Hmm. As I was just saying recently, imagine if we as a country defined national security as the health, well-being, education and gainful employment of our citizens, and not as the ability to deliver bombs on targets.

I'm not surprised that someone else came to the same obvious conclusion -- only that it's two members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying so:

On Friday, April 8, as members of the U.S. Congress engaged in a last-minute game of chicken over the federal budget, the Pentagon quietly issued a report that received little initial attention: "A National Strategic Narrative." The report was issued under the pseudonym of "Mr. Y," a takeoff on George Kennan's 1946 "Long Telegram" from Moscow (published under the name "X" the following year in Foreign Affairs) that helped set containment as the cornerstone of U.S. strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union.

The piece was written by two senior members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CAPT Wayne Porter, USN and Col Mark "Puck" Mykleby) in a "personal" capacity, but it is clear that it would not have seen the light of day without a measure of official approval. Its findings are revelatory, and they deserve to be read and appreciated not only by every lawmaker in Congress, but by every American citizen.

The narrative argues that the United States is fundamentally getting it wrong when it comes to setting its priorities, particularly with regard to the budget and how Americans as a nation use their resources more broadly. The report says Americans are overreacting to Islamic extremism, underinvesting in their youth, and failing to embrace the sense of competition and opportunity that made America a world power. The United States has been increasingly consumed by seeing the world through the lens of threat, while failing to understand that influence, competitiveness, and innovation are the key to advancing American interests in the modern world.

Courageously, the authors make the case that America continues to rely far too heavily on its military as the primary tool for how it engages the world. Instead of simply pumping more and more dollars into defense, the narrative argues:

By investing energy, talent, and dollars now in the education and training of young Americans -- the scientists, statesmen, industrialists, farmers, inventors, educators, clergy, artists, service members, and parents, of tomorrow -- we are truly investing in our ability to successfully compete in, and influence, the strategic environment of the future. Our first investment priority, then, is intellectual capital and a sustainable infrastructure of education, health and social services to provide for the continuing development and growth of America's youth.

Please don't forget about our donation drive.

From Barefoot and Progressive, more words of wisdom from wunderkind Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

Rand Paul then decided to play some Tea Party History. You know Tea Party History, right? How the Founding Fathers ended slavery, Sputnik brought down the Soviet Union, Reagan never raised taxes, so on and so on. Rand Paul's been known to play this before with Hitler-flation, and played with Henry Clay in his opening speech on the Senate floor. And here's what he had to say about the Iraq/Iran War in the 80's:

"During the Iran/Iraq war from 1980-88, there were F-14's on both sides, you know, we're bombing each other with planes that we paid for on both sides because we got them for the Shah, and then we were supporting Sadam Hussein at the time."

That would be a great point, if it actually had any basis in reality. The United States didn't sell or give any aircraft to Iraq. Iraq never had F-14's. I get the "point" he's making here, but this once more shows either an incredible lack of understanding of history, or a willingness to make stuff up in order score political points.

Reality in the Republican World does have a different bend. It helps them make serious decisions about taxes and budgets and such. But even with these words of wisdom, I'll bet he and other Repubs don't think there's anything wrong with arming both Egypt and Israel, past enemies, with US military weapon systems. It's all good business for them, and they have no illusions about retaining the military-industrial complex.

But it is kind of weird to see M1 Abrams tanks facing off from the Egyptian protestors, isn't it? And F16s flying over Cairo? (Hat tip to Prof Farley)

UPDATE: Ron/Rand/Ryan typo corrected. Apologies.

At the NRO corner, Sarah Palin (or her ghostwriter) takes a moment to rally the Republican Senators against the evil that is New START. "It's a trap!" she screams. "Run away!"

New START recognizes a link between offensive and defensive weapons – a position the Russians have sought for years.  Russia claims the treaty constrains U.S. missile defenses and that they will withdraw from the treaty if we pursue missile defenses.  This linkage virtually guarantees that either we limit our missile defenses or the Russians will withdraw from the treaty.  The Obama administration claims that this is not the case; but if that is true, why agree to linking offensive and defensive weapons in the treaty?  At the height of the Cold War, President Reagan pursued missile defense while also pursuing verifiable arms control with the then-Soviet Union.  That position was right in the 1980’s, and it is still right today.  We cannot and must not give up the right to missile defense to protect our population – whether the missiles that threaten us come from Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, or anywhere else. I fought the Obama administration’s plans to cut funds for missile defense in Alaska while I was Governor, and I will continue to speak out for missile defenses that will protect our people and our allies.

It would be too easy to rebut her many incorrect assumptions and faulty logic, especially about the actions she may or may not have taken during her half-term as governor. It's not as bad as Romney's tirade against New START, but it's damned close in the level of stupidity and backwardness. Fortunately, there's a writer who has presented a counter-argument in The American Conservative magazine, of all places.

This is one thing in the treaty debate that has never made much sense. Treaty opponents are overwhelmingly drawn from the ranks of people who viscerally dislike and distrust the Russian government, but they ought to be among the first to want to put Russia under a verification regime. As it stands, they are working very hard to prevent the re-establishment of any verification regime. Whether or not they claim to want some ideally superior means of verification, they are taking the position that the regime established by this treaty should not be implemented.

Despite the best efforts of some hawkish interventionists to pretend that arms control is a relic of the past and irrelevant to today’s problems, they are the ones most likely to portray Russia as an existing or emerging threat to its neighbors. They should be the ones most eager to limit and constrain Russia through treaty obligations. Even if they don’t believe that Russia will comply with the treaty, it is hawks who should want to impose obligations and limits on Russia’s arsenal. Instead, it is the most anti-Russian and hawkish figures who are effectively enabling Russian power. What is remarkable about this is that these are the same people who could not stop haranguing the administration for betraying Poland and the Czech Republic when there was no betrayal, and they are the ones who remain convinced that it is the administration that is giving in to Russian demands when Russia has obtained virtually nothing tangible from the “reset.” Now that they are presented with an opportunity to side with European allies in support of greater U.S. and European security, they have opted instead for a rejectionist position that would keep the U.S. largely blind to Russian activities, increase uncertainty about Russia’s arsenal, and add to allied anxieties about potential Russian threats.

It's a no-brainer. Moderate Republicans should support New START because it does in fact limit Russian nuclear weapons and it sets up the opportunity to re-engage them on other issues, such as tactical nuclear missiles. The hard-right Republicans just want Russia to portray a symbol of unending threat, so it justifies spending lots of money on defense programs. The latter don't need arms control treaties to make their argument; the former recognize the need, but have to drum up the courage to stand up to their colleagues. We'll see who wins this round, sanity or madness.

Sarah Palin should stick to issues she understands, like shooting moose or wolves from planes, rather than addressing serious national security issues of which she has no comprehension. At the least, reflexively going against an arms control initiative because the Bush-initiated agreement might be completed under Obama's term, while every former Secretary of State and all of the active duty general officer is for it, is really not a great idea.

I suppose I'm suffering from Greenwald Syndrome -- yes, Obama's done some good things, but I just can't get past the civil liberties horrors of the Bush era that he not only defends, his policies embrace:

The victims of the Bush administration's programme of "extraordinary rendition" will not be able to sue the private company which transported them to foreign countries for torture by the CIA, after the present White House stepped in to squash their lawsuit on the grounds of national security.

A California court has sided with the Obama administration, which argued that a case led by the British resident Binyam Mohamed against the aerospace giant Boeing was bound to reveal state secrets and sensitive intelligence information.

Legal supporters of Mr Mohamed raised uproar at the decision, which the judge in charge of the case said had presented a "painful conflict between human rights and national security".

Ben Wizner, attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, who argued the case, called it "a sad day not only for the torture victims whose attempt to seek justice has been extinguished, but for all Americans who care about our nation's reputation in the world", and vowed to appeal to the US Supreme Court. "To date, not a single victim of the Bush administration's torture programme has had his day in court," the attorney said.

SHORTER Marc Thiessen: "We need Obama to use the CheneyBush national security toolchest to put a hit out on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. It's the only responsible thing to do."

Marc Thiessen is furious, simply furious that the Obama adminstration hasn't put Julian Assange on the top of the "Most Wanted" list. In his WaPo op-ed, he calls for the full force of the federal government to stop Assange - a "clear and present danger to the national security of the United States" - before he kills again.

Assange claims to be in possession of 15,000 even more sensitive documents, which he is reportedly preparing to release. On Sunday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told ABC News that Assange had a "moral culpability" for the harm he has caused. Well, the Obama administration has a moral responsibility to stop him from wreaking even more damage.

Assange is a non-U.S. citizen operating outside the territory of the United States. This means the government has a wide range of options for dealing with him. It can employ not only law enforcement but also intelligence and military assets to bring Assange to justice and put his criminal syndicate out of business.
---------
Arresting Assange would be a major blow to his organization. But taking him off the streets is not enough; we must also recover the documents he unlawfully possesses and disable the system he has built to illegally disseminate classified information.

Chalk this up as another screeching editoral by the community of people who still believe that there was nothing wrong with how the CheneyBush administration ran the country's security infrastructure. Despite losing elections in 2006 and 2008, they still think that the only way to run the federal government is by unilaterally strong-arming other nations, evesdropping on US citizens, and rewriting the Constitution.

But as much as Thiessen reveals himself to be a foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic, you have to wonder if there are any limits in place at the Washington Post for conservative pundits. Obviously there are not.

The UAE has decided to suspend Blackberry service in their country:

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority has said that BlackBerry Messenger, BlackBerry E-mail and BlackBerry Web-browsing services in the UAE will be suspended as of October 11.

The suspension is a result of the failure of ongoing attempts, dating back to 2007, to bring BlackBerry services in the UAE in line with UAE telecommunications regulations.

To coincide with the announcement, the UAE's state news agency WAM has produced a detailed comparison of telecommunications regulation in the UAE, UK and US.

Both telecommunications operators, Etisalat and du,were informed of the decision earlier today. The notification was delivered with an instruction to ensure minimal consumer disruption in the provision of alternative services.

Initially, I glanced over the story and didn't think much about it. But then I saw this article at Ars Technica and realized there is more than meets the eye:

(O)ne of the selling points of the Blackberry—strong encryption between the hardware and RIM's e-mail servers in Canada—hasn't sat well with the UAE's security services. After previous attempts to subvert the encryption, the UAE has now decided to simply ban sales of the devices. Meanwhile Saudi Arabia is considering blocking the use of RIM's instant messaging service.

The problem, from the security service's perspective, is that the e-mails never spend any time where the UAE's security services can examine their contents. In what appeared to be an earlier attempt to get around this issue, Etisalat attempted to get RIM users on its network to install some software that simply took any e-mail that had been decrypted and forwarded it on to a server within the UAE. This effort was quickly discovered, however, and RIM washed its hands of the whole thing publicly.

Now, the UAE has apparently decided that if you can't subvert them, you might as well kill them. As of October, RIM devices will be cut off from Internet access when using carriers based in the UAE. The security services would apparently accept the company setting up a local proxy server for monitoring, but the user population is small enough that RIM may be comfortable walking away from that market instead. But there are some signs that the UAE isn't alone in this. A BBC report on the same topic mentioned that some Blackberry services would be banned by Saudi Arabia; both mentioned India being concerned with its inability to monitor traffic from the devices.

So because the UAE could not install spyware on the cellphones as they had hoped, they simply banned the phones. The plot thickens. It should also be assumed that other phones available at UAE have not had this problem. But that wasn't the only thing that struck me. I remember a conversation I had with some other bloggers at the time that when Obama was stubbornly refusing to give up his BlackBerry and I remembered the acronym RIM. I did a quick search through my inbox and found this link:

On February 9, 2006, the US Department of Defense (DOD) filed a brief stating that an injunction shutting down the BlackBerry service while excluding government users was unworkable. The DOD also stated that the BlackBerry was crucial for national security given the large number of government users.

National security? Encrypted spyware? We know that telecom companies acceded to demands by the Bush/Cheney administration to wiretap Americans land lines without a warrant. Could RIM have made a similar agreement with the DOD, but not with the government of UAE? After all, when he was elected in 2007, Sarkozy banned the use of BlackBerrys for his cabinet for security reasons, citing the fact that the servers reside in the UK and US.

Défense Nationale (SGDN), the French security agency, says the BlackBerry is "a problem of data security." The French Cabinet and staffs have been barred from using the popular handheld.

The Financial Times says the French foreign service got rid of its BlackBerries some time ago, but that other ministries had ignored guidance and were still using them.

French paper Le Monde reportedly was quite explicit regarding who might be seeking to spy on the secrets of France, pointing the finger firmly at the USA's National Security Agency interception spookshop. There was no mention of the UK's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, aka MI6) or Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ), but one can be sure they too have figured in the SGDN's decision.

Obviously, it's virtually impossible to confirm anything when we start getting into the arena of spyware and foreign governments, but I'd say there's enough fragments there to say that this is not simply a case of the UAE not finding the Blackberry technology up to its standards.

So an anonymous "senior administration official" says that "most" internet and email providers already turn over this information. (Gee, I wonder why he didn't want to go on the record. And I wonder why the Post allowed it.)

See, here's the problem with these relentless expansions of executive power: I don't actually believe that the Obama administration is interested in putting me under surveillance for criticizing their policies. But they're sure as hell making it a lot easier for a paranoid Republican administration to do it -- not to mention loose cannon FBI agents who simply want to ignore the rules. In a democracy, the way it's supposed to work is, we have laws that will protect us even when the bad guys are in charge:

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the "content" of e-mail or other Internet communication.

But what officials portray as a technical clarification designed to remedy a legal ambiguity strikes industry lawyers and privacy advocates as an expansion of the power the government wields through so-called national security letters. These missives, which can be issued by an FBI field office on its own authority, require the recipient to provide the requested information and to keep the request secret. They are the mechanism the government would use to obtain the electronic records.

[...] Many Internet service providers have resisted the government's demands to turn over electronic records, arguing that surveillance law as written does not allow them to do so, industry lawyers say. One senior administration government official, who would discuss the proposed change only on condition of anonymity, countered that "most" Internet or e-mail providers do turn over such data.

To critics, the move is another example of an administration retreating from campaign pledges to enhance civil liberties in relation to national security. The proposal is "incredibly bold, given the amount of electronic data the government is already getting," said Michelle Richardson, American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel.

Did Nancy Skinner Question Karl Rove’s Patriotism? Angry Bear

Cliff May thinks so:

On Fox a moment ago, liberal radio talk show host Nancy Skinner said that Karl Rove “is endangering our national security” – her short-hand reference to the Wilson/Plame brouhaha. So the left, which is always shouting: “How dare you question my patriotism!” to people who are not questioning their patriotism is now questioning the patriotism of Karl Rove and President Bush. Nice twist. This has become the left’s new refrain and a useful one it is since the left has long been seen by many Americans as not trustworthy on national security.

Of course, Mr. May questions the patriotism of liberals when there is no basis for doing so. It would seem that he and John Podhoretz want to give us ample reason to question their commitment to national security when it conflicts with their partisan garbage. I only regret that I was not watching FNC for their reaction to Ms. Skinner’s comment.

Crime and Punishment Billmon

"If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

George W. Bush
Remarks to Reporters
July 18, 2005

Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Stephen Hadley announced today the appointment of Elliott Abrams as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy. . ."

Executive Office of the President
Personnel Announcement
February 2, 2005

The Board concluded . . . that Abrams had engaged in "dishonesty, deceit or misrepresentation" by giving false (but unsworn) testimony to three congressional committees regarding the role of the United States government in what has become known as the Iran-Contra Affair. Following Abrams' conviction, upon a plea of guilty, of criminal charges arising out of his congressional testimony, President Bush granted him a full and unconditional pardon."

District of Columbia Court of Appeals
In re Elliott Abrams, Respondent
February 5, 1997

________________________
Sorry Elliott, but you know how it is: The president is a man of his word. And he didn't make any exception for pardoned criminals.

Don't forget to turn in your ID badge on the way out.

[ed note: couple other guys who might want to look for other work if Dear Leader really means it...BWA HAHAHAHA
John Poindexter
Otto Reich

Hawks Say What We've Been Saying All Along

They are not quick studies. We anti-war types have been arguing from day one that an American invasion of Iraq would be a disaster and would serve as the best recruitment campaign the Muslim fundies had ever seen:

A growing number of national security specialists who supported the toppling of Saddam Hussein are moving to a position unthinkable even a few months ago: that the large US military presence is impeding stability as much as contributing to it and that the United States should begin major reductions in troops beginning early next year.

Their assessments, expressed in reports, think tank meetings, and interviews, run counter to the Bush administration's insistence that the troops will remain indefinitely to establish security. But some contend that the growing support for an earlier pullout could alter the administration's thinking.

Those arguing for immediate troop reductions include key Pentagon advisers, prominent neoconservatives, and some of the fiercest supporters of the Iraq invasion among Washington's policy elite.

The core of their arguments is that even as the US-led coalition goes on the offensive against the insurgency, the United States, by its very presence, is stimulating the resistance.

"Our large, direct presence has fueled the Iraqi insurgency as much as it has suppressed it," said Michael Vickers, a conservative-leaning Pentagon consultant and longtime senior CIA official who supported the war.

These people are specialists, for God's sake?