Saturday, February 28, 2009

Fitzgerald: Building That Bridge Over The River Kwai, Or, Why Are We In Afghanistan?

(Compiler's note: Hugh understands and had thus written this must read article)

from Hugh @ Jihad Watch

The very idea that because Al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan, Afghanistan has a special, irreplaceable importance in the "war against terrorism," is false.

In the first place, the fact that Al Qaeda found Afghanistan under the Taliban (a Taliban nurtured by an American-supported Pakistan, and recognized by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) useful does not mean that Al Qaeda can only regroup in Afghanistan. The terrorist attacks in London were not hatched by those trained in Afghanistan, but by people living in, raised in, Great Britain. Those who bombed the Atocha station in Madrid were not from Afghanistan. Those who killed Pim Fortuyn (a weak-minded Dutchman put up to it by Muslims) and Theo van Gogh were not trained in Afghanistan. The Chechens who seized the theatre in Moscow, or the school in Beslan, were not trained in Afghanistan. Anywhere there are Muslims, ready to participate in Jihad through violence, they will be able to find sufficient weaponry and bombs. Afghanistan is being endowed with a significance it does not possess.

In the second place, the very idea that Americans and other NATO troops must be sent in large numbers to pacify Afghanistan, a vast country, remote from Western bases, difficult to get in and out of (just look at the sums demanded by Kyrgyzstan for the continued use of an airbase), and that requires the collaboration of another meretricious Muslim state that is actually far more hideous and dangerous than Afghanistan itself, Pakistan, is nonsense. Afghanistan, or rather the various ethnic groups within it, can be controlled, or at least the threat coming from them can be managed from afar. The very idea that the only choice is ever-increasing numbers of American troops, and ever more billions poured into Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries on earth, on the theory that Muslim hearts, if they are not with the Taliban, are therefore accessible and winnable, is absurd.

Here and there, just as in Iraq, some locals will prefer to use the Americans, and to temporarily curry favor with them out of self-interest -- that is, out of a desire for American weaponry, supplies, and money. In Afghanistan, local groups and even individual warlords, and Karzai himself, have proven adept at leading the Americans by the nose for quite a while, just as the Pakistani military has managed to do for decades, and as the Al-Saud have done in presenting themselves as not the most dangerous enemies of Infidels, but as "America's staunch ally."

The United States has squandered at least two trillion dollars in Iraq. What is the result? Possibly, a state, and an army, that consists mainly of Muslim Arabs (the Kurds are slowly being squeezed out, and Maliki's "outreach to the Sunni Arabs" will be, predictably, at the expense of the non-Arab Kurds), one that possibly will not be quite as ostentatiously aggressive as was the state run by that obviously hideous despot Saddam Hussein. But so what? How does this improve the Infidel position in the world? What has been accomplished, or could possibly be accomplished, to weaken the hold of Islam on the minds of men in Afghanistan? Nothing at all.

We, the Infidel Americans, have managed or may have managed to hold Iraq together a bit longer by doing everything we could to prevent the fissures, sectarian and ethnic, from leading to open and large-scale hostilities. And we, those American Infidels, were further kindly allowed by the local Arabs and Muslims to spend nearly two trillion dollars on this effort at a time when it is now recognized that economic warfare, and economic damage, is a key weapon in the jihadist arsenal. This remains true whether that damage is inflicted from without or self-inflicted by the assumption of responsibilities that make no geopolitical sense. And every dollar spent on Iraq, on Egypt, on Pakistan, on Afghanistan, on Jordan, on the "Palestinians," represents a transfer of wealth from Infidels to Muslims, one that goes beyond the trillions in unmerited oil revenues the Arabs and Muslims have received.

We have spent that money, and have received, and will receive, no gratitude in return. When Iraq dissolves inevitably into the warring tribes and groups, who will be blamed? America. Americans. And so much of what we spend there, by the way, is on goods (such as oil shipments from Kuwait) and services (contractors, from ditto), that enrich Kuwaitis and Qataris and Bahrainis (when our ships are in), so that we are propping up all of these statelets and peoples who are not and cannot ever be our friends, but who in the end will use and abuse us every which way. And they will do this while we spend time trying to figure out what makes them tick, when what makes them tick are the texts, the tenets, the attitudes, the atmospherics, of Islam.

Tarbaby Iraq is about to be followed by Tarbaby Afghanistan. The military men involved focus on the immediate task at hand. They do not have time to study, or so they think, the texts, the ideology, of Islam. They do not have time, or do not have the inclination, to think beyond the immediate theatres of war -- war understood only in the military sense, or at least in the sense of either making war or "winning hearts and minds" of combatants -- in Iraq and now Afghanistan. Do you think General Petraeus, General Odierno, General McKiernan, has stopped to consider what is happening in Western Europe? Do you think they understand that there many ways to conduct Jihad, and that deployment of the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest (already showing its effects on the fear displayed by many in the political and media elites of Western Europe, determined to appease Muslims and meet their demands on so many levels), is a much greater threat to the United States and to the civilization of the West than any conceivable outcome in remote and impoverished Afghanistan, or in Iraq?

Local entanglements of course inevitably engender human sympathies -- sympathies, say, by the American officers for this or that local gunga-dinnish figure, who seems -- and in a certain sense may be -- appealing. But policy should not be based on that kind of sentimentality, and on a handful of local exceptions. We need to weaken the Camp of Islam and Jihad. And we need to do this without unduly squandering men, money, materiel, and morale. Propping up Afghanistan has to come to an end. Instead, officials should be soberly, coldly, even ruthlessly, deciding to manage the situation from afar, through help given to now this, and now to that, local group whose interests temporarily coincide with ours. They should be stopping all this wasteful "construction" that earns no gratitude, and merely rescues Muslims from the obvious consequences of inshallah-fatalism.

The logic of events will in the end require this realization. But how long will it take? Another few years? It ought to have been understood long ago, and would have been, if those making policy had understood, had allowed themselves to study, the meaning, and the menace, of Islam.

In the end, if Obama wishes to staunch the flow of American lives and money, he will have to pull out of Afghanistan and adopt what is suggested here. But he can protect himself from criticism on the right only by adopting, as well, the rationale offered here: pull out of Afghanistan not because Islam, and Muslims, are no threat, but precisely because they are. And resolve never to help them out of their problems, but to allow their political, economic, social, intellectual and moral failures to be on obvious display, not least to themselves. If Infidels, or a sufficient number of them, grasp the connection between the nature of Islam and the failures of Muslim states and societies, then Muslims themselves will have to begin at least to attempt to answer the argument that insists upon that connection. And in so doing, the most advanced Muslims will have to admit, to themselves if not to Infidels, that in fact Islam does explain those failures.

It explains the natural tendency toward despotism of Muslim lands, for the political theory of Islam is not one that pays attention to the will expressed by the people, but rather to the will expressed by Allah. Islam does explain, through its inshallah-fatalism, the economic paralysis, does explain the mistreatment of women and of all non-Muslims, does explain Islam as a vehicle for Arab cultural and linguistic imperialism, does explain the stunting of mental growth among those who are taught to regard themselves as merely "slaves of Allah" in a collectivist Total Belief-System, and discouraged from the kind of free and skeptical inquiry without which no progress in anything can be achieved. Infidels cannot undo all this by rescuing Iraqis, or Afghanis, from the consequences of Islam itself.

They may do so, just possibly, by removing themselves from Muslim countries, keeping Muslims from acquiring the kind of weaponry that can inflict great damage, and halting Muslim immigration to non-Muslim lands while working to reverse as much as possible the aggressive Muslim presence already achieved in those lands, through a fit of criminal negligence by our ignorant-of-Islam elites. This is the way, the only way, to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam. Winning hearts and minds cannot be done, and those who think they can do so with armies, expensively maintained in the wilds of Afghanistan, are committing folly upon folly.

In their inattention to the real context, and their monomaniacal attention to the immediate task at hand -- the wrong task, undertaken for the wrong reasons -- they all remind one of Alec Guinness, as Colonel Bogey, building that bridge, urging his men to do more and more and more, and forgetting, in his mad attention to that bridge, that he is actually building it for the Japanese, helping them in their war effort. And that is exactly what some, both in the military and in the civilian part of our government, appear to be doing: overlooking the larger picture, the only picture that counts.

Intel chiefs face renewed torture claims

The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin

LONDON – Top leaders in the United Kingdom are demanding answers to claims that agents from both of Britain's intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, at least knew of the torture of 10 Britons under a CIA program assembled following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

"There is a case that should be answered," Lord Carlisle said after Binyam Mohamed was processed by authorities at the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention facility and flown to Britain for release.

"We need to know whether there was any presence, condoning or collusion by UK security officials," Carlisle said.

Officials for MI5 and MI6 are being caught in the crosshairs of the questions, following allegations they colluded with authorities in Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco and possibly Uzbekistan in the torture of the 10 Britons.

Previously, only MI5 was accused of complicity in the torture of Mohamed under the program. Coalition forces have rejected claims that the detention and confinement program constituted torture.

Documents presented in London's High Court recently, however, contain the allegations that the 10 Britons were subjected to torture, which may actually have been carried out by Egyptians or Moroccans.

Now secret files have emerged that name not only MI5 agents but also officers of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, who allegedly "colluded with foreign torturers,"

The allegations have intensified the assertion that the British government is trying to cover up evidence of both intelligence services being engaged in "collusion with security services in foreign countries where torture is rampant."


Physicians: Obama plan will 'shut down hospitals'

By Bob Unruh

Doctors

are forecasting the closure of hospitals and clinics across America and a mass migration of physicians and their assistances to other careers should the Obama administration succeed in its attempt to overrule their rights of conscience.

"Thousands of conscientious and compassionate physicians, nurses, hospitals and clinics currently serve poor women and those who live in medically underserved areas," said David Stevens, CEO of the Christian Medical Association today.

"Many of these professionals and institutions are motivated and guided by longstanding Hippocratic ethics and biblical principles that preclude participation in abortion and other controversial procedures. Infringing on their right to practice medicine according to these life-affirming ethical standards will force them to leave the profession and to shut down the hospitals and clinics," he warned

Stevens was reacting to reports in several newspapers that the Obama administration is moving quickly to rescind a U.S. Department of Health

and Human Services rule that currently protects civil rights and the exercise of conscience in healthcare.

The rule had been adopted under the Bush administration.

"The move to rescind the healthcare provider conscience regulation imperils women's healthcare access, threatens healthcare professionals' freedom to practice medicine according to ethical standards, and exposes the myth of moderation in Obama's abortion policy," he said.

"The Obama administration claims, without offering a shred of statistical evidence, that the regulation has 'created confusion' and will somehow hinder access to healthcare. What can be clearer than not using federal funds to force healthcare professionals to violate longstanding principles of medical ethics like the Hippocratic Oath, which guided medicine for over two millennia?

"The real threat to healthcare access is driving out every healthcare professional who conscientiously practices medicine according to life-affirming ethical standards," Stevens said.

He said that four in 10 of the organization's members "report being pressured to violate ethical standards. Physicians report losing positions and promotions because of their life-affirming views. Residents report losing training privileges because they refuse to do abortions. Medical students report changing career tracks away from obstetrics for fear of pressure to do abortions."

"We hear a lot of rhetoric from abortion advocates about the government not interfering with the physician-patient relationship. Why is this argument no longer employed when the physician and the patient disagree with abortion on demand? It would appear that for all the abortion 'choice' rhetoric, 'choice' is really a one-way street. When it comes to pro-life individuals, abortion choice quickly turns into abortion mandate," Stevens said.

Stevens said Obama's attack on doctors reveals "the myth of their moderation on abortion."

"They have no tolerance for moderate abortion policies like informing parents when their children seek an abortion, banning the essentially infanticidal partial-birth abortions, or protecting the civil rights of healthcare professionals who follow the Hippocratic Oath," Stevens said.

The rule-change plan comes on the heels of Obama's decision to lift the Mexico City policy, which forces taxpayers to support international groups facilitating abortions. Obama also plans to give tax money to the United Nations population program that the U.S. State Department found to have been aiding China's mandatory abortion policy.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Obama's move to demand doctors participate in the abortion industry came earlier today. The report said the move was being made "quietly" even as most of Washington was focusing on the president's budget plan.

WND recently reported on legal challenges to the Bush rule.

Experts for the Alliance Defense Fund and Christian Legal Society then reported they were gearing up to defend three laws that allow medical professionals to follow their conscience and not participate in abortions.

"Medical professionals should not be forced to perform abortions against their conscience," Casey Mattox, litigation counsel with the CLS's Center for Law & Religious Freedom, said at the time.

"Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and their pro-abortion allies are seeking to punish pro-life medical professionals for their beliefs," Mattox said. "Far from arguing for 'choice,' these lawsuits seek to compel health care workers to perform abortions or face dire consequences."

The public-interest legal groups have filed motions to intervene in three separate lawsuits that seek to invalidate a federal law protecting medical professionals from discrimination because they refuse to participate in abortions.

"For over three decades, federal law has prohibited recipients of federal grants from forcing medical professionals to participate in abortions," said ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. "The arguments in the lawsuits themselves demonstrate lack of compliance with these laws and the necessity of the regulation they are challenging."

Obama, while a state lawmaker in Illinois, objected to requiring doctors to provide medical care for infants who survive abortions and advocated virtually unlimited abortion on demand.

During his presidential campaign he said he would not want one of his daughters "punished" with a baby.

House Republican Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said the Obama plan "will hurt faith-based health providers and hospitals throughout our nation who are committed to caring for Americans at this critical time. It will also inevitably result in more abortions being performed nationwide."

"It is beginning to look like the administration is intent on enacting [Freedom of Choice Act] incrementally ... through low-key legislative maneuvers and executive orders," Boehner said.

FOCA would overturn all abortion regulations nationwide.

Radio chip coming soon to your driver's license?

By Bob Unruh

Privacy advocates are issuing warnings about a new radio chip plan that ultimately could provide electronic identification for every adult in the U.S. and allow agents to compile attendance lists at anti-government rallies simply by walking through the assembly.

The proposal, which has earned the support of Janet Napolitano, the newly chosen chief of the Department of Homeland Security, would embed radio chips in driver's licenses, or "enhanced driver's licenses."

"Enhanced driver's licenses give confidence that the person holding the card is the person who is supposed to be holding the card, and it's less elaborate than REAL ID," Napolitano said in a Washington Times report.

REAL ID is a plan for a federal identification system standardized across the nation that so alarmed governors many states have adopted formal plans to oppose it. However, a privacy advocate today told WND that the EDLs are many times worse.

Radio talk show host and identity chip expert Katherine Albrecht said REAL ID earned the opposition of Christians because of its resemblance to the biblical "mark of the beast," civil libertarians opposed it for its "big brother" connotations and others worried about identity theft issues with the proposed databases.

"We got rid of the REAL ID program, but [this one] is way more insidious," she said.

Enhanced driver's licenses have built-in radio chips providing an identifying number or information that can be accessed by a remote reading unit while the license is inside a wallet or purse.

The technology already had been implemented in Washington state, where it is promoted as an alternative to a passport for traveling to Canada. So far, the program is optional.

But there are other agreements already approved with Michigan, Vermont, New York and Arizona, and plans are under way in other states, including Texas, she said.

Napolitano, as Arizona's governor, was against the REAL ID, Albrecht said. Now, as chief of Homeland Security, she is suggesting the more aggressive electronic ID of Americans.

"She's coming out and saying, 'OK, OK, OK, you win. We won't do REAL ID. But what we probably ought to do is nationwide enhanced driver's licenses,'" Albrecht told WND.

"They're actually talking about issuing every person a spychip driver's license," she said. "That is the potential problem."

Imagine, she said, going to a First Amendment-protected event, a church or a mosque, or even a gun show or a peace rally.


Katherine Albrecht

"What happens to all those people when a government operator carrying a reading device makes a circuit of the event?" she asked. "They could download all those unique ID numbers and link them."

Participants could find themselves on "watch" lists or their attendance at protests or rallies added to their government "dossier."

She said even if such license programs are run by states, there's virtually no way that the databases would not be linked and accessible to the federal government.

Albrecht said a hint of what is on the agenda was provided recently by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The state's legislature approved a plan banning the government from using any radio chips in any ID documentation.

Schwarzenegger's veto noted he did not want to interfere with any coming or future federal programs for identifying people.

Albrecht's recent guest on her radio program was Michigan State Rep. Paul Opsommer, who said the government appears to be using a national anti-terrorism plan requiring people to document their identities as they enter the United States to promote the technology.

"The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was … just about proving you were a citizen, not that you had to do it by any specific kind of technology," Opsommer said.

But he said, "We are close to the point now that if you don't want RFID in any of your documents that you can't leave the country or get back into it."

Opsommer said his own state sought an exception to the growing federal move toward driver's licenses with an electronic ID chip, and he was told that was "unlikely."

He was told, "They were trying to harmonize these standards with Canada and Mexico [so] it had to apply to everybody. I was absolutely dumbfounded."

WND previously has reported on such chips when hospitals used them to identify newborns, a company desired to embed immigrants with the electronic devices, a government health event showcased them and when Wal-Mart used microchips to track customers.

Albrecht, who has worked on issues involving radio chip implants, REAL-ID, "Spychips" and other devices, provided a platform for Opsommer to talk about drivers licenses that include radio transmitters that provide identity information about the carrier. She is active with the AntiChips.com and SpyChips.com websites.

Opsommer said he's been trying for several years to gain permission for his state to develop its own secure license without a radio chip.

"They have flat out refused, and their reasoning is all about the need for what they call 'facilitative technology,' which they then determined was RFID," he said during the recent interview.

According to the U.S. State Department, which regulates international travel requirements, U.S. citizens now "must show proof of identity and proof of U.S. citizenship when entering the United States from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the countries of the Caribbean by land or seas."

Documentation could be a U.S. passport or other paperwork such as birth certificates or drivers' licenses. But as of this summer, one of the options for returning residents will be an "Enhanced Driver's License."

The rules are being promulgated under the outline of the WHTI, a result of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which requires travelers to present a passport or other identity documents on entry into the U.S.

While the government has expressed confidence that no personal or critical information will be revealed through the system, it also says drivers will need special information on how to use, carry and protect the radio-embedded licenses as well as "a shielded container that will prevent anyone from reading your license."

But Albrecht, the author or co-author of six books and videos, including the award-winning "Spychips: How major corporations and government plan to track your every move with RFID," warns it goes much further.

"This must be nipped in the bud. Enhanced DL's make REAL ID look like a walk in the park," Albrecht said.

"Look, I am all in favor of only giving drivers licenses to U.S. citizens or people that are otherwise here in this country legally," Opsommer said, "But we are already doing that in Michigan. We accomplished that without an EDL, as has virtually every other state via their own state laws.

"But just because we choose to only issue our license to U.S. citizens does not mean that our licenses should somehow then fall under federal control. It's still a state document, we are just controlling who we issue them to. But under the EDL program, the Department of Homeland Security is saying that making sure illegals don't get these is not enough. Now you need the chip to prove your citizenship," he continued.

Opsommer further warned the electronic chips embedded in licenses to confirm identity are just the first step.

"Canadians are also more connected to what is going on in Britain with the expansion of the national ID program there, and have seen the mission creep that occurs with things like gun control first hand … Whatever the reason, as an example, just last week the Canadian government repatriated a database from the U.S. that contained the driver's license data of their citizens," he said.

"Someone finally woke up and realized it would not be a good idea for that to be on American soil … I think it is only logical that we as state legislators really understand how the governments of Mexico and Canada will have access to our own citizen's data. Right now it is very ambiguous and even difficult for me to get answers on as a state representative."

But Opsommer said Big Brother concerns certainly have some foundation.

"So if EDLs are the new direction for secure licenses in all states, it just reinforces what many have been telling me that DHS wants to expand this program and turn it into a wireless national ID with a different name," he said. "We'll wake up one day and without a vote in Congress DHS will just pass a rule and say something like 'starting next month you will need an EDL to fly on a plane, or to buy a gun, or whatever.'"

North Korean Rocket Assembly Under Way

from Global Security Newswire

Assembly of a rocket is reportedly under way at a North Korean launch site, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, Feb. 26).

Pyongyang says it is preparing to launch a satellite into space from the Musudan-ri facility, while the United States and other concerned nations suspect that the Stalinist state actually plans another test of its long-range Taepodong 2 missile.

"It appears that (the North) has begun assembling the rocket on the ground," a South Korean government official told the Yonhap News Agency (Agence France-Presse I/Spacewar.com, Feb. 27).

A newspaper report also indicated that radar and related technology was being tested at the launch site, AFP reported.

"It seems that the North has begun preparations in earnest for a launch," a government source in Seoul told the Chosun Ilbo newspaper (Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, Feb. 27).

North Korea might reach launch readiness within the next two weeks but could delay action until late March or early April "considering the North's political schedule and the situation on the Korean Peninsula," Yonhap quoted its source as saying.

Seoul and Washington have scheduled a large-scale military exercise for March 9 to 20, followed by a summit early the following month, according to Yonhap. ....

U.S. Pledges to Halt "Illicit" Iranian Nuclear Activity

U.S. President Barack Obama intends to pursue polices aimed at halting Iran's pursuit of an "illicit nuclear capacity," Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 26).

The United States and other Western powers have expressed concern that Iranian atomic activities could support nuclear-weapon development, but Tehran has insisted its nuclear intentions are strictly peaceful.

.... The Obama administration is sending "a mixed signal" about its possible intention to seek dialogue with Tehran on its nuclear program, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Reza Salari said yesterday.

"Somehow in that domain we are witnessing more rationality in the present U.S. administration. They are not talking with the same tone that existed before," he said. "But still, the signal that is reaching Iran from the United States is not a very clear and proper one."

.... Dennis Ross, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recently appointed Southwest Asia adviser, "strongly backs stepping up sanctions against Iran (and) supports profound U.S.-Israeli cooperation to confront Iran's nuclear activities," Iranian state radio said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 24; Edith Lederer, Associated Press/Google News, Feb. 26).

It remained unclear how Ross would affect Washington's Iran policy, the Washington Times reported yesterday. He is expected to help draft a national security directive on the administration's strategies for talking with Iran and for pursuing new economic penalties should the state fail to alter its nuclear policy, one U.S. official said.

The Obama administration is likely to seek negotiations with Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rather than wait for the outcome of the June presidential race, said Patrick Clawson, deputy research head at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Ross' former workplace.

.... The Obama administration is likely to seek negotiations with Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rather than wait for the outcome of the June presidential race, said Patrick Clawson, deputy research head at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Ross' former workplace.

Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist who is seeking the office again, "has a record of not being able to accomplish very much," Clawson said. "The key decision-maker is Khamenei and not the Iranian president. Therefore, U.S. policy should concentrate on how to engage with the supreme leader."

"There is no way you are going to prevent them from having [nuclear] capability," added Lawrence Korb, a Reagan-era defense official who is now a fellow at the Center for American Progress. "What you can do is prevent them from making nuclear weapons."

The relatively low-profile announcement of Ross' appointment raised questions about how important a role he would play in shaping U.S. policy on Iran, according to the Times. The official has adopted a behind-the-scenes style in the past, former co-workers said (Eli Lake, Washington Times, Feb. 26).

Meanwhile, the 35-nation IAEA governing board is expected to address Iran on Monday at its first meeting since Obama took office last month, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported.

The board is unlikely to issue resolutions or take other action on Iran's nuclear program, though, because the Obama administration is still reviewing its Iran policy, several Vienna-based diplomats said.

Even if Tehran does not pursue a nuclear weapon, its growing uranium stockpile could still give it a nuclear deterrent, one of the envoys said.

"That's probably what they always wanted," said the official (Albert Otti, Deutsche Presse-Agentur/Monsters and Critics, Feb. 27).

New Security Lapse at Los Alamos Triggers Angry Response From Energy Department

By Greg Webb

WASHINGTON -- Plutonium handling practices are so poor at a major U.S. nuclear-weapon laboratory that they threaten the facility's ability to function at all, Energy Department officials warned in a letter this week (see GSN, Feb. 12)

In January, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico reported to Energy Department officials that an "inventory difference" had "exceeded alarm limits," according to a letter back to the laboratory from two National Nuclear Security Administration officials. The Feb. 23 letter was acquired by the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog organization that has persistently raised alarms over lax security practices at Los Alamos and other nuclear laboratories.

The inventory difference involves improper accounting of materials at Technical Area 55, the facility's plutonium research and processing facility, according to a Los Alamos release issued yesterday. The area is responsible in part for producing the plutonium cores for refurbished U.S. nuclear warheads (see GSN, Dec. 17, 2008).

"It’s fairly clear that the inventory list indicates that the material is in a certain spot, in a particular vault, and when they go to check, it’s not there," POGO's Senior Investigator Peter Stockton told Global Security Newswire today, citing conversations with Los Alamos workers. "They have a discrepancy of something around a kilogram of plutonium."

The lapse, however, never constituted a security or safety threat outside the laboratory, according to the Los Alamos release.

"There is 100 percent certainty that no sensitive materials left the facility," the release says, citing extensive physical security measures the laboratory uses to screen personnel entering and leaving the site.

Stockton disparaged those assurances, arguing that repeated security tests at nuclear laboratories have failed, including a dramatic incident last year at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California in which a mock thief used a lacrosse stick to toss two plutonium containers over a perimeter fence (see GSN, May 13, 2008).

"We’ve had fairly significant tests of the facilities from time to time and it’s been shown that insiders can do you great damage in getting material out of there," he said.

The NNSA letter adopts a threatening tone and expresses exasperation that previous recommendations for improving the laboratory's material control and accounting program have not been adopted.

The latest incident "raises questions about the ability of the Los Alamos National Laboratory MC&A program to accomplish its primary objective, namely to deter and detect theft and diversion of special nuclear material," the letter says.

If not for the physical security measures, "these identified weaknesses in the MC&A program would impact the ability of the facility to continue operations," it adds.

Two officials in charge of the laboratory's material security measures were dismissed within the past month, Stockton said. He praised the NNSA effort to improve the situation.

"We’ve got to give NNSA credit. They really have done a good job on this. They’ve had about five or six teams in the last year out there trying to get this system fixed," he told GSN, but called for a stronger reaction still.

"A sharply worded letter is a good step, but without financial penalties, improvement is much less likely," he said in a POGO release yesterday.

The laboratory has vowed "to review and improve internal bookkeeping, inventory procedures and processes," says its release.

Top U.S. General Spurns Obama Pledge to Reduce Nuclear Alert Posture

By Elaine M. Grossman

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The nation's most senior nuclear combat commander yesterday took issue with U.S. President Barack Obama's characterization of U.S. atomic weapons as being on "hair-trigger alert" and warned against reducing the arsenal's launch readiness (see GSN, Feb. 17).

"The alert postures that we are in today are appropriate, given our strategy and guidance and policy," Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, who heads U.S. Strategic Command, said at a press conference here.

The White House says Obama intends to make good on a campaign promise to "work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair-trigger alert."

There are growing international calls to do just that. Six nations, including China, New Zealand and Switzerland, recently pressed the U.N. General Assembly to pass a resolution demanding that the world's nuclear weapons be removed from a status that would allow them to be launched in minutes (see GSN, Oct. 24, 2008).

The United States keeps roughly 1,000 nuclear warheads on alert atop ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, according to Hans Kristensen, who directs the Federation of American Scientists' Nuclear Information Project in Washington. The land-based missiles can be fired three to four minutes after a presidential order, while the submarine weapons require roughly 12 minutes' notice prior to launch, he said.

U.S. President George H.W. Bush unilaterally took the nation's bomber aircraft off of alert in 1991.

Russia, which has long opposed de-alerting measures for its own force, retains approximately 1,200 warheads at top readiness, nearly all of them on ICBMs, Kristensen said. The British and French together account for roughly 112 nuclear warheads on alert, though he said their weapons might require days' notice to launch.

Chilton said it is misleading to use the term "hair-trigger" when describing the U.S. arsenal, which he said remains safe from accidental or unauthorized launch.

"It conjures a drawn weapon in the hands of somebody," said the general, speaking at a two-day conference on air warfare. "And their finger's on the trigger. And you're worried they might sneeze, because it is so sensitive."

However, the "reality of our alert posture today," he said, is that "the weapon is in the holster."

Continuing the analogy, Chilton said the holster for nuclear weapons "has two combination locks on it," it "takes two people to open those locks," and "they can't do it without authenticated orders from the president of the United States."

At a separate press conference a few minutes earlier, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz also sought to "push back a little" on the notion that "these things are very close to launching."

"That's anything but the case," Schwartz said. "There is a rigorous discipline [and] process involved, should that ever be required, and it is anything but hair trigger."

The Air Force is responsible for managing the ICBM and strategic bomber legs of the U.S. nuclear triad, while the Navy handles submarine-based missiles.

Schwartz became his service's chief of staff last August after Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired Gen. Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne, citing dissatisfaction with their management of nuclear weapons.

The Air Force discovered last year that mislabeled ICBM fuses had been mistakenly shipped to Taiwan in 2006 (see GSN, March 25, 2008). In 2007, a bomber aircraft crew transported six cruise missiles across several U.S. states, unaware that the weapons were armed with nuclear warheads (see GSN, Sept. 5, 2007).

Schwartz yesterday appeared to suggest that the U.S. military has not yet been asked to review the issue or to determine how Obama's de-alerting pledge might be implemented. He said a description of the policy posted on the White House Web site falls short of "formal direction to study something or do something."

"This matter has been evaluated over the years on numerous occasions," said the Air Force chief. "I have no doubt that we've thought about it. We certainly can and will look at it again, if that's what the new defense team wishes. ... But we'll wait for an appropriate assignment from the White House or from the Office of the Secretary [of Defense] to do that."

For his part, Chilton described a process of "de-alerting" as a fairly radical step.

Returning to the analogy of a holstered weapon, Chilton said a lower level of readiness for the nuclear stockpile would be like "taking the gun apart and mailing pieces of it to various parts of the country. And then when you're in crisis, deciding to reassemble it.

"And we have to ask ourselves: Can we afford that time period for the delivery of the pieces to put it back together?" he continued. "Is that the posture we want to be in as we [review] policy, strategy, force structure and posturing of forces?"

That broad analysis is to take place during the Nuclear Posture Review, a congressionally mandated Defense Department study that is set to begin this year. It is expected to take a fresh look at the nation's deterrence posture and potentially recommend changes in the nuclear weapons approach, given current and anticipated threats.

Kristensen said Chilton appeared to depict only the most extreme scenario for de-alerting the nuclear force, while Obama might opt instead for more incremental measures.

"There is a wide range of measures you could take, from taking the entire force off of alert, to biting off the edges of the alert force in terms of gradually reducing the alert force or ... [adding] delays in the launch sequence," he told Global Security Newswire today.

One underlying objective of building more time into the nuclear-weapons launch process could be to offer a longer window for a president to weigh and potentially reverse a momentous strike order, Kristensen said. He added that Bush's decision to reduce bomber aircraft readiness has not weakened the U.S. deterrence posture.

"We have already taken the bombers off of alert ... and no one has attacked us in almost two decades," Kristensen said. "[Obama] is the one to make the decision ... because if you leave it to the warfighters and the strategists, then it's always going to be impossible to do anything that will change the status quo."

On a related issue, Schwartz raised the prospect that a new nuclear and conventional long-range bomber might not be fielded by 2018 to replace B-2 and B-52 aircraft, as his predecessor had assured (See GSN, Oct. 25, 2007).

"One of the things in a period of austerity is having acquisition programs that deliver on time and on cost," Schwartz told reporters. "And so whether it's 2018 or not, I think, is less important to me than having a viable, manageable program which will actually deliver at endgame."

Air Force Secretary Michael Donley -- a Bush administration appointee the White House announced yesterday it would retain -- said the bomber's prospects are under closed-door discussion as the Pentagon debates the 2010 defense spending plan and embarks on longer-term reviews.

"We don't have any determined outcomes yet on systems of that nature," said Donley, sitting alongside Schwartz at the afternoon press conference. Both noted their view that a new bomber continues to be needed in the coming years.