Australia Is A Giant US Military Base With Kangaroos
The Australians do appear to be in a fierce competition with the UK over who will be the US’s top poodle.
Category: Military
Punk’D
Remember that unhinged letter signed by 100 retired US military retired general officers? It included the signature of one, “Rear Admiral Jack Meehoff.”
The MAGAts are really, really stupid people:
A group of more than 100 retired generals and admirals who have accused President Joe Biden of being a communist have been pranked by a faux flag officer going by the nom de guerre “Rear Adm. Jack Meehoff.”
If you don’t get the joke, just say the name “Jack Meehoff” aloud. That’s right. You understand now.
Earlier this month, the group Flag Officers 4 America posted an open letter that repeated lies spread by former President Donald Trump and the elected leaders who support his claims that the FBI and Supreme Court ignored “election irregularities” in 2020.
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In their letter, the retired generals and admirals – most of whom have been out of uniform for several years – claim the Biden administration has “launched a full-blown assault on our Constitutional rights in a dictatorial manner” by passing executive orders. They also claim the administration is damaging the military’s ability to fight wars through an “infusion of Political Correctness.” And they raise doubts about Biden’s ability to serve as commander in chief by claiming: “The mental and physical condition of the Commander in Chief cannot be ignored.”
“Under a Democrat Congress and the Current Administration, our Country has taken a hard left turn toward Socialism and a Marxist form of tyrannical government which must be countered now by electing congressional and presidential candidates who will always act to defend our Constitutional Republic,” reads the heavily capitalized letter. “The survival of our Nation and its cherished freedoms, liberty, and historic values are at stake.”
Enter “Jack Meehoff.”
After Christopher Mathias of the Huffington Post wrote a May 12 story about the letter, he received an email the following day from someone showing how he had managed to get the apocryphal “Rear Adm. Jack Meehoff” added to the list of signatories.
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On Monday, Task & Purpose spoke to “Jack Meehoff” – not his real name – who said he was prompted to prank the cabal of McCarthyites because he felt their open letter was “f—ing absurd”, especially in the context of the Jan. 6 riots.
The man – who declined to provide his real name or a copy of his DD-214 [military discharge documents] – claimed to be a former enlisted submariner. He said Flag Officers 4 America removed “Rear Adm. Jack Meehoff” from the letter on Saturday after Mathias tweeted about how they had fallen for his ruse.
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Among its other more well-known signatories are retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, a U.S. Senate candidate in New Hampshire; retired Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a virulent anti-Muslim bigot who now heads up the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council; and retired Vice Adm. John Poindexter, best known for being convicted for his role in the Iran-Contra Affair as national security adviser for President Ronald Reagan.
One way to fix the problem is to understand that we have too many general officers in the US military.
In World War II, there were 16 million men in service, and about 2000 GOFOs, and now with 1.3 million men (and women) under arms, there are 900 general/flag officers.
Additionally, the ratio of officers to enlisted men has gone from the traditional ratio of about 10:1 then to about 5:1 now.
Tighter standards for officers, they reducing the size of the officer corps would go a long way toward reducing the total numbers blithering idiots in the higher ranks of US military.
From the Department of About F%$#ing Time
It looks like members of Congress are getting sick and tired of skyrocketing operational costs and fiscal obfuscation by the Department of Defense, and will be pushing back against any increase in acquisition.
Unfortunately, the excessive costs of the program has been baked into the program, with the DoD signing off a model that is clearly intended to maximize rent seeking by Lockheed-Martin: (Paid subscription required)
In response to new delays to the F-35 fighter program, senior House Democrats are threatening to limit aircraft production and end the practice of adding funding for aircraft the Pentagon never requested.
The laundry list of program problems includes cost overruns, a large engine backlog at the depots, funding cuts to an already temperamental predictive maintenance system and delays to essential upgrades.
“If this program continues to fail to significantly control and reduce actual projected sustainment costs, we may need to invest in other affordable programs and backfill an operational shortfall of potentially over 800 tactical fighters,” Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.), House Armed Services Committee (HASC) tactical air and land forces subcommittee chairman, said during a hearing on the F-35 program.
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Now that Democrats control the Senate, Garamendi and Norcross may turn the tide and prevent lawmakers from increasing the F-35 quantity in future budget requests. During the fiscal 2021 budget cycle, the HASC failed to convince the other defense committees not to add extra F-35s.
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F-35 Program Executive Officer Lt. Gen. Eric Fick, agrees with Abba’s assessment. Delays in delivering required support equipment and technical data, along with the increased work scope for F135 power module repairs, are driving the depot shortfalls, he said.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) acknowledges that the Pentagon is taking steps to increase depot repair capacity for the F135 power module, but the GAO says the number of capable aircraft will remain an issue in the near term.
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Along with those delays, the cost of the engine is growing. The increase, likely 3% for the 15th production lot, is the result of Turkey being removed from the program after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan opted to purchase the Russian-manufactured S-400 anti-aircraft weapon system.
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Meanwhile, the F-35’s logistics system is experiencing yet another round of upheaval. The Pentagon was in the process of transitioning its Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) to a new cloud-based network, the Operational Data Integrated Network (ODIN), by 2022. But the Pentagon has directed a “strategic pause” for the move to ODIN because of a 42% funding cut in fiscal 2021.
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Other delays plaguing the program include the slowdown of Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3) and Block 4 development. Lockheed Martin waived $60 million in fees because of the delays to TR-3, the hardware providing the F-35 additive processing power, memory and open-systems architecture. The company says the delays were caused by supplier challenges related to the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Lockheed knows that they have the DoD, and particularly the USAF by the short hairs, and the “Mistake-Jet” continues to eat the operational capabilities of the USAF.
The tail, now controlled by the contractors, is devouring the teeth.
Headline of the Day
The Operating Costs of the F-35 Are High Because They Are Designed to Be
Money quote from the interview:
The operating costs are high because they are designed to be so. From the very beginning of the program, the F-35 was set up to operate as a “total system performance responsibility” enterprise which meant that the services were intentionally surrendering a great deal of control over the maintenance and operations of the weapon they were buying to the contractors. This incentivised the contractors to design the aircraft in such a way that only their personnel could perform many of the maintenance actions on the aircraft. It is nearly always more expensive to use contractor personnel to perform work for the government, which certainly drives up the cost-per-flight-hour. It also means that the government has only one source bidding for these contracts, so there is little incentive to lower costs.
This, “Total system performance responsibility,” was not an accident.
The Pentagon procurement is deeply corrupt, with senior military officers choosing the most expensive, and hence most profitable ways to address their stated needs, because at the end of their career, after they retire, they secure comfortable sinecures at defense contractors and the like.
Our defense procurement system is corrupt, dysfunctional, and unaffordable.
Tweet of the Day
In 1954, a TV station aired a film distributed by the USN titled "This Is Your Navy". Unfortunately, the film had been mislabeled and was actually the extremely graphic hygiene film "USS VD: Ship of Shame". One shocked viewer said she would never watch TV again. #FunFactFriday pic.twitter.com/94QYk7qHpk
— U.S. Naval Institute (@NavalInstitute) April 16, 2021
Film librarians are very imprtant.
Tweet of the Day
The only thing I would add to this is how defensive officials I talk to get when I say plainly that America lost the Afghanistan war. It’s instinctive, tribal and revealing, a glitch in the matrix of American Exceptionalism. https://t.co/vmHcgeab2M
— Spencer Ackerman (@attackerman) April 2, 2021
Mixed emotions on this one, but just on the semantics. I don’t think that we LOST the war in Afghanistan, I think that the Afghans BEAT us.
The phrasing of “Lost” implies that the agency was all on the part of the us, but the American public lacked the will to continue. (It’s called the Green Lantern theory of geopolitics.)
This terminology allowed our military to learn nothing but how to lie to the American public in response to the Vietnam debacle.
In Afghanistan, much like in Vietnam, we were beaten, and once again, we will learn nothing from this.
Speaking of Defense Procurement Misconduct………
The US Air Force has declared the F-35 A combat ready.
The Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation (DOT&E) has declared that it is not even close:
The Pentagon’s top weapons tester is again sounding the alarm over the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, warning that significant deficiencies with the gun, challenges integrating the short-range AIM-9X missile and unresolved software bugs could delay fielding of the jet’s full capability.
On the heels of the U.S. Air Force’s milestone decision to declare the F-35A ready for battle, the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation (DOT&E) is raising new concerns about Lockheed Martin’s fifth-generation fighter. In an internal memo to Defense Department leadership Aug. 9, the DOT&E warned the jet still has a long way to go before full combat capability and may run out of funds to fix significant performance problems on time if late discoveries delay the end of the program’s development phase.
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In response to Aviation Week queries, the DOT&E reiterated concerns that the program’s official start date for IOT&E is “not realistic,” repeating the agency’s public assessment that the F-35 will not be ready to begin the test period until mid-2018 at the soonest—assuming the JPO can provide production-representative test aircraft by then.
Late, over budget, and not combat ready.
The internal fun does not shoot straight, there are cracks in the carrier variant’s wings, external carriage of ordinance is at least 2 years away.
The Pentagon procurement process at its finest.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!? Trillions of Dollars?
An auditor has found that the US Army has engaged in trillions of dollars in dodgy spending:
The United States Army’s finances are so jumbled it had to make trillions of dollars of improper accounting adjustments to create an illusion that its books are balanced.
The Defense Department’s Inspector General, in a June report, said the Army made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments to accounting entries in one quarter alone in 2015, and $6.5 trillion for the year. Yet the Army lacked receipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up.
As a result, the Army’s financial statements for 2015 were “materially misstated,” the report concluded. The “forced” adjustments rendered the statements useless because “DoD and Army managers could not rely on the data in their accounting systems when making management and resource decisions.”
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The new report focused on the Army’s General Fund, the bigger of its two main accounts, with assets of $282.6 billion in 2015. The Army lost or didn’t keep required data, and much of the data it had was inaccurate, the IG said.
“Where is the money going? Nobody knows,” said Franklin Spinney, a retired military analyst for the Pentagon and critic of Defense Department planning.
The significance of the accounting problem goes beyond mere concern for balancing books, Spinney said. Both presidential candidates have called for increasing defense spending amid current global tension.
I’m beginning to think that we will need to experience something akin to the sinking of the Vasa in 1628 (which led to the creation of the progenitor of the Swedish defense procurement agency, the FMV) before we end up with a defense procurement system that actually works.
This is Getting Insane
We are now scrambling jets to defend its allies in Syria against the Assad regime:
U.S. fighter jets scrambled to eastern Syria this week when Syrian bombers attacked in the vicinity of American and coalition Special Operations forces working with Kurdish and Arab opposition fighters, the Pentagon said Friday.
The unprecedented incident, near the Syrian city of Hasakah, did not result in a direct confrontation or any injury to U.S. or coalition forces.
But it illustrated the increasingly tense and ambiguous Syrian battlefield, where aircraft and ground troops from multiple countries — with multiple agendas and loyalties — are fighting overlapping wars.
Following the initial Thursday incident, the coalition began “actively patrolling the airspace nearby,” a Defense Department official said. Early Friday, “two Syrian SU-24 aircraft attempted to transit the area and were met by coalition fighter aircraft,” which “encouraged” the Syrians to depart “without further incident,” said the official, who spoke on a Pentagon-imposed condition of anonymity.
The Syrian military, engaged in a five-year civil conflict, has generally given a wide berth to U.S. aircraft targeting the Islamic State, as have Russian jets aiding their Syrian ally. But local fighters being assisted by U.S. Special Operations forces on the ground are often opposed to both the Islamic State and the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
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Marine Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway said that the Syrian strikes targeted Kurdish forces in Hasakah on Thursday. Social-media reports indicated that several Kurds were killed in the bombing.
U.S. forces initially contacted Russia, using “deconfliction” channels established to ensure that Russian and U.S. planes over Syria avoid each other, but were told that the bombers in question were not Russian. Ground forces received no response to attempts to contact the planes through a recognized radio channel.
The United States then launched a “combat air patrol,” Rankine-Galloway said. It arrived in the area as the Syrian Su-24 ground-attack aircraft were leaving. While he would not specify from where the U.S. aircraft were launched, the United States maintains a contingent of F-15 fighter jets at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.
So, now the Syrians are bombing the Kurds.
My guess is that this is a result of the recent Turkish and Russian rapprochement: The Turks see any form of Kurdish state as an existential threat to their state, and so the Syrian attacks on Kurdish positions are likely an artifact of this.
The US is clearly unamused by this development, since there are reports that fighters sent to intercept the Syrian aircraft was an F-22, probably because they were concerned about Syrian and Russian SAMs.
The US forces are in a bit of a bind though, because the Turks are implacably opposed to any Kurdish autonomous regions.
The only way the US wins this game is not to play.
This Is Unbelievably Sensible, and Will Never Be Implimented
The Stimson Center has issued a report saying that maintaining deployed nuclear weapons on NATO basis is stupid and dangerous:
The U.S. government is strengthening its nuclear-deterrent posture to reassure allies in Europe, and is moving forward on a number of programs to modernize its arsenal. But last-minute questions are being raised about whether Washington should rethink the use of B61 tactical warheads in Europe, for both strategic and budgetary reasons. On Aug. 1, the National Nuclear Security Administration revealed that it has initiated a B61 refurbishment program, authorizing the start of production engineering, with production to follow from 2020-25. The effort will extend the lives of about 480 B61 warheads, some of which will be based in Europe.
But why, argues nuclear disarmament expert Barry Blechman, cofounder of the Stimson Center. In a new report, he says it is unlikely NATO allies would ever use a nuclear weapon. Predicted advances in Russian and Chinese air defenses are expected to keep tactical fighters at bay. And security for the warheads is costly and problematic. For example, during the recent failed military coup in Turkey, B61s were left at a base without electricity and whose commander was arrested. Blechman says the U.S. should stop buying B61s for use on tactical fighters and remove them altogether from Europe.
The bombs are don’t serve any tactical purpose these days, if they ever did, as as the failed Turkish coup demonstrates, when Incirlik airbase was literally left in the dark after power was cut, they create a real risk of the loss of a nuclear weapon.
The modernization program is a waste of money that makes us less safe.
Combat Ready My Ass
The US Air Force has declared that its first squadron of F-35s is combat ready:
The U.S. Air Force on Tuesday declared an initial squadron of Lockheed Martin Corp F-35A fighter jets ready for combat, marking a major milestone for a program that has faced cost overruns and delays.
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“The U.S. Air Force decision to make the 15 F-35As … combat ready sends a simple and powerful message to America’s friends and foes alike – the F-35 can do its mission,” the program’s chief, Air Force Lieutenant General Chris Bogdan, said in a statement.
Not so much:
Dan Grazier, a fellow of the Project On Government Oversight, said, however, “This is nothing but a public relations stunt.” He added that it would not be possible to know if the F-35 jets were ready for combat until after initial operational testing.
That’s putting it mildly.
As the folks at The Register note. “It’s got dodgy radar, relies on an insecure database, boasts a buggy operating system, and a laser targeting system that can’t be used for training in the UK, but the United States Air Force is satisfied that the F-35A fighter is ready for combat.”
Also: its ejection seat can injure smaller (less than 165 lb) pilots, and its cannon cannot be fired.
This is a statement that is intended for the consumption of the Pentagon and Congress, and not reflective of the maturity of the program.
Well, this is Reassuring
Did you know that there is a bunker at Incirlik air base that contains dozens of nuclear weapons?
With the attempted coup and other recent developments in Turkey, this fills me with a sense of dread:
The U.S. and NATO face serious questions about the wisdom of stationing nuclear weapons in Turkey after commanders at Incirlik air base, which houses potentially as many as 50 B61 thermonuclear weapons, were implicated in the attempted overthrow of President Recep Erdogan.
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Incirlik is located outside of Adana in southern Turkey, just 100 nm from the so-called Islamic State terrorist group’s headquarters in Aleppo, Syria. Since Turkey agreed to allow counter-Islamic State air operations from the base one year ago, it has become an epicenter for attacking ground targets within Syria.
Now, as Erdogan “purges” his military and police ranks of opposition elements, and as the commander of Incirlik is arrested and replaced, how does America reconcile the fact that a longstanding NATO ally lost control of its military with U.S.-owned nuclear weapons in the mix?
“I can’t remember another time when a base where the U.S. has nuclear weapons was directly involved in a coup, and also where the host government cut off the ability to operate in and out of the base,” says Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. “The physical protection of the weapons is not the issue because they have their own security unit and backup power, but it’s a precarious situation that requires the U.S. to rethink why it has nuclear weapons in Turkey. The situation is so unique, and it’s evolving so rapidly that this is just not a place you want to have nuclear weapons deployed.”
As an FYI, the B-61 is a “dial bomb”, and it’s yield can vary from 0.3 to 360 kilotons.
And it’s in a country that just had a violent attempted coup which is run by a paranoid megalomaniac who has been given carte blanch by the attempted coup.
Pleasant dreams.
The Coup Fizzles, and Things in Turkey got Worse
Now the coup has been put down, the crackdown on innocent members of the opposition begins:
Turkey widened a crackdown on suspected supporters of a failed military coup on Sunday, taking the number of people rounded up in the armed forces and judiciary to 6,000, and the government said it was in control of the country and economy.
President Tayyip Erdogan and the government accused the U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, a former ally whom Erdogan accuses of trying to create a “parallel structure” within the courts, police, armed forces and media, of orchestrating the coup.
Erdogan’s supporters of gathered in front of his Istanbul home to call for the plotters to face the death penalty, which Turkey outlawed in 2004 as part of its efforts to join the European Union.
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With expectations growing of a heavy clampdown on dissent, European politicians warned Erdogan the coup attempt did not give him a blank cheque to disregard the rule of law, and that he risked isolating himself internationally as he strengthens his position at home.
Broadcaster NTV cited Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag as saying more arrests were expected.
By Sunday evening, authorities had rounded up nearly 3,000 suspected military plotters, ranging from top commanders to foot soldiers, and the same number of judges and prosecutors after forces loyal to Erdogan crushed the attempted coup on Saturday.
Arresting 3000 judges and prosecutors?
Tell me that Erdogan is not using this an excuse to further buttress his his grip on power.
It also looks like he’s going to use the events of this past weekend in an attempt to blackmail the US into extraditing a political opponent of his living in exile in Pennsylvania:
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, newly emboldened after crushing a coup attempt, is testing his country’s key defense relationship by demanding the U.S. turn over a cleric he accuses of inspiring the uprising.
Erdogan on Sunday repeated his challenge to the U.S. to extradite Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic preacher who lives in exile in rural Pennsylvania, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry balanced comments about considering such a request with criticizing the Turks for implying the U.S. had involvement in the coup attempt.
“If we’re strategic partners, I’m saying, carry through on your strategic partner’s request,” Erdogan said in Istanbul. “When you wanted a terrorist, we delivered him to you. Now we’re saying deliver this guy who’s on our terrorist list to us.”
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An immediate point of tension in the partnership was resolved Sunday when the U.S. resumed flights out of Incirlik Air Base, a staging point for the fight against Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq, according to Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook. Operations at Incirlik were halted Saturday after the Turkish government closed its airspace to military aircraft and cut off commercial power to the base, which hosts about 1,500 American military personnel and aircraft.
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“You have to begin to be concerned that if the U.S. continues to resist the extradition request and other requirements, would the Turkish government restrict use of Incirlik, would they start impacting our operations against ISIS,” said Heather Conley, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They are a crucial ally — the location is very, very important, but they have been an extremely challenging ally to work with.”
Kerry said Turkey would have to submit a formal request for extradition and prove its accusations. “Give us the evidence, show us the evidence,” he said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” program.
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The chances of the U.S. extraditing Gulen, who has lived in the country for nearly 20 years, are slim, said Brett Bruen, a former official in Obama’s National Security Council and now president of the Global Situation Room consulting firm.
“I don’t see a scenario at the moment at least in which he is extradited to Turkey,” Bruen said. “The evidence that has been presented that he was somehow behind this coup is still not there. And obviously there would be very real concerns about what would befall him if he were turned over to Turkish authorities.”
This has turned into a complete clusterf%$#.
There is an Ongoing Coup Attempt in Turkey
There is Civilian Resistance
As is frequently the case, the picture of what is going on is unclear:
A military coup attempt plunged Turkey into a long night of violence and intrigue on Friday, threatening its embattled president and injecting new instability into a crucial NATO member and American ally in the chaotic Middle East.The coup attempt was followed hours later by an equally dramatic public appearance by the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose whereabouts was unknown for hours after the plotters claimed to have taken control. Flying into Istanbul Ataturk Airport from an undisclosed location early Saturday, Mr. Erdogan signaled the coup was failing.
“A minority within the armed forces has unfortunately been unable to stomach Turkey’s unity,” Mr. Erdogan said, after the private NTV television channel showed him greeting supporters. Blaming political enemies, Mr. Erdogan said: “What is being perpetrated is a rebellion and a treason. They will pay a heavy price for their treason to Turkey.”
There were indications that the coup’s leaders, at a minimum, did not have a tight grip on many parts of the country. Supporters of Mr. Erdogan took to the streets of Istanbul to oppose the coup’s plotters. More than 130 people have been arrested in connection with the coup attempt, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said in comments to CNN Turk.
Nonetheless, the abrupt turn of events in Turkey left Mr. Erdogan’s grip on power uncertain. The country has been reeling from a wave of deadly extremism by the Islamic State militant group, struggling to accommodate hundreds of thousands of refugees from the war in neighboring Syria and fighting a resurgent Kurdish rebellion in the Turkish southeast.
Martial law was declared in the country, which has been convulsed by military takeovers at least three times in the past half-century. Mr. Erdogan, an Islamist who has dominated politics for more than a decade and sought to exert greater control over the armed forces, was forced to use his iPhone’s FaceTime app from a secret location to broadcast messages beseeching the public to resist the coup attempt.
Erdogan has been a disaster for Turkey and the Middle East: He has systematically dismantled the already meager protections of civil rights in Turkey, and has (at least until recently) been a supporter, along with the House of Saud of the Islamic State terrorist group.
Additionally, he has taken to stoking ethnic tensions with the Kurds, and re-initiated operations in Kurdish regions that is brutal even by the standards of the Turkish-Kurdish convlict.
If he were to leave the political stage it would be a good thing for pretty much everyone who has to deal with him.
On the other hand, a coup d’etat by the military is not a good thing.
There is no upside to this.
And the JSF Clustf%$# Continues
If there was one thing that you would think that the people managing could get right, it would be the rather prosaic ejection seat, which has been in fighter jets since the Korean war.
The US Air Force is looking into the possibility of replacing the Martin-Baker ejection seat on the F-35 joint strike fighter with the United Technologies ACES 5 model, Defense News has learned.
While still in the earliest stages, such a move could have have massive repercussions for the F-35 supply chain, impacting the workshare strategy that forms the backbone for the international fleet of the Lockheed Martin-designed fighter.
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At the core of the Air Force’s move is concern over pilot safety following the discovery that F-35 pilots under 136 pounds were at increased, potentially fatal, risk of neck damage when ejecting from the plane aboard the Martin-Baker US16E design. The service has also acknowledged an “elevated level of risk” for pilots between 136 and 165 pounds.
Defense News first broke the news of that issue in October. As a result of the issue, pilots under 136 pounds are prohibited from operating the fifth-generation fighter, which went operational for the Marines in 2015 and is expected to be operational for the Air Force by the end of this year.
That pilot risk, Bunch said, is unacceptable.
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Based on Bunch’s comments, it appears Air Force officials are concerned that another problem could occur with the Martin-Baker seat in the future, which raised the question of why the Air Force is only now starting to look at a backup option, eight months after the pilot safety concerns became public knowledge.
This is a big deal, particularly since changing the seats will mess up the work share with the UK. (Martin Baker is a UK firm)
The fact that this is still up in the air while the various branches are attempting to declare, or have declared, Initial Operating Capability (IOC) .
This is a definition of IOC that I was previously unaware of.
General Strangelove Breedlove Revealed
I have wondered if former SACEUR (military leader of NATO) Phillip Breedlove is completely nuts.
Well, it appears that someone hacked his email and removed all doubt as to his insanity:
Retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, until recently the supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe, plotted in private to overcome President Barack Obama’s reluctance to escalate military tensions with Russia over the war in Ukraine in 2014, according to apparently hacked emails from Breedlove’s Gmail account that were posted on a new website called DC Leaks.
Obama defied political pressure from hawks in Congress and the military to provide lethal assistance to the Ukrainian government, fearing that doing so would increase the bloodshed and provide Russian President Vladimir Putin with the justification for deeper incursions into the country.
Breedlove, during briefings to Congress, notably contradicted the Obama administration regarding the situation in Ukraine, leading to news stories about conflict between the general and Obama.
But the leaked emails provide an even more dramatic picture of the intense back-channel lobbying for the Obama administration to begin a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.
In a series of messages in 2014, Breedlove sought meetings with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, asking for advice on how to pressure the Obama administration to take a more aggressive posture toward Russia.
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Breedlove attempted to influence the administration through several channels, emailing academics and retired military officials, including former NATO supreme commander Wesley Clark, for assistance in building his case for supplying military assistance to Ukrainian forces battling Russian-backed separatists.
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Phillip Karber, an academic who corresponded regularly with Breedlove — providing him with advice and intelligence on the Ukrainian crisis — verified the authenticity of several of the emails in the leaked cache. He also told The Intercept that Breedlove confirmed to him that the general’s Gmail account was hacked and that the incident had been reported to the government.
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In the European press, Breedlove has been portrayed as a hawkish figure known for leaning on allied nations to ditch diplomacy and to adopt a more confrontational role again Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine. Breedlove, testifying before Congress earlier in February of this year, called Russia “a long-term existential threat to the United States and to our European allies.”
Der Spiegel reported that Breedlove “stunned” German leaders with a surprise announcement in 2015 claiming that pro-Russian separatists had “upped the ante” in eastern Ukraine with “well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of the most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery” sent to Donbass, a center of the conflict.
Breedlove’s numbers were “significantly higher” than the figures known to NATO intelligence agencies and seemed exaggerated to German officials. The announcement appeared to be a provocation designed to disrupt mediation efforts led by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
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The emails, however, depict a desperate search by Breedlove to build his case for escalating the conflict, contacting colleagues and friends for intelligence to illustrate the Russian threat. Karber, who visited Ukrainian politicians and officials in Kiev on several occasions, sent frequent messages to Breedlove — “per your request,” he noted — regarding information he had received about separatist military forces and Russian troop movements. In several updates, Breedlove received military data sourced from Twitter and social media.
Not just a dangerously bellicose general officer, but an insubordinate one as well.
He wanted war with Russia, and he was using tweets in an attempt coerce the President of the United States to go along with his folly.
That is completely nuts.
Thanks, Hillary
What a surprise, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton aggressively supported the right wing coup in Honduras.
Now we discover that the government’s US trained military has been assassinating indigenous environmental activists:
Berta Cáceres, the murdered environmental campaigner, appeared on a hitlist distributed to US-trained special forces units of the Honduran military months before her death, a former soldier has claimed.
Lists featuring the names and photographs of dozens of social and environmental activists were given to two elite units, with orders to eliminate each target, according to First Sergeant Rodrigo Cruz, 20.
Cruz’s unit commander, a 24-year-old lieutenant, deserted rather than comply with the order. Cruz – who asked to be identified by a pseudonym for fear of reprisal – followed suit, and fled to a neighbouring country. Several other members of the unit have disappeared and are feared dead.
“If I went home, they’d kill me. Ten of my former colleagues are missing. I’m 100% certain that Berta Cáceres was killed by the army,” Cruz told the Guardian.
Cáceres, an indigenous Lenca leader who won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015 for a campaign against the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam, was shot dead in her home in March. Before her murder, she had reported 33 death threats linked to the campaign and had warned international human rights delegates that her name was on a hitlist.
According to Cruz, Cáceres’s name appeared on a list given to a military police unit in the Inter-institutional Security Force (Fusina), which last summer received training from 300 US marines and FBI agents.………
Cáceres’s daughter, Bertita Zúñiga, said Cruz’s testimony strengthened the family’s calls for an independent international investigation to find the intellectual authors.
“This shows us that death squads are operating in the armed forces, which are being used to get rid of people opposing government plans. It shows us that human rights violations are state policy in Honduras.”
Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy cred is a myth.
She has been wrong, and continues to be wrong, on Everything.
This Wouldn’t Have Happened If the Original Story Hadn’t Gotten a Lot of Ink
The USAF inspector general lost over a decade of corruption and mismanagement files back, and now, following surprisingly extensive coverage of this mishap, they appeared to have rectified the error. I thought that the loss was suspicious, and I don’t think that the recovery efforts were as herculean as the article implies.
My guess is that no one wanted to try to recover the data, but it got too hot not to try:
The U.S. Air Force says it has recovered files from 100,000 inspector general investigations dating back to 2004.
In a short, four-sentence statement released midday on Wednesday, service officials said the Air Force continues to investigate the embarrassing incident in which the files and their backups were corrupted.
“Through extensive data recovery efforts over the weekend and this week, the Air Force has been able to regain access to the data in the Air Force Inspector General Automated Case Tracking System (ACTS),” the statement reads.
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The inspector general’s office investigates claims of waste, fraud, and abuse within the Air Force.
It may be innocent, but it smells like a 3 dead dead gopher in august.
About F%$#ing Time
I’m not calling for reinstituting the draft, but it’s good that they have stopped excluding women from Selective Service registration:
By a 85-13 vote on Tuesday, the Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act for the next fiscal year. It did not include amendments that would have required greater authorization for conflicts, and did not include an amendment from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to end Selective Service. Instead, it welcomed women into Selective Service for the first time, starting in 2018, unless that policy is stripped when the bill goes to conference.
The vote contained some element of surprise, as Republicans had stopped the female draft provision in the House. In fact, its presence in that version of the NDAA was a kind of ruse gone wrong. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), a military veteran opposed to women serving in combat, proposed the draft amendment during mark-up, to make a point. Expecting the amendment to fail, he voted against it, ready to argue that Democrats and other supporters of women in combat were hypocrites.
Hopefully this makes it to Obama’s desk.
And Tonite’s Theme of the Incompetent Foreign Policy Elites Continues………
And in this case, I find myself agreeing with a writer at The National Interest, which I find particularly disturbing, since the magazine was founded by the godfather of the Neocon movement, Irv Kristol.
In this case, Christopher Preble is suggesting that we toss the entire foreign policy establishment out on its ear:
The public is pretty cranky these days: Americans are unhappy with the presumptive nominees of the Democratic and Republican Parties. The dislike for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is at record-breaking levels relative to other major party standard bearers over the last thirty-six years. Americans are also gloomy about the state of the economy (Republicans more so than Democrats), and anxious about foreign entanglements, especially in the Middle East.
These sentiments are nothing new. American officials and those who run for office are generally unpopular. And an individual’s economic outlook is notoriously volatile, contingent on a few relevant factors that are subject to change.
Foreign policy views are more consistent in the sense that few Americans are committed interventionists, but, as I noted last week, the elites who populate the American foreign policy community tend to see public will as essentially irrelevant, because it is malleable in the hands of a skillful leader. The trouble arises when public sentiment shapes leaders’ perceptions of what is possible at a given time, but not enough to change their positions. The end result is often a dramatic gap between the ends that policymakers seek and the means available to achieve them.
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Ambitious leaders can shape public opinion through threat inflation and fearmongering. Interventionist elites know that skeptics will have a very difficult time ending a war once it is started. The hawks puts the nation’s prestige on the line. When things turn sour, the public wants to double down, unwilling to see the country to suffer an ignominious defeat. Americans are especially loathe to admit that the heroic sacrifices made on their behalf by U.S. troops might ultimately have been in vain.
There’s something unseemly about a U.S. foreign policy community that consistently defies the wishes of the American people, repeatedly making mistakes, and expecting things to magically turn around. But it is worse, to attempt grandiose foreign policies geared to shaping major regions in the face of clear public sentiment for a more modest approach. That leads to strategies that are almost sure to fail, given the limited resources available.
Ian Bremmer had it right in his book, Superpower: Three Choices for America’s Role in the World. After a thorough review of three distinct approaches, Bremmer opts for what he calls “Independent America”. This includes leading the world by example, and focusing on domestic priorities in order to establish a strong and vibrant society here at home in order to engage with the rest of the world through voluntary and peaceful means. This is different, however, from attempting to dictate how others should live their lives. If U.S. leaders adhere to such an approach, he explains, they “will make fewer costly mistakes,” and, crucially, they can count on “strong and lasting public backing.”
When we look at our interventionist foreign policy, intelligence, and military establishments, the interventionists have had a record of uninterrupted failure and misery since before I was born, and I am one seriously old fart.
We need to completely break the foreign policy elites before they break us.