Politics/Intel
Another Waste of Money
If you put these coordinates ( +32° 40' 35.65", -117° 9' 29.96") into Google maps (or similar) and get the satellite view you can see the latest waste of tax payer money. The NY Times and others report that the Navy will be spending $600,000 to 'fix' a 'problem' that has existed since the 1960s but apparently was never an issue until the wide spread availability of hi-res satellite maps. Perhaps they'll be painting the rooftop black and the ground red so it won't be so overlooked in the future. Time to get over it and move on people.On another note... more evidence that Congress wants their ratings to sink even further. They've just attached a 'hate crimes' rider onto a defense appropriations bill. Aren't we past the age where we treat the same crime differently depending on the victim? Isn't murder still murder? Assault, assault? This was, bad pun intended, bush league.
What's In A Name?
After researching a few rules and regs on the Federal Election Commission web site we were a bit numb and needed a break from the tedium of paragraph this subsection that. On the front of the FEC page is a search function and we thought lets play with this... wonder how many people named 'Clinton' gave to Hillary Clinton or 'Romney's' giving to Mitt Romney... hmm...We tossed in a bunch of names.. it really didn't take very long at all. Except as noted, the totals reflect individuals, not contributions; the exceptions just had too many entries to bother condensing down to individuals (the output lists each donation so some people have multiple low dollar entries):
Clinton: 1 out of 7 total
Edwards: 20 of 220 *
Obama: 1 of 1
Dodd: 2 of 13
Richardson: 14 of 212 *
Biden: 2 of 2
Giuliani: 6 of 6
Romney: 32 of 32
Paul: 5 of 232 *
McCain: 9 of 18
Huckabee: 2 of 3
Brownback: 2 of 3
* denominator is total line item contributions
The Democrats Are Idiots
What else can it be when their 'leadership' sees fit to call a vote in the Senate on a bill to defund the war in Iraq.The legislation, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Russ Feingold, was indicative of the Democratic leadership's new hardline strategy.Here is a small clue to you Senator Reid: you don't need to vote on a "defunding bill". You simply do not bring any funding bill to the floor at all. This is exactly what should have been done with the last supplemental. Take the request from the White House, add a sufficient amount to cover an orderly withdrawal of the troops and give it to Bush to sign. Then hold a press conference stating 'that's all folks!'. At that point you have funded his request and given him enough to bring the troops out with their equipment. If the administration ignores the wishes of Congress by trying to continue past that point, the funds will have to come from the general DOD budget and the burden is on the White House for acting irresponsibly and against the wishes of the people as expressed by their elected representatives - which means no more funding bills.
Unable to attract enough Republican support on milder proposals, Reid has sought votes on strong anti-war measures intended to force a withdrawal of troops. The outcome was not a surprise. In May, the Senate rejected a similar proposal by Reid and Feingold by a 29-67 vote, with most Democrats saying they did not support using money to force an end to the war because that approach could hurt the troops. Source: AP
Bush: Insulting
Two things we took away from the Bush address last night on Iraq. First, he is unable to come clean and admit the only reason he is drawing down troops as described is because the Army can't maintain that level past March. That was bad enough. But what we found quite offensive and frankly insulting was the following quote:In Anbar, the enemy remains active and deadly. Earlier today, one of the brave tribal sheikhs who helped lead the revolt against al Qaeda was murdered.Mr. President, reserve the word brave to preface the names of our troops. This man whom you chose to dignify was until very recently part of the Sunni insurrection with the overarching aim to kill American soldiers. The enemy of my enemy who is now my friend is not brave. Sorry.
No point in commenting on the rest of it - that ground has been covered before too many times, most recently here.
Russia: Daddy Of All Bombs?
We've decided to skip over the Kremlin politics du jour (Putin dissolved the current government and named a surprise candidate to PM, Victor Zubkov, aNot to be confused with the Boston Red Sox's 'Big Papi' (David Ortiz), the Russian military tested a new bomb this week they've dubbed 'Daddy of all bombs' - a reference to the US MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Blast, aka 'Mother Of All Bombs'). Analysts who watched the tape of the test (available on the BBC agree the Russian claims to have produced the most powerful conventional bomb as quite plausible given their past history with this genre of bomb. Russia claims they are using a designer explosive exploiting nano technology techniques which has yields significantly better than the H-6 used in the MOAB. H-6 is a combination of the more traditional explosives RDX, TNT with aluminum. This allows the Russian bomb to be lighter (7,100 kg filling vs 8,200 kg) but more deadly - equivalent of 44 T TNT vs about 11 T for the MOAB.
Russian bluster aside, neither bomb is even remotely close to the power of a nuclear explosion. The Mk 54 Davy Crockett nuclear artillery weapon came in two versions, 10 T and 20 T equivalent yields while the Mk 54 SADM (special atomic demolition weapon) had a variable yield from 10T to about 1 kiloton. The W 84, put out of service with the signing of the INF treaty in the 1980s, had a variable yield from as low as 0.2 kt to 150 kt. As a reference, the 'Little Boy' MK 1 dropped on Hiroshima was about 15 kt while 'Fat Man' (Nagasaki) was 21 kt.
This test fits nicely with Russia's continued moves towards a return to a more active military posture patterned on the Cold War. These huge bombs are meant more for show than use (the MOAB has never been used though the BLU-82 has) in part to scare a potential adversary but also for domestic consumption - look how powerful our weapons are! That seems to be the case here with Putin continuing his efforts to rebuild the Russia psyche by appeal to military patriotism.
Know Enough About Mitt Romney?
Apparently most people do - at least those using the internet. Nielsen has been tracking various web metrics as related to the 2008 presidential campaign such as online advertising, YouTube visits and web traffic. Generally, the Republicans trail the Democrats in most categories. However, Mitt Romney stands out among the 'first tier' candidates - apparently voters already have all they need to know about him:
Site Visits Avg. Time(m:s) ImWithFred.com 381,000 01:35 JoinRudy2008.com 124,000 07:33 MittRomney.com 116,000 00:49 RonPaul2008.com 113,000 06:52 JohnMcCain.com 104,000 01:47
The above data (via DJ Wire) shows Romney not only trails in visits but people only spend 49 seconds looking at his page! With other polling info showing Romney still trailing in name recognition, the limited time the public is willing to spend on his web is a potentially bad sign for the future of his campaign. Fred Thompson may suffer a similar fate - given the clamoring in June and July for him to enter the race as some kind of conservative saviour, it has to be a let down that he can't keep their attention for much over a minute.
Rudy, however, is a much trickier read. On the one had it should be seen as a positive that his visitors spend seven and a half minutes getting more information about him and his stances. On the other though, doesn't everybody know everything about Rudy? We wonder if there may be a certain element of second guessing and double checking of his position statements.
That Ron Paul can attract a comparable number of visits to the polling leader with nearly the same visit length is quite a testament to his message. Dismissed by many as a novelty, people do seem interested in what he has to say - or at least are not running away the moment they read that his foreign policy stance (non-interventionist) differs dramatically from the other Republican candidates.
For comparison purposes, the top three Dems all have far more page views - Obama 717K (7:53), Hillary 437K (8:17) and Edwards 348K (3:43) compared to the long running Republicans. And if the GOP believes Hillary is their best fight - explain the over 8 minutes people spend finding out more about her campaign. We certainly thought everyone knew all there was to know about Hillary (and Bill).
Whoopsy! Runaway Nukes!
CNN is running a story that the Air Force had a major slip up last week when a B-52 was flown from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Barksdale in Louisiana with an armament of cruise missiles attached. Not just any cruise missiles mind you - nuclear tipped missiles. We suspect these may have been ACM's (AGM-129) or possibly older ALCM's (AGM-86B) as the story notes the missiles were to be decommissioned (last March we were downbeat on the decision to retire all the ACM's.) The problem here is that the Air Force no longer sends planes up with nukes on board and in fact it is a violation of an arms control agreement; the nuclear warhead should have been removed from the missile prior to being carried on the B-52 to its final decommissioning site (or stoage facility). In addition, there are real safety concerns flying with nuclear weapons.The Air Force spokesman down played the risk of any potential danger to those on the ground and on background to CNN:
A military official told CNN there was no nuclear risk to public safety because the weapons were not armed. Officials believe that if the plane had crashed or the missiles somehow had fallen off the wings, the warheads would have remained inert and there would have been no nuclear detonation, though conventional explosive material in the warhead could have detonated. Source: CNNWhile a crash of a B-52 flying non-combat on a short haul over the US is indeed remote, there are some significant risks, even if the warhead is unarmed. In a 1991 paper Occasional Report–Nuclear Warhead Safety and the CTB, von Hippel wrote:
The problem of plutonium dispersal by an accidental detonation of the chemical explosive in a nuclear warhead is dealt with in most modern nuclear warheads by using "insensitive high explosive" (IHE) in the implosion mechanism. The Drell panel notes, however, that, as of the beginning of 1990, only 25% of the US stockpile was equipped with IHE. Kidder points out that, aside from the warheads on the Minuteman ICBM and on submarine launched ballistic missiles, all US warheads that do not contain IHE are expected to be retired.
[...]
Both reports agree that the greatest danger of a plutonium-dispersal accident would be as a result of an airplane crash or fire. Indeed, the only two incidents with US warheads that have resulted in widespread plutonium contamination were crashes of nuclear-armed B-52's in 1966 and 1968. Since that time, the US Air Force has kept its nuclear-armed aircraft on the ground. However, the Drell panel points out that the Department of Defense - unlike the Department of Energy - continues to routinely transport non-IHE nuclear weapons by air. Kidder urges that all transport of nuclear weapons by air in peacetime be halted and that nuclear-armed alert aircraft not be stationed near operating runways.
The least serious potential consequence of a warhead accident would be local plutonium contamination event as a result of a warhead burning with-out exploding. As the Drell panel report points out, in contrast to an explosive plutonium dispersal accident, which could create a plutonium inhalation hazard over an area of hundreds of square kilometers, the area of contamination from a fire would be on the order of one square kilometer and most of the plutonium-containing particles would be too large to be inhaled.
The Drell panel notes that some modern warheads contain "fire-resistant pits" that are designed to contain molten plutonium for the duration of a serveral-hour-long jet-fuel fire and panel recommends that all warheads loaded on aircraft be so equipped.
To the best of our knowledge, both the AGM-129 and AGM-86B are armed with a W-80 mod 1 warhead which has a spherical IHE shell surrounding the plutonium pit, however the pit itself is not fire resistant. So while the Air Force official sourcing CNN was correct in saying the risk of a nuclear detonation was near nil, there was definitely the risk of plutonium contamination were the aircraft to fail or otherwise crash. As to the history of the B-52 while carrying nuclear weapons, see:
1-13-1964: A B-52 plane crashes with nuclear bombs on board in Maryland
1-17-1966: A B-52 plane crashes after collision with KC-135 during refueling over Spain causing plutonium contamination [2nd most serous accident -MILNET]
1-21-1968: A B-52 plane crashed and burned seven miles south of Thule Air Base, Greenland; all bombs destroyed with some contamination of the area
1-29-1961: A B-52 plane carrying nuclear bombs crashes, the bombs do not explode but three of the eight crew members are killed
2-12-1968: A B-52 plane with nuclear bombs on board crashes near Toronto
3-14-1961: A B-52 plane crashes with nuclear bombs on board in California
Improbable, yet certainly possible.
[Update (9/6/07 1500 GMT): Some more information on the security protocols which must have been violated for this 'accident' to have taken place via Jane at ArmscontrolWonk.com
The Rehabilitation of Rafsanjani
In a move that was expected, though not certain, former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani was elected to head the Assembly of Experts. This group is primarily responsible for the selection of a new 'Supreme' Leader and in theory at least, keeping tabs on the current Supreme Leader, Ali Kahmenei. This was another blow for the hard-line camp of President Ahmadinejad and to a lesser extent Ayatollah Kahmenei. Interestingly, Rafsanjani seems ready to go so far as to publish publicly any future review of the actions of Kahmenei as part of the role of the assembly to monitor the Supreme Leader for the public good.This is part of an fairly amazing come back by Rafsanjani, counted out after his 2005 run-off loss to Ahmadinejad for the Iranian presidency. Not only was his personal star diminished, the Iranian electorate seemed to have given up on the idea of 'reform' instead buying into hollow economic promises by the former mayor of Tehran. Putting aside palace intrigue, this should be seen as positive news for the West. There should be no delusions about Rafsanjani - he is no saint and is wanted on terrorism charges by Argentina - but the fact remains he is a pragmatic leader unlike Ahmadinejad or Kahmenei and thus offers an opening to the West to seek a less confrontational relationship. As Ahmadinejad's term nears an end, expectations will grow that Rafsanjani or one of his protege's will take the Presidency after the broken promises and world isolation of Admadinejad have turned the Iranian electorate back towards the center (well, the Iranian center).
The question is, can the Bush Administration navigate through the difficulties of the current administration without adversely affecting the future administration in Iran, or worse, turning the Iranian population back towards the hardliners? As has been seen in North Korea, skillful negotiation can lead to productive results and change the course of events away from confrontation and towards a negotiated settlement which benefits both parties. The US and N. Korea have only just begun to make such progress and there remains great uncertainty of the final result, yet events are moving in the right direction. In the case of Iran, things are a bit more personal. Ahmadinejad has not missed any opportunity to poke a finger in Bush's eye by adding to US difficulties in Iraq, Lebanon and the Emirates, well beyond what most would consider in Iran's national interest. Can Bush (and Cheney) resist the urge to get in a brawl with Iran before leaving office? If rumors of the imminent roll out of a concerted program led by a few right/neo-con think tanks to prepare the public for action against Iran are true, then the answer is no. Some believe the objective is only to put pressure on Iran's UN nuclear portfolio, however the potential involvement/direction of the Office of VP smells much like Iraq in 2002. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail this time around.
