations.blogspot.com)
• Donald L. Gilleland: With Iran in hot pursuit of a nuclear weapons, how close are we to Armageddon? (tcpalm.com)
• Diplomacy With Iran: Hey, What's the Hurry? (globalspin.blogs.time.com)
• You: Another war in the Middle East? (nation.com.pk)
• Iran's nuclear program: the riddle, the enigma and the mystery - CNN (articles.cnn.com)
• What is really happening in Iran? Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei may control the nuclear programme, but he lacks a critical mass of Iranians. (irannewpearlharbour.wordpress.com)
• Opinion: Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei humbles President Ahmadinejad in parliamentary elections (vancouversun.com)
• Nuclear weapons are a sin, says Iran's supreme leader (thestar.com)
• Iran's supreme leader denies Tehran is seeking nuclear weapons (guardian.co.uk)
• Ayatollah Praises Obama Peace Remarks (newser.com)
• Former Israeli spy chief talks down strike on Iran nuclear sites as 'stupidest idea' (csmonitor.com)

Fighting the hidden war

SOCOM II .308 (Photo credit: ~Steve Z~)

The Long War is far from over.  It is, however, being fought differently. And despite whatever you may have heard, it's expanding.  In a year, American forces have conducted "engagements in more than 100 countries worldwide."

First, look at the numbers: tell me your budget, and tell you what you care about.  With that in mind, here's the numbers, courtesy of Defense Industry Daily.  Although the Army has the greatest reductions in funding for combat operations (logical, figuring the drawdown from Iraq), its baseline spending does surprising well in relation to the other armed services.


And how about by function?  Again, the numbers tell a story.  Oddly enough, although overall military personnel spending is down, it shows an astonishing increase under OCO, as does the ever-popular "Other".  The increases are more than balanced by cuts in OCO operations, procurement, and R&D, so the total under OCO hides an important story.  Clearly something is going on here.

 

So what is it?  My first guess is (a) Special Operations Forces, and (b) drones.  It fits the numbers, and recent public statements.  Anyone have a better idea?

There are other reasons to focus on a growing SOF budget. Special Operations Forces, like drones, allow an administration to run a war with minimal visibility.  Big armies are expensive--not only in terms of money and lives, but in terms of political risk.  Politicians would rather mobilize and use the Leviathan Force (to use a term coined by Thomas P.M. Barnett) as a last resort.  It's so much better to send robots, or small teams of SOF.

Image via Wikipedia

Besides, we have word of those who know.  Admiral McRaven, commander of SOCOM, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee last week on what the Special Operations Forces are doing:

The direct approach is characterized by technologically-enabled small-unit precision lethality, focused intelligence, and interagency cooperation integrated on a digitally-networked battlefield…. Extreme in risk, precise in execution and able to deliver a high payoff, the impacts of the direct approach are immediate, visible to the public and have had tremendous effects on our enemies’ networks throughout the decade.

However, the direct approach alone is not the solution to the challenges our Nation faces today as it ultimately only buys time and space for the indirect approach and broader governmental elements to take effect. Less well known but decisive in importance, the indirect approach is the complementary element that can counter the systemic components of the threat.

The indirect approach includes empowering host nation forces, providing appropriate assistance to humanitarian agencies, and engaging key populations. These long-term efforts increase partner capabilities to generate sufficient security and rule of law, address local needs, and advance ideas that discredit and defeat the appeal of violent extremism.

What I find most interesting, though, is his statement that SOF are engaged in "more than one hundred countries worldwide."

Think about that for a second.  There are 193 member states of the United Nations.  Call it two hundred countries.  American SOF, "throughout the year... conducts engagements in more than 100 countries worldwide." They are operating, one way or another, with or without the permission of the local government, against some perceived threat to American interests in over half the countries on earth.

And for the most part, people either don't know or don't care.  That's part of the point of using those kinds of forces.  But if there are that many enemies mobilized against us, in so many places, is it inappropriate to ask the question: could we be doing something wrong?

Related articles

• Special Operations Forces Rescue Hostages in Somalia (vcasny.org)
• Lawmaker: Larger special ops role in Afghan war? (sfgate.com)
• Restricted U.S. Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) Religious Factors Analysis Manual (publicintelligence.net)
• Wars Should Be Hard to Start (usnews.com)
• Admiral Over Special Forces Pushes for a Freer Hand - New York Times (nytimes.com)
• Official Cites Importance of Sustaining Special Ops Forces (waronterrornews.typepad.com)
• U.S. To Increase Drone Fleet And Special Forces (thinkprogress.org)
• U.S. Army RQ7-B Shadow Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System (TUAS) Handbook (publicintelligence.net)
• U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center Leader's Handbook on Unconventional Warfare (publicintelligence.net)
• It's Time to Make Special Operations a Separate Service (usnews.com)

Global Threats

Image via Wikipedia

The ink is dry on the contract for the new textbook I'm to co-author.  It's entitled Global Threats (CQ Press, 2013), and I'm a little anxious about it.  Last time I tried to write a textbook it was on Soviet politics--and the Soviet Union collapsed.  Trying to keep up with what was happening, while it happening, was impossible. Even if I could have kept up with everything up to the day I handed in my sections, the book would have been overtaken by events long before it was out the door of the publisher.  Trying to do the impossible produced a lot of unnecessary anxiety then, and thinking about it still triggers a little anxiety today.

The good news is I know better now than to attempt the impossible.  As long as I keep my perfectionist tendencies in line, this new book should not only be possible, but fun.  How often do I get (paid) to speculate on as many possibilities as I can think of for the collapse of nations and civilizations?  The book encourages brainstorming, and that's one of my favorite activities.  It's as if I get to write a bad science fiction novel without the going to the trouble of developing believable characters.

So if I get anxious it's my own fault: I'm the one who can choose to set the bar higher than any real person can achieve, or worry about how my work will be received by others.  Instead, I'll do my best to produce good work and have some fun.

Paging Jason Bourne

Image via Wikipedia

Every so often the curtain parts and one sees the world is a lot more like a spy movie than most people want to believe. Memos have leaked from the the CIA describing a "false flag" operation by the Israelis, directed against Iran, in which an anti-Iranian terrorist group was told they were being sponsored by the Americans. In this world, you can never be entirely sure who you are working for, or with. And once discovered (during W's administration), what was the reaction?

The CIA memos of the incident have been "blue bordered," meaning that they were circulated to senior levels of the broader U.S. intelligence community as well as senior State Department officials.

What has become crystal clear, however, is the level of anger among senior intelligence officials about Israel's actions. "This was stupid and dangerous," the intelligence official who first told me about the operation said. "Israel is supposed to be working with us, not against us. If they want to shed blood, it would help a lot if it was their blood and not ours. You know, they're supposed to be a strategic asset. Well guess what? There are a lot of people now, important people, who just don't think that's true."

False Flag - By Mark Perry | Foreign Policy

Related articles

• Washington Post Plumbs the Depths of the U.S. Intelligence Community (pogoblog.typepad.com)

An adult at the table

There remains hope that the people who actually have an understanding of the situation will restrain the politicians.  It's hard to dismiss the current and past heads of the Mossad as "anti-Israel" or "soft on defense."  

A nuclear-armed Iran wouldn't necessarily constitute a threat to Israel's continued existence, Mossad chief Tamir Pardo reportedly hinted earlier this week.
***
On Tuesday evening, Pardo addressed an audience of about 100 Israeli ambassadors. According to three ambassadors present at the briefing, the intelligence chief said that Israel was using various means to foil Iran's nuclear program and would continue to do so, but if Iran actually obtained nuclear weapons, it would not mean the destruction of the State of Israel. 

The ambassadors said Pardo did not comment on the possibility of an Israeli military assault on Iran."What is the significance of the term existential threat?" the ambassadors quoted Pardo as asking. "Does Iran pose a threat to Israel? Absolutely. But if one said a nuclear bomb in Iranian hands was an existential threat, that would mean that we would have to close up shop and go home. That's not the situation. The term existential threat is used too freely." 

"But what was clearly implied by his remarks is that he doesn't think a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to Israel," one of the envoys said. 

For the past several years, Netanyahu has characterized a nuclear Iran as an existential threat to Israel. The prime minister has even compared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Adolf Hitler and argued that Iran should be treated as Nazi Germany should have been dealt with in 1938, just before World War II. In contrast, Barak said in April 2010 that Iran "was not an existential threat at the moment," but warned that it could become one in the future.Pardo's remarks follow lively a public debate in recent months over a possible Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. One of the figures at the center of this public debate has been Pardo's predecessor as Mossad chief, Meir Dagan. Dagan has argued that Israel should only resort to military force "when the knife is at its throat and begins to cut into the flesh." He has also criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, accusing them of pushing for an Israeli attack on Iran, and warned that such an assault would have disastrous consequences. 

In the cabinet, Netanyahu and Barak have been the leading proponents of a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. So far, however, they have not managed to convince a majority of either the "octet" forum of eight senior ministers or the diplomatic-security cabinet to support their position.

Otto von Bismarck, master of Realpolitik, probably said it best: "Preemptive war is like committing suicide for fear of death."

A few "secrets"

This is stuff I've already seen in the public domain, but the article at Danger Room does a good job of summing up some of the "secret" military and intelligence programs most people don't hear about.

I gotta wonder what hasn't been revealed (yet).

The Navy of the future

Crap. I really hope this is wrong.

I'm not sure what bothers me more: that this might be true, or that the only place to get the story is from the alternative media and the Iranians.  One whistleblower site working on the story reports that an Iraqi journalist based in London has told them

"Some of the US forces that left the Ain al-Assad Air base in Iraq last Thursday, did not come back to the USA or its base in Germany, but were transferred to Jordan during the evening hours.”

Furthermore, they add

Update 1: Today at 12:00 P.M. we contacted DOD Press Office via two voicemail messages and one e-mail asking for comment(s) on this story. As of 6:00 P.M. EST we have not heard back.

Update 2: Another journalist with a major mainstream media publication was told by his editors that there would be no coverage or follow up on these developments.

Maybe it isn't what it looks like.  But it sure looks like the media have agreed what to NOT tell the American people.  Again.

Keep your eyes open.

Boldly going where we've never been before

From the Institute for the Future, a visualization of trends and where they may be leading us

A look at 'the future of science: 2021, from CNN.com

Would anyone care to speculate on what some of these imply for politics and economics?  It sometimes seems like most political discussion is analogous to medieval debates over angels, pins, and biblical interpretation.  I suppose it seems important in its own context, but the world is passing it by.

Here we go again?

Explosion near Iran nuclear facility in Isfahan reported | World news | guardian.co.uk

Once is happenstance.

Twice is coincidence.

Three times is enemy action.

'via Blog this'

No room to cut the "defense" budget?

Of course, comparing expenditures is a crude measure of capabilities, but

I think there must be SOME room to trim.  Pity that if the DoD has its way the cuts will probably protect the pork at the expense of the things (like training) that are really needed.

Where have the troops been?

American troop deployments: Boots on the ground | The Economist

"Seal Team Geronimo" is a big fat lie

Can I be any more clear about this? The sources suck, the analysis is self-serving, and the conclusions--particularly in regard to WMD--are insupportable.

Or let's get another opinion--from Danger Room:

Author Chuck Pfarrer is taking flack over his account of the Osama bin Laden raid in his new revisionist history, SEAL Target Geronimo. But that’s overshadowed another big problem with the book: Pfarrer’s claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction are absolutely bananas.
To read SEAL Target Geronimo is to get sucked into a vortex of WMD insanity. Pfarrer says that Saddam Hussein had dangerous, active chemical, biological and nuclear programs up until the day of his downfall. Worse, those weapons made it into the hands of Osama himself. Why didn’t you know about it? Because craven politicians and the lying media hid the truth about what U.S. military weapons experts uncovered.
Well, sorry, Charlie. I was one of those military experts in Iraq. I learned the full, underwhelming truth about Saddam’s programs because I was there to help the Iraqis settle the issue once and for all. And SEAL Target Geronimo’s claims are the literary equivalent of a smoking gun that could have been a mushroom cloud — a paranoid, evidence-free fantasy, fueled by ignorance.
Start with all that Iraqi WMD that U.S. forces found. Pfarrer gasps over an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit’s 2003 discovery of an artillery shell filled with the nerve agent sarin, part of an early homemade bomb. To Pfarrer, that bomb would have “spread a mortal, invisible cloud over a dozen city blocks” where “death would have come quickly for ten thousand Iraqi civilians living near the airport and three thousand coalition troops stationed at nearby Camp Victory.” If two of those sarin-laced bombs went off in a crowded football stadium, it would have caused more casualties than “those suffered by the United States during the entire Vietnam War.” His emphasis.
Absolutely none of this is plausible. You’re talking about a piece of steel that needs to survive being fired out of an artillery piece, and then burst apart by explosives in order to disseminate the chemicals inside. Much of the chemical material is destroyed in the process. And it would take a lot of sarin to achieve any deadly effect. Saddam’s vicious gassing of the Kurds at Halabja in March 1988, for example, was a coordinated military campaign lasting for two days. During that time, the Iraqis murdered up to 5,000 people — nowhere near Pfarrer’s stadium scenario. An actual chemical artillery round might — might — kill dozens. Not thousands.

This sounds a lot more plausible to me. If the rest of the book is as inaccurate as this--and so far as I've seen, it seems to be--I can only wonder about the agendas of those promoting and publishing it.

Our "friends" in Pakistan

From the July 7th Nightwatch:

Pakistan-North Korea: Special comment. The international news media have reported that Pakistan provided North Korea the technology and sample centrifuges for making Highly Enriched Uranium for nuclear weapons. 

The source of the revelation is a newly disclosed letter sent in 1998 from a senior North Korean official to Abdul Qader Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. The letter contains details of  bribes or payoffs to then Chief of Army Staff General Jehangir Karamat and another general. It was signed by North Korean National Defense Commission member Chon Pyong Ho. The letter mentions missile components sent to Pakistan and the dispatch of a new emissary who has been in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Iran - all conventional weapons or missile clients of North Korea.Pakistani officials have charged the letter is a forgery by A.Q. Khan so as to distribute blame for his conviction for selling strategic secrets. Khan is under house arrest, but always swore he acted under orders from the highest authorities. In 1998, those would have been General Karamat and then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Those luminaries always claimed Khan acted on his own in selling Pakistan's strategic nuclear secrets to North Korea.US intelligence people have said the letter looks authentic, according to press reports. And this time they have it right. The transaction in 1998 involved strategic assets which North Korea and Pakistan guard jealously. Pakistan desperately needed a reliable nuclear weapons delivery system after India tested its nuclear weapons in 1998. Pakistan had tested its nuclear technology in response. The date of the letter is July 1998.North Korea had plutonium for fissile material, but was in the market for uranium enrichment technology. North Korea had the NoDong medium range ballistic missile as a delivery system, a reliable weapons carrier, to trade for enrichment technology. Most nuclear weapons states have both plutonium and highly enriched uranium processes for producing fissile material.The individuals mentioned in the letter include people who must be involved in such a transaction, namely General Karamat and Chon. Chon Pyong Ho was the chief of the Second Economic Committee, the North Korean name for the group that supervises the military industrial complex - all the plants that make ballistic missiles, nuclear weapons and all other military ordnance. He is a classmate of Kim Chong-il, who still chairs the National Defense Commission. 

Karamat probably did not take a bribe as he claims. Any money from North Korea would have been diverted into Pakistan Army secret funds. Chon Pyong Ho's involvement indicates the highest level of the North Korean government was involved directly in the transaction.  That raises a prima facie inference that Chon was dealing with his counterparts in Pakistan. RThe Chief of the Army Staff is the highest ranking military officer in Pakistan. A.Q. Khan was the project director and middleman.The facts are that the four prototype uranium enrichment centrifuges that the North obtained were made in Pakistan and supplied by A.Q. Khan, by his own admission. The Ghauri missiles in the Pakistan Army came from North Korea and are  NoDongs.The obvious inference is that this was a high level arrangement authorized by both governments. This was not a simple swap because of the huge follow-on investments in land and equipment required to build Ghauri missile production and testing facilities and bases in Pakistan and to build a nuclear enrichment centrifuge cascade in North Korea. These were large-scael and expensive undertakings by both countries.In short, in 1998, Pakistan, a US friend, provided nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, an enemy with whom the US was and is still at war. The letter adds details about the physical exchange of strategic assets in 1998. 

Pakistan-US: Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral. Mike Mullen said 7July that the murder of a Pakistani journalist was sanctioned by the Pakistani government. Mullen said he did not have reason to disabuse that the Pakistani government knew about the murder. 

Comment: The journalist was Syed Saleem Shahzad who was murdered in May for reporting on infiltration of the Pakistan armed forces by anti-government Islamic militants. For Mullen and other US officials to make unconditional statements about Pakistani government culpability means that the evidence is conclusive. 

The above two reports are studies in Pakistani democracy.

Sometimes it feels like we've made an alliance with Hitler in order to fight Mussolini.

Reconceptualizing security

From the NATO Parliamentary Assembly--General Hans Klauman, former chairman of the North Atlantic military council, had some interesting comments:

“Globally, the struggle for water will be the primary source of conflict in the future, since at present 40% of mankind gets water from extraterritorial sources” said General Naumann, speaking to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Edinburgh.  He also issued a warning on the impact of demographic shifts on geopolitical power structures.  The shrinking, aging European population will put “tremendous pressure” on their societies, compounded by migration trends.  These trends are in turn likely to intensify, partly as a result of the effects of climate change on poorer countries.  General Naumann also predicted a decline of the Russian population to “perhaps less than 100 million”, and pointed out the strategic significance of the four million illegal Chinese immigrants living and working in the resource rich parts of Siberia.

“The twenty-first century will be an unsettled century” said the general, whose presentation went on to discuss cyberwar and other emerging threats.  He supported the role of NATO on the world security stage, but said that the alliance “must be refashioned in accordance with a duly expanded concept of security”, to incorporate “all the instruments of crisis management, including, above all, non-military components, and which seeks cooperation with other organisations.”

I think he needs to distinguish between levels of causation when talking about resource wars.  As for the expansion of the concept of security, he's right that it needs to be expanded, so long as we don't forget the difference between intended and unintended threats.