Dan Gerstein has written an interesting book in his review of how the US government has reacted to the bioterrorism challenge over the past eight years. Gerstein wasn't traditionally a bioterrorism expert until he started taking the PhD program at George Mason University. [...]
Domino's Scientists Test Limits Of What Humans Will Eat
If you have some time, listen to the Charlie Rose show titled "Live analysis of President Obama's address on Afghanistan 12/01/09" - there's no direct link, but you can access it under "recent shows." In particular, Dexter Filkins (NYT) and Martha Raddatz (ABC) make some very good points and are clearly [...]
Al Kamen reminds us of the hysterical Republican party's reaction to handing the Panama Canal over to Panama ten years ago - because it was just an insane idea that the US government wouldn't want to continue occupying a country with military and civilian [...]
I used to respect David Ignatius and enjoy his columns. I enjoyed his narration between Bret Scowcroft and Zbignew Brzezinski in "America and the World." Then he took a few helicopter rides with Gen. Petraeus and I think they replaced him with a pod [...]
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathy Sebelius has thought about all the challenges with getting the H1N1 vaccine out to the public, and she's convinced that many of the problems are due to the lack of modern technology. So she's called for a review.
"Today, [...]
I wanted to get back to William Owen's article in Armed Forces Journal. He's concerned that the military obsesses a bit too much on terminology at the cost of not appreciating the universal nature of war. And by "universal nature of war," he means [...]
For those interested, here's the WaPo coverage and the White House transcript. For the WMD crowd, here's the money shots:
"The people and governments of both Afghanistan and Pakistan are endangered. And the stakes are even higher within a nuclear-armed Pakistan, because [...]
2003: "bring this war to a successful conclusion..." good start. Oh, shit, he's pulling out the 9/11 argument. "to destroy al Qaeda's terrorist network... we sent our troops into Afghanistan." So when do we invade Saudi Arabia?
2008: The Iraq war took the majority of our resources... no kidding. "we will [...]
... that the British political leadership was aware that the WMD intel was weak to nonexistent and still marched on to war in 2003.
Tim Dowse, the Foreign Office’s head of counter-proliferation at the time, said that in 2001 the threat from [...]
So in the true spirit of LBJ, President Obama is going to double down on the Bush decision to "muddle through" Afghanistan, because (as SecState Clinton said on Monday) we can't allow "an environment in which terrorist groups thrive" - as they already have in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, [...]
A report from the Senate's Foreign Relations committee suggests that SecDef Don Rumsfeld and General Tommie Franks allowed Osama bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora in December 2001. It was a deliberate decision not to engage with overwhelming force that was available and [...]
This video is dedicated to William F. Owen and all the true believers who attended the Army War College and believe in conventional combined arms warfare as the be-all and end-all. Yes, they really believe in this man's writing that much.
UPDATE: Sorry, didn't realise the video has [...]
President Obama has hit the "go" button to begin escalating the troop strength in Afghanistan by more than 30,000. Now for the rest of today and through tomorrow, you will hear from retired general officers and Republican politicians and right-wing pundits about how this was a Good Decision, and [...]
Major Robert Thorton at Fort Leavenworth provides his two cents on the recent media articles about retired general officers and flag officers providing mentoring advice to active duty officers.
As an active duty Army major, I have a different perspective on the use of senior mentors. I have seen [...]
Check out this dialogue between a person associated with the Army's Chemical Materials Agency and curious laypersons. It's pretty interesting and somewhat entertaining... the expert here is calling himself/herself "sniff," which is funny (considering the topic - sorry, we're all sick puppies).
mfriedm 16 points [...]
I really thought the day of the Neocon was over when most people admitted what a screw-up the Iraq war had been, from start to almost-finish. But here we have Fred and Kim Kagan gloating in the Washington Post about the inevitable "troop surge that [...]
Spencer Ackerman has found out what crap the made-for-television movie "The Plan" was, and he's not a happy man.
...what Plan did the Cylons have?
They were planning to destroy humanity. You know, the thing we learned in the very first episode of the fucking — [...]
In a very small AP article going around, it's been noted that the Obama administration has decided not to join the Ottawa Treaty on Land Mines, continuing the Bush administration's refusal to sign up (along with more than 35 other countries, including China, [...]
David Axe is starring on "Russia Today" and talking about Afghanistan. He looks better on video than Spencer Ackerman or Andrew Exum, but it frightens me that Russia is running a propaganda television show with US newspersons on YouTube.
Speaking of Andrew, he's taking some time off of daily [...]
Time-Lapse Favs from Chad Richard on Vimeo.
Thankful for sunrises.Thankful that I'm not President Obama.
[...]Rick "Ozzie" Nelson at CSIS gets it:
Some analysts said Obama was right to discuss an eventual Afghan military drawdown, especially in light of doubts among Democrats in Congress who could pre-empt him by voting to deny funds for the war effort.
But they stressed this should be seen [...]
Gen. Kevin "Chilly" Chilton, commander of USSTRATCOM, is still voicing his concern that the US government needs to retain its ability to make new nukes in the DOE national labs. And the best way to retain that expertise? Build new nukes, of course...
Of particular [...]
In which Andrew Bacevich schools David Frum on strategic defense policy issues. David Frum asks Dr. Bacevich how he would advise Obama (just around 11 minutes in):
What I would say is, Mr. President, you need to stop having meetings about Afghanistan. You need to start having meetings in which your national security [...]
Ray in the UK sends this short BBC article, which says that the UK government is going to delve into that nebulous mess about why it was so motivated to plunge into Iraq with its partner, the United States. Was the intelligence on WMD [...]
Honestly, on what planet are these people living?
UPDATE: And it's Palin's commentary on the military and national security issues - such as this one - that really steams me, considering that she has a kid in the military. But hey, not the first time she's used her kids as props. [...]
Gordon at Alternative Brain reads an on-line article about Bill Moyers and agrees:
The Nation talks about a show I watched last Friday evening of LBJ's taped phone conversations and Bill Moyers' commentary. Highly recommended as a history lesson. And a warning.
One point of the program, he explained, was [...]
Travis Sharp from Nukes and Hazard points out this report from the Institute for Policy Studies that criticizes the Obama administration of not shifting the US security policy away from "business as usual."
The Obama administration promised “a sweeping shift of priorities and [...]
Many of you may be aware that one of the main criticisms of the DHS Domestic Nuclear Detection Office is its inability to find radiological detectors that can unobtrusively monitor cargo and vehicles that might be concealing a large amount of shielded radioactive [...]
There was a rumor going around about a year or two ago that the DHS Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) was going away, that people were tired of its constant inability to do much more than scatter thousands of radiological detectors around the [...]
Courtesy of Abu M, I find that Gen. Odienro has a British civilian political advisor by the name of Ms. Emma Sky. The NY Times says that she's a "woman to be reckoned with."
Ms. Sky sees herself as part aid worker, part political operator, part cultural translator.
“I’m [...]
Sen. Joe Lieberman (Idiot-CT) decided that he couldn't wait for the DOD to finish its investigation of the Fort Hood shooting, so he decided to have his own committee circus last Thursday. Because he couldn't get any official witnesses, he had to bring in some [...]
InsideDefense (subscription required) reports that, on last Thursday, SecDef Bob Gates announced plans to place a National Guard general officer in charge of US Northern Command. I'm not sure that this is a great idea.
Signaling the growing influence of citizen-soldiers in the military's [...]
I don't have any Lady Gaga songs on my iPod, but the visual image of Christopher Walken and Cartman singing with her is pretty damn funny. [...]
I sincerely wanted to resist any comment on Sarah Palin and her book tour (sponsored in part by Faux News), but I just have to say, now I recognize that her fan base really does like the fact that she is just like them - completely devoid of [...]
Spencer Ackerman has done a yeoman's job digging into the details as to whether the 40-44,000 troop estimate by Gen. McChrystal is even realistic to consider, when one counts the number of troops still in Iraq and Gen. Odierno's glacially slow deployment out of that country, the number of [...]
Rob Farley points to a Small Wars Journal article by COL Gian Gentile, where he proposes a "better understanding of the Vietnam War." Gentile is concerned that the COINdanistas are using the Vietnam conflict as an excuse to say "if they let us [...]
So let's talk about this great government in Kabul that we're trying to prop up with the billions of dollars from the US treasury. First we can talk about the mansions in Kabul, where simple government officials making a few hundred dollars [...]
Now I am probably not telling you anything new in this title, but when I saw this op-ed by William Kristol in his Weekly Standard magazine (hat tip to Matt Y), I just suddenly got this pounding headache and resulting furious reaction.
In areas [...]
Australian government officials announced the discovery of a World War 2-era cache of mustard-filled 105-mm artillery shells last week. It's causing a bit of a stir, but then again, it's just mustard agent and they're not leaking. Still, a bit of historical interest here as to where they came [...]
