The Bush administration announces they’re going to reevaluate their anti-terrorism strategies. To put it mildly, “[t]he policy review marks what many experts regard as a belated shift.” Well, perhaps a good place to start would be looking harder at who we sell weapons to, so we as advocates of freedom around the world aren’t forced to explain away situations like the recent massacre in Uzbekistan. (2nd link via Looka.)
Tag: Military-Industrial Complex
Oh, you mean that Koran.
While the toilet incident that got Newsweek in trouble was emphatically denied, the Pentagon announces — after the release of FBI interviews obtained by the ACLU — that there have in fact been incidents of Koran mistreatment at Gitmo. (Surprise, surprise.) While “the interviews underscore that U.S. government officials were made aware of allegations of prisoner abuse and Koran mistreatment within months of the opening of Guantanamo Bay in early 2002“, just last week “Pentagon spokesman Lawrence T. Di Rita said the Defense Department had received no credible claims of such abuse.”
Star Wars: Episode I.
Eager to try out new experimental weapons systems with dubious names like “Rods from God,” the Air Force looks to Dubya to greenlight space weapons programs. The Air Force believes ‘we must establish and maintain space superiority,’ Gen. Lance Lord, who leads the Air Force Space Command, told Congress recently. ‘Simply put, it’s the American way of fighting.” Hmmm. I might feel less uneasy about all this if this fellow Lord didn’t sound like he’s channeling Buck Turgidson. ‘Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny,” he told an Air Force conference in September. “Space superiority is our day-to-day mission. Space supremacy is our vision for the future.“‘
The Zap-O-Terrorist doesn’t work?
“‘Everyone was standing in line with their silver bullets to make us more secure after Sept. 11,’ said Randall J. Larsen, a retired Air Force colonel and former government adviser on scientific issues. ‘We bought a lot of stuff off the shelf that wasn’t effective.'” Yep, unfortunately we purchased billions of dollars of defective garbage in the post-9/11 rush to defend the homeland, a mistake that will cost several billion more to rectify. “After 9/11, we had to show how committed we were by spending hugely greater amounts of money than ever before, as rapidly as possible,” said Representative Christopher Cox, a California Republican who is the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. “That brought us what we might expect, which is some expensive mistakes.”
Life on Mars, Death from Space.
“I’d give it a 50-50 shot that you could find it somewhere underground. But then that’s a guess.” The NYT surveys the current thinking about prospects of Martian life, and how astrobiologists plan to go about proving or disproving its existence. (To wit, the European Space Agency plans to send an tricked-up rover to the red planet after 2011…hopefully, it’ll get past the Dubya Pentagon’s rash of Moonraker weapons.) Update: In somewhat related news (to the second story), Slate‘s Fred Kaplan assesses the Pentagon’s overly enthusiastic vision for ground-based future tech.
We are Dancing Mechanic.
“In the quest for artificial intelligence, the United States is perhaps just as advanced as Japan. But analysts stress that the focus in the United States has been largely on military applications. By contrast, the Japanese government, academic institutions and major corporations are investing billions of dollars on consumer robots aimed at altering everyday life, leading to an earlier dawn of what many here call the ‘age of the robot.‘” And to think I was geeking out over the Roomba just a few weeks ago.
The Pieces are Moving.
“The congressional watchdog remains fast asleep, and we intend to wake him up.” As Catkiller Frist and the GOP threaten to go nuclear on the filibuster tip, Senate Dems announce they’ll be holding oversight hearings into matters such as “defense contract abuses” over the coming year. Well, at the very least, this news from our side of the aisle sounds more promising than Harry Reid’s recent thumbs up for Scalia.
Friendly Fire.
Speaking to the Associated Press yesterday, fair-weather maverick John McCain gives Donald Rumsfeld a vote of “no confidence.” As usual, this seems like the type of key reservation McCain should have expressed before last month’s election.
Fear and Loathing at Gitmo.
A NYT report finds mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo is much more widespread than earlier suggested by Rumsfeld and other administration officials. “One regular procedure…was making uncooperative prisoners strip to their underwear, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them to endure strobe lights and screamingly loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to maximum levels…Such sessions could last up to 14 hours with breaks.”
Expats Against Bush.
“‘This is a completely partisan thing,’ one Defense Department voting official told Salon. The official, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of being fired, is one of the many people in the department assigned to help both uniformed military personnel as well as American civilians register to vote.’” For reasons that seem politically-motivated – and at the very least require much more explanation from the higher-ups who made the call, the DoD has blocked non-military access to the Federal Voting Assistant Program. (Those overseas voters needing access to the forms can get them here.) Particularly once you factor in the Omega fiasco as well, Rummy’s sure getting his ducks in a row over at the Defense of Dubya Dept, isn’t he? (Also seen at Expats Against Bush.)