Dept of Defense DoD

no notes 5/14capt bak 819

<div>see pentagon for newer</div><div>
</div><div>MIC</div><div>
</div><div>esper</div>

<div>should add all the brass</div>

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=see NSC security=<div>=</div><div>READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/right-wing-bloviation-millitary-wokeness/" target="self" class="rm-stats-tracked">How right-wing 'bloviation' over 'military wokeness' may harm the US armed forces: journalist</a>
</div><div>=</div><div>=</div><div>an 922</div><div>From Fox News’ Tucker Carlson to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to former President Donald Trump, MAGA Republicans have been claiming that Democrats are undermining the U.S. military by trying to make it as “woke” as possible. Cruz, in a <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1395394254969753601" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">May 19, 2021 tweet</a>, praised the Russian military for not being “woke” and “emasculated” — a tweet that received a scathing response from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/21/ted-cruz-russia-army-emasculated/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois</a>.But the MAGA narrative claim that Democrats and so-called RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) are harming the U.S. military by making it “woke” persists. And Never Trump conservative Max Boot, in a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/26/maga-woke-us-military-influence/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">September 26 opinion column</a> for the Washington Post, argues that some disturbing motivations are behind this MAGA narrative.“Donald Trump Jr., for example, claims a ‘militant female’ can become an admiral or general in today’s military ‘for no other reason other than they’re probably female,’ or “if you can say: Hey, I’m trans,’” Boot explains. “Tucker Carlson asserts: ‘It has been one calculated humiliation after another for the U.S. armed forces: vax mandates, anti-White ideology, sex changes, drag shows. Whatever is necessary to telegraph to the United States military you are worthless.’”READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/fact-checker-shreds-don-trump-jr-s-claim-about-6-million-military-hours-being-spent-promoting-the-woke-agenda/" target="self" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Fact checker shreds Trump Jr.'s claim about 6 million military hours being spent promoting the 'woke' agenda</a>Boot continues, “Needless to say, these fanciful descriptions from bomb-throwers who never served in uniform bear no relation to reality. The U.S. military remains one of the most conservative institutions in America, with traditions dating back centuries. That the military now welcomes African-Americans, women and LGBTQ people — all groups that were kept out in the past — only strengthens an institution that needs to draw on the talents of the whole country to defend it. So, why are cartoonish inhabitants of the Fox News Cinematic Universe caterwauling about a ‘woke military?’”The conservative columnist answers his question by arguing that the “MAGA brigades want to populate the military with far-right officers who will do whatever Trump or a Trump mini-me commands, no matter how illegal.”Boot notes that Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “became anathema to Trump & Co. not by embracing ‘critical race theory,’ but by making clear that the military would place loyalty to the Constitution above loyalty to Trump.”“All of these attacks against the military for being too ‘woke’ should be seen as part of the MAGA strategy to harness the armed forces — ‘the guys with the guns,’ as Milley put it — to advance their authoritarian agenda,” Boot warns. “Blake Masters, the ultra-MAGA Republican Senate nominee in Arizona, has even advocated firing all the generals — ‘they’re left-wing politicians’ — and replacing them with ‘the most conservative colonels.’ Unfortunately, there would be little to stop a President Trump or a President Ron DeSantis from doing precisely that as long as the Senate confirms their new generals. A MAGA president could even summon back to active duty loony retired generals such as (Gen. Michael) Flynn or Don Bolduc, the GOP Senate nominee in New Hampshire, and appoint them to senior commands as long as the Senate consents…. The growing chorus of MAGA complaints about the ‘woke military,’ nonsensical as they are, indicate that the challenges will only grow. A homegrown extremist movement that has already captured control of one of the two major political parties is now trying to bend the armed forces to its supreme leader’s malign will.”READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/paul-krugman-ted-cruzs-dumbed-down-comments-on-russias-military-show-how-little-he-understands-war-s-technical-realities/" target="self" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Paul Krugman: Ted Cruz’s 'dumbed down' comments show how little he understands war’s 'technical' realities</a></div><div>=</div>=<h1 class="widgetheadline h1" style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; cursor: pointer; overflow-wrap: break-word; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="widgetheadline-text custom-post-headline" href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/gaetz-crt/" aria-label="Watch: Joint Chiefs chairman incinerates Matt Gaetz with epic lecture on Critical Race Theory" data-type="text" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" word-break="word-break" break-word="break-word" outline="outline" px="px" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" font-size="font-size" line-height="line-height" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Joint Chiefs chairman incinerates Matt Gaetz with epic lecture on Critical Race Theory</a></h1><div class="social-author clearfix" style="margin-top: 10px; display: inline-block; font-size: 17.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="social-authorname" href="https://www.alternet.org/author/david-badash" data-type="text" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.4; display: inline; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">David Badash</a> <a class="social-authorname" href="https://www.alternet.org/author/the-new-civil-rights-movement" data-type="text" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.4; display: inline; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">The New Civil Rights Movement</a></div> June 23, 2021<div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body css-listicle-body-2653510423" style="margin-top: 10px; -moz-box-orient: vertical; font-size: 17px; text-overflow: ellipsis; overflow: hidden; display: -webkit-box; -webkit-line-clamp: 4; line-height: 31px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description">Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley blasted <a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=Matt+Gaetz" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word;">U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz</a> for mocking and opposing critical race theory during what was supposed to be a budget hearing. He left the Florida Republican...</div></div>==<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/pentagon">https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/pentagon</a>four star Army General Barry McCaffrey (Ret.) is sounding the alarm on reports acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller has <a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2020/12/career-military-officials-stunned-as-trumps-pentagon-chief-bans-biden-transition-team-report/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="font-size: 17px; text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">banned Pentagon brass from holding meetings</a> with Biden transition team officials, leaving career military staff "stunned.""Pentagon abruptly halts Biden transition—- MAKES NO SENSE. CLAIM THEY ARE OVERWHELMED. DOD GOES OPAQUE. TRUMP-MILLER UP TO NO GOOD. DANGER. —-" <a href="https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1339966295656124416" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">tweeted</a> McCaffrey, who is a well-known and highly-respected NBC News and MSNBC military analyst.Reports from <a href="https://www.axios.com/pentagon-biden-transition-briefings-123a9658-4af1-4632-a6e6-770117784d60.html?utm_campaign=organic&utm_medium=socialshare&utm_source=twitter" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Axios</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/acting-pentagon-chief-halts-cooperation-with-biden-team-on-transition-2020-12" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Business Insider</a> both say Pentagon officials are feeling "overwhelmed" by the number of meetings they've attended with Biden staff, and Miller has decided to order a two-week break for the holidays.An official who spoke with Business Insider attempted to soften the ban, "explaining that the Pentagon and the Biden transition team agreed to a break and that the transition meetings are being rescheduled for after the holidays."That report adds "other transition activities, such as answering requests for information and providing written materials, continue uninterrupted, the official explained."Last month (video below) McCaffrey expressed great concern about Trump getting rid of senior Pentagon officials – including his Secretary of Defense – and substituting them with top Trump loyalists. McCaffrey said he was "alarmed" with the shakeup."If I was a CIA officer trying to understand what was going on in a third-world country and I saw this pattern of behavior, I would say the strongman's trying to take over the government and defy an election."...=trump's <a class="widgetheadline-text custom-post-headline" href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump-coup-2648865938/" aria-label="Trump's purge at the Pentagon is increasing fears of a coup-in-progress" data-type="text" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" word-break="word-break" break-word="break-word" outline="outline" px="px" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" font-size="font-size" line-height="line-height" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">purge at the Pentagon is increasing fears of a coup-in-progress</a><div class="social-author clearfix" style="margin-top: 10px; display: inline-block; font-size: 17.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="social-authorname" href="https://www.alternet.org/author/kenny_stancil" data-type="text" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.4; display: inline; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">Kenny Stancil</a> <a class="social-authorname" href="https://www.alternet.org/author/common-dreams" data-type="text" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.4; display: inline; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">Common Dreams</a></div> <div class="social-date" style="margin-top: 8px; display: inline-block; font-size: 1.4rem; vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> November 12, 2020</div><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body css-listicle-body-2648865938" style="margin-top: 10px; -moz-box-orient: vertical; font-size: 17px; text-overflow: ellipsis; overflow: hidden; display: -webkit-box; -webkit-line-clamp: 4; line-height: 31px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description">Fears that a possible slow-motion coup is in progress in the United States continued to grow on Wednesday, as observers sounded the alarm over President Donald Trump's decision to install "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/11/downright-dangerous-democrat-alarm-as-trump-stacks-pentagon-with-loyalists" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word;">extreme Republican partisans</a>" at the Pentagon after his <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/mark-esper-who-flinched-at-military-crackdown-out-at-pentagon?ref=author" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word;">firing </a>of Defense...</div></div>=an 1220Friday, the White House fired nine members of the Pentagon's Defense Business Board and installed people loyal to President Donald Trump, Politico reports. At the same time, Trump's Pentagon officials have refused members of President-elect Joe Biden's transition team to meet with officials at U.S. intelligence agencies....=recently retire gen adm jt chief ltr pro biden?---=<div class="header-list-style" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 class="entry-title grid-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px;">p<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/pentagon-officials-fear-trump-may-order-troops-to-put-down-election-unrest-nyt/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; letter-spacing: 0px;">entagon officials fear Trump may order troops to put down election unrest: NYT</a></h2><div class="grid-post-box-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 12px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/brad-reed/" title="Posts by Brad Reed" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Brad Reed</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/raw-story/" title="Posts by Raw Story" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Raw Story</a>September 25, 2020</div></div><div class="item-content entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 18px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Senior Defense Department officials have been privately discussing resigning if President Donald Trump orders the American military to put down unrest in the wake of the 2020 election. The New York…</div>=<div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-white-house-asked-va-secretary-to-run-pentagon-if-president-fires-dods-esper/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-white-house-asked-va-secretary-to-run-pentagon-if-president-fires-dods-esper/ </a></div><div>
</div><div>as Donald Trump scrambles to recover from reports that he disparaged fallen U.S. soldiers, there are new claims that the president might shakeup leadership at the Pentagon.</div>The president has reportedly talked to Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie about becoming the new defense secretary if he fires Mark Esper, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/white-house-has-talked-va-secretary-about-taking-pentagon-job-n1239007" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">according to NBC News</a>. But his allies are warning him not to act before the election.“Two senior administration officials said Trump discussed the position directly with Wilkie at the White House last month. Two other senior administration officials said Wilkie had senior-level discussions with the White House about becoming Trump’s next defense secretary,” NBC News reported on Monday.<div class="story_page_incontent_instagram_container story_page_incontent_ig" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 17px;">The White House, Pentagon, and Veterans Affairs Department all declined to comment to NBC – and one official anonymously pushed back on the report, saying “There are no plans to replace Secretary Esper."but the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-wanted-to-fire-esper-over-troops-dispute-11591728235" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Wall Street Journal has previously reported</a> in June that Trump nearly fired Esper for not for backing the idea of using military troops to quell protests. “Trump was furious,” the Journal said.Now, NBC News reports that Trump’s allies inside and outside the White House are urging him to stick with Esper until the November 3 election. They warn that ousting the defense secretary would create turmoil.</div><div></div></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/white-house-officials-fear-turmoil-as-trump-considers-ousting-pentagon-chief-ahead-of-november-election-report/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/white-house-officials-fear-turmoil-as-trump-considers-ousting-pentagon-chief-ahead-of-november-election-report/</a></div><div>
</div><div>pdnt Trump is reportedly plotting yet another major shakeup to his cabinet.</div><div>
</div><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/white-house-has-talked-va-secretary-about-taking-pentagon-job-n1239007" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Sources tell NBC News</a> that Trump is intent on replacing Defense Secretary Mark Esper and potentially replacing him with Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie.There have been rumblings for months that Trump is unhappy with his Pentagon chief, whom <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/pentagon-officials-mockingly-call-trumps-defense-secretary-yesper-because-he-is-so-obedient-to-the-president/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Defense Department officials reportedly refer to as “Yesper”</a> due to his unwillingness to stand up to the president“Trump has told aides for months that he is unhappy with Esper and wants to fire him,” reports NBC News. “Trump’s allies inside and outside the White House have told him that shaking up leadership at the Pentagon before the Nov. 3 election would create turmoil in his administration during the closing weeks of the campaign. It would come at a time when the president is planning to reduce the number of U.S. forces in hot spots such as Iraq and Afghanistan.”<div>
</div><div></div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/when-robots-wage-our-wars-for-us/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/when-robots-wage-our-wars-for-us/</a>When robots wage our wars for usAn MQ-9 Reaper, armed with GBU-12 Paveway II laser guided munitions and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, piloted by Col. Lex Turner flies a combat mission over southern Afghanistan. (U.S. Air Force Photo / Lt. Col. Leslie Pratt)Written by Michael T. Klare / TomDispatch August 25, 2020=an 720<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click1.e.alternet.org/ctqqlkmvmnhfhlzzfgpmmfmzzgfzvcjsqnmhptkjjpql_omwztqmqdtwqltfmrwj.html?a=&b=5086&c=21989&d=2" style="text-decoration-line: none; border-collapse: collapse; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Appalling and dangerous’: Pentagon chief under fire after leaked military docs refer to journalists as ‘adversaries’</a><div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/the-pentagon-is-now-training-the-military-to-view-protestors-and-journalists-as-a-threat-report/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;">Pentagon is now training the military to view protestors and journalists as a ‘threat’: report</a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/david-badash/" title="Posts by David Badash" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">David Badash</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/the-new-civil-rights-movement/" title="Posts by The New Civil Rights Movement" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The New Civil Rights Movement</a></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Former Pentagon press secretary and CIA spokesperson George Little calls it “appalling and dangerous.”---</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/the-dystopian-fantasy-of-robotic-warfare-may-soon-become-a-reality/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/the-dystopian-fantasy-of-robotic-warfare-may-soon-become-a-reality/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">us navy, accel amplify?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>On March 26th, the coronavirus accomplished what no foreign adversary has been able to do since the end of World War II: it forced an American aircraft carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, to suspend patrol operations and shelter in port. By the time that ship reached dock in Guam, hundreds of sailors had been infected with the disease and nearly the entire crew had to be evacuated. As news of the crisis aboard the TR (as the vessel is known) became public, word came out that <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/22/politics/us-navy-coronavirus-cases/index.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">at least 40</a> other U.S. warships, including the carrier <a href="https://news.usni.org/2020/04/23/26-navy-battle-force-ships-have-had-covid-19-cases" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">USS Ronald Reagan</a> and the guided-missile destroyer <a href="https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2020/04/27/destroyer-kidd-nears-50-coronavirus-cases-as-more-than-half-the-crew-awaits-testing/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">USS Kidd</a>, were suffering from Covid-19 outbreaks. None of these approached the scale of the TR and, by June, the Navy was again able to deploy most of those ships on delayed schedules and/or with reduced crews. By then, however, it had become abundantly clear that the long-established U.S. strategy of relying on large, heavily armed warships to project power and defeat foreign adversaries was no longer fully sustainable in a pandemic-stricken world.Just as the Navy was learning that its preference for big ships with large crews — typically packed into small spaces for extended periods of time –was quite literally proving a dead-end strategy (one of the infected sailors on the TR <a href="https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2020/04/13/sailor-from-theodore-roosevelt-has-died-of-covid-19-complications/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">died</a> of complications from Covid-19), the Army and Marine Corps were making a comparable discovery. Their favored strategy of partnering with local forces in far-flung parts of the world like Iraq, Japan, Kuwait, and South Korea, where local safeguards against infectious disease couldn’t always be relied on (or, as in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/12/okinawa-demands-answers-from-us-after-61-marines-contract-coronovirus" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Okinawa recently</a>, Washington’s allies couldn’t count on the virus-free status of American forces), was similarly flawed. With U.S. and allied troops increasingly forced to remain in isolation from each other, it is proving difficult to conduct the usual joint training-and-combat exercises and operations.In the short term, American defense officials have responded to such setbacks with various stopgap measures, including <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3085247/us-air-force-ramps-flyovers-near-china-sign-rising-tension-and" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">sending</a> nuclear-capable B-1, B-2, and B-52 bombers on long-range “show-of-force” missions over contested areas like the Baltic Sea (think: Russia) or the South China Sea (think: China, of course). “We have the capability and capacity to provide long-range fires anywhere, anytime, and can bring overwhelming firepower — even during the pandemic,” <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/14/politics/us-china-military-pressure/index.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">insisted</a> General Timothy Ray, commander of the Air Force Global Strike Command, after several such operations.In another sign of tactical desperation, however, the Navy ordered the shattered crew of the TR out of lockdown in May so that the ship could participate in long-scheduled, China-threatening multi-carrier exercises in the western Pacific. A third of its crew, however, had to be left in hospitals or in quarantine on Guam. “We’re executing according to plan to return to sea and fighting through the virus is part of that,” <a href="https://apnews.com/0ad85bd579341d186acfe6dc7d8e8716" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">said</a> the ship’s new captain, Carlos Sardiello, as the TR prepared to depart that Pacific island. (He had been named captain on April 3rd after a letter the carrier’s previous skipper, Brett Crozier, wrote to superiors complaining of deteriorating shipboard health conditions was leaked to the media and the senior Navy leadership <a href="https://seapowermagazine.org/former-commander-of-theodore-roosevelt-to-replace-ousted-skipper/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">fired</a> him.)Such stopgap measures, and others like them now being undertaken by the Department of Defense, continue to provide the military with a sense of ongoing readiness, even aggressiveness, in a time of Covid-related restrictions. Were the current pandemic to fade away in the not-too-distant future and life return to what once passed for normal, they might prove adequate. Scientists are warning, however, that the coronavirus is likely to persist for a long time and that a vaccine — even if successfully developed — may not prove effective forever. Moreover, many virologists <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-05-21/coronavirus-chronicle-pandemic-foretold" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">believe</a> that further pandemics, potentially even more lethal than Covid-19, could be lurking on the horizon, meaning that there might never be a return to a pre-pandemic “normal.”That being the case, Pentagon officials have been forced to acknowledge that the military foundations of Washington’s global strategy — particularly, the forward deployment of combat forces in close cooperation with allied forces — may have become invalid. In recognition of this harsh new reality, U.S. strategists are beginning to devise an entirely new blueprint for future war, American-style: one that would end, or at least greatly reduce, a dependence on <a href="https://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176625/tomgram:nick_turse,bases,bases,everywhere,and_not_a_base_in_sight" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">hundreds</a> of overseas garrisons and large manned warships, relying instead on killer robots, a myriad of unmanned vessels, and offshore bases.Ships Without SailorsIn fact, the Navy’s plans to replace large manned vessels with small, unmanned ones was only accelerated by the outbreak of the pandemic. <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R45757.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Several factors</a> had already contributed to the trend: modern warships like nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and missile-armed cruisers had been growing ever more expensive to build. The latest, the USS Gerald R. Ford, has cost a whopping <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-08/navy-s-13-billion-aircraft-carrier-had-launch-system-failure" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">$13.2 billion</a> and still <a href="https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/07/01/the-navys-new-plan-to-fix-fords-elevator-failures/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">doesn’t work</a> to specifications. So even a profligately funded Pentagon can only afford to be constructing a few at a time. They are also proving increasingly vulnerable to the sorts of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-missiles-specialreport-us/special-report-u-s-rearms-to-nullify-chinas-missile-supremacy-idUSKBN22I1EQ" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">anti-ship missiles</a> and torpedoes being developed by powers like China, while, as events on the TR suggest, they’re natural breeding grounds for infectious diseases.Until the disaster aboard the Theodore Roosevelt, most worrisome were those Chinese land-based, anti-ship weapons capable of striking American carriers and cruisers in distant parts of the Pacific Ocean. This development had already forced naval planners to consider the possibility of keeping their most prized assets far from China’s shores in any potential shooting war, lest they be instantly lost to enemy fire. Rather than accept such a version of defeat before a battle even began, Navy officials had begun adopting a new strategy, sometimes called “<a href="https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/03/14/a-classified-pentagon-maritime-drone-program-is-about-to-get-its-moment-in-the-sun/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">distributed maritime operations</a>,” in which smaller manned warships would, in the future, be accompanied into battle by large numbers of tiny, unmanned, missile-armed vessels, or maritime “<a href="https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">killer robots</a>.”In a reflection of the Navy’s new thinking, the service’s surface warfare director, Rear Admiral Ronald Boxall, <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/01/15/the-us-navy-moves-toward-unleashing-killer-robot-ships-on-the-worlds-oceans/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">explained</a> in 2019 that the future fleet, as designed, was to include “104 large surface combatants [and] 52 small surface combatants,” adding, “That’s a little upside down. Should I push out here and have more small platforms? I think the future fleet architecture study has intimated ‘yes,’ and our war gaming shows there is value in that… And when I look at the force, I think: Where can we use unmanned so that I can push it to a smaller platform?”Think of this as an early public sign of the rise of naval robotic warfare, which is finally leaving dystopian futuristic fantasies for actual future battlefields. In the Navy’s version of this altered landscape, large numbers of unmanned vessels (both surface ships and submarines) will <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/01/15/the-us-navy-moves-toward-unleashing-killer-robot-ships-on-the-worlds-oceans/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">roam</a> the world’s oceans, reporting periodically via electronic means to human operators ashore or on designated command ships. They may, however, operate for long periods on their own or in robotic “wolf packs.”Such a vision has now been embraced by the senior Pentagon leadership, which sees the rapid procurement and deployment of such robotic vessels as the surest way of achieving the Navy’s (and President Trump’s) goal of a fleet of 355 ships at a time of potentially static defense budgets, recurring pandemics, and mounting foreign threats. “I think one of the ways you get [to the 355-ship level] quickly is moving toward lightly manned [vessels], which over time can be unmanned,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper typically <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2020/02/09/defense-secretary-mark-esper-on-how-the-navy-can-get-to-355-ships/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">said</a> in February. “We can go with lightly manned ships… You can build them so they’re optionally manned and then, depending on the scenario or the technology, at some point in time they can go unmanned… That would allow us to get our numbers up quickly, and I believe that we can get to 355, if not higher, by 2030.”To begin to implement such an audacious plan, that very month the Pentagon <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R45757.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">requested</a> $938 million for the next two fiscal years to procure three prototype large unmanned surface vessels (LUSVs) and another $56 million for the initial development of a medium-sized unmanned surface vessel (MUSV). If such efforts prove successful, the Navy wants another $2.1 billion from 2023 through 2025 to procure seven deployable LUSVs and one prototype MUSV.Naval officials have, however, revealed little about the design or ultimate functioning of such robot warships. All that service’s 2021 budget request <a href="https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2021/fy2021_Weapons.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">says</a> is that “the unmanned surface vessel (USV) is a reconfigurable, multi-mission vessel designed to provide low cost, high endurance, reconfigurable ships able to accommodate various payloads for unmanned missions and augment the Navy’s manned surface force.”Based on isolated reports in the military trade press, the most that can be known about such future (and futuristic) ships, is that they will resemble <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/03/14/a-classified-pentagon-maritime-drone-program-is-about-to-get-its-moment-in-the-sun/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">miniature destroyers</a>, perhaps 200 feet long, with no crew quarters but a large array of guided missiles and anti-submarine weapons. Such vessels will also be equipped with sophisticated computer systems enabling them to operate autonomously for long periods of time and — under circumstances yet to be clarified — take offensive action on their own or in coordination with other unmanned vessels.The future deployment of robot warshipson the high seas raises troubling questions. To what degree, for instance, will they be able to choose targets on their own for attack and annihilation? The Navy has yet to provide an adequate answer to this question, provoking disquiet among arms control and human rights advocates who <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-03/features/autonomous-weapons-systems-laws-war" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">fear</a> that such ships could “go rogue” and start or escalate a conflict on their own. And that’s obviously a potential problem in a world of recurring pandemics where killer robots could prove the only types of ships the Navy dares deploy in large numbers.Fighting from AfarWhen it comes to the prospect of recurring pandemics, the ground combat forces of the Army and Marine Corps face a comparable dilemma.Ever since the end of World War II, American military strategy has called for U.S. forces to “fight forward” — that is, on or near enemy territory rather than anywhere near the United States. This, in turn, has meant maintaining military alliances with numerous countries around the world so that American forces can be based on their soil, resulting in <a href="https://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176043/tomgram%3A_david_vine%2C_our_base_nation" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">hundreds</a> of U.S. military bases globally. In wartime, moreover, U.S. strategy assumes that many of these countries will provide troops for joint operations against a common enemy. To fight the Soviets in Europe, the U.S. created NATO and acquired garrisons throughout Western Europe; to fight communism in Asia, it established military ties with Japan, South Korea, South Vietnam, the Philippines, and other local powers, acquiring scores of bases there as well. When Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Islamic terrorism became major targets of its military operations, the Pentagon forged ties with and acquired bases in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Djibouti, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, among other places.In a pandemic-free world, such a strategy offers numerous advantages for an imperial power. In time of war, for example, there’s no need to transport American troops (with all their heavy equipment) into the combat zone from bases thousands of miles away. However, in a world of recurring pandemics, such a vision is fast becoming a potentially unsustainable nightmare.To begin with, it’s almost impossible to isolate thousands of U.S. soldiers and their families (who often accompany them on long-term deployments) from surrounding populations (or those populations from them). As a result, any viral outbreak outside base gates is likely to find its way inside and any outbreak on the base is likely to head in the opposite direction. This, in fact, occurred at numerous overseas facilities this spring. Camp Humphreys in South Korea, for example, was <a href="https://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/american-contractor-is-latest-to-test-positive-for-coronavirus-on-camp-humphreys-1.624422" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">locked down</a> after four military dependents, four American contractors, and four South Korean employees became infected with Covid-19. It was the same on several bases in Japan and on the island of Okinawa when Japanese employees tested positive for the virus (and, more recently, when U.S. military personnel <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/07/13/national/japan-us-coronavirus-military-bases-okinawa/#.Xwx1TB17lTY" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">at five bases</a> there were found to have Covid-19). Add in <a href="https://www.stripes.com/news/us-base-in-djibouti-to-lock-down-after-second-contractor-tests-positive-for-coronavirus-1.627688" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Camp Lemonnier</a> in Djibouti and <a href="https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2020/07/01/coronavirus-outbreak-reported-at-al-jaber-air-base-in-kuwait/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Ahmed al-Jaber Air Base</a> in Kuwait, not to speak of the fact that, in Europe, some <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/defense/488671-pentagon-monitoring-2600-military-personnel-in-europe-for-possible-coronavirus" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">2,600</a> American soldiers have been placed in quarantine after suspected exposure to Covid-19. (And if the U.S. military is anxious about all this in other countries, think about how America’s allies feel at a moment when Donald Trump’s America has become the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic.)A world of recurring pandemics will make it nearly impossible for U.S. forces to work side-by-side with their foreign counterparts, especially in poorer nations that lack adequate health and sanitation facilities. This is already true in <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2020/03/20/training-in-iraq-halted-smaller-bases-consolidating-some-coalition-troops-homeward-bound-over-covid-19-concerns/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Iraq</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/afghanistan-coronavirus-security-forces-military/2020/06/24/0063c828-b4e2-11ea-9a1d-d3db1cbe07ce_story.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Afghanistan</a>, where the coronavirus is thought to have spread widely among friendly local forces and American soldiers have been ordered to suspend joint training missions with them.A return to the pre-Covid world appears increasingly unlikely, so the search is now on big time for a new guiding strategy for Army and Marine combat operations in the years to come. As with the Navy, this search actually began before the outbreak of the coronavirus, but has gained fresh urgency in its wake.To insulate ground operations from the dangers of a pandemic-stricken planet, the two services are exploring a similar operating model: instead of deploying large, heavily-armed troop contingents close to enemy borders, they hope to station small, highly mobile forces on U.S.-controlled islands or at other reasonably remote locations, where they can fire long-range ballistic missiles at vital enemy assets with relative impunity. To further reduce the risk of illness or casualties, such forces will, over time, be augmented on the front lines by ever more “unmanned” creations, including armed machines — again those “killer robots” — designed to perform the duties of ordinary soldiers.The Marine Corps’ version of this future combat model was first spelled out in <a href="https://www.hqmc.marines.mil/Portals/142/Docs/CMC38%20Force%20Design%202030%20Report%20Phase%20I%20and%20II.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Force Design 2030</a>, a document released by Corps commandant General David Berger in the pandemic month of March 2020. Asserting that the Marines’ existing structure was unsuited to the world of tomorrow, he called for a radical restructuring of the force to eliminate heavy, human-operated weapons like tanks and instead increase mobility and long-range firepower with a variety of missiles and what he assumes will be a proliferation of unmanned systems. “Operating under the assumption that we will not receive additional resources,” he wrote, “we must divest certain existing capabilities and capacities to free resources for essential new capabilities.” Among those “new capabilities” that he considers crucial: additional unmanned aerial systems, or drones, that “can operate from ship, from shore, and [be] able to employ both [intelligence-]collection and lethal payloads.”In its own long-range planning, the Army is placing an even <a href="https://breakingdefense.com/2020/01/army-chief-seeks-minimally-manned-vehicles-joint-c2/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">greater reliance</a> on creating a force of robots, or at least “optionally manned” systems. Anticipating a future of heavily-armed adversaries engaging U.S. forces in high-intensity warfare, it’s seeking to reduce troop exposure to enemy fire by designing all future combat-assault systems, including tanks, troop-carriers, and helicopters, to be either human-occupied or robotically self-directed as circumstances dictate. The Army’s next-generation infantry assault weapon, for instance, has been dubbed an <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R45519.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">optionally manned fighting vehicle</a> (OMFV). As its name suggests, it is intended to operate with or without onboard human operators. The Army is also <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R45392.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">procuring</a> a robotic utility vehicle, the squad multipurpose equipment transport (SMET), intended to carry 1,000 pounds of supplies and ammunition. Looking further into the future, that service has also begun development of a robotic combat vehicle (RCV), or a self-driving tank.The Army is also speeding the development of long-range artillery and missile systems that will make attacks on enemy positions from well behind the front lines ever more central to any future battle with a major enemy. These include the extended range cannon artillery, an upgraded Paladin-armored howitzer with an extra-long barrel and supercharged propellant that should be able to <a href="https://breakingdefense.com/2020/05/army-tests-new-a2-ad-tools-howitzers-missiles-1000-mile-supergun/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">hit targets</a> 40 miles away, and the even more advanced <a href="https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2021/fy2021_Weapons.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">precision strike missile</a> (PrSM), a surface-to-surface ballistic missile with a range of at least 310 miles.Many analysts, in fact, believe that the PrSM will be able to strike at <a href="https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/army-lockheed-prsm-missile-aces-third-flight-test/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">far greater distances</a> than that, putting critical enemy targets — air bases, radar sites, command centers — at risk from launch sites far to the rear of American forces. In case of war with China, this could mean firing missiles from friendly partner-nations like Japan or U.S.-controlled Pacific islands like Guam. Indeed, this possibility has <a href="https://breakingdefense.com/2020/07/long-range-all-domain-prompts-roles-missions-debate/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">alarmed</a> Air Force supporters who fear that the Army is usurping the sorts of long-range strike missions traditionally assigned to combat aircraft.A Genuine Strategic RedesignAll these plans and programs are being promoted to enable the U.S. military to continue performing its traditional missions of power projection and warfighting in a radically altered world. Seen from that perspective, measures like removing sailors from crowded warships, downsizing U.S. garrisons in distant lands, and replacing human combatants with robotic ones might seem sensible. But looked at from what might be called the vantage point of comprehensive security — or the advancement of all aspects of American safety and wellbeing — they appear staggeringly myopic.If the scientists are right and the coronavirus will linger for a long period and, in the decades to come, be followed by other pandemics of equal or greater magnitude, the true future threats to American security could be microbiological (and economic), not military. After all, the current pandemic has already killed more Americans than <a href="https://fortune.com/2020/06/10/coronavirus-deaths-us-covid-19-killed-more-americans-korean-war-vietnam-iraq-persian-gulf-combined-how-many-died/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">died</a> in the Korean and Vietnam wars combined, while triggering the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Imagine, then, what a more lethal pandemic might do. The country’s armed forces may still have an important role to play in such an environment — providing, for example, emergency medical assistance and protecting vital infrastructure — but fighting never-ending wars in distant lands and projecting power globally should not rank high when it comes to where taxpayer dollars go for “security” in such challenging times.One thing is inescapable: as the disaster aboard the Theodore Roosevelt indicates, the U.S. military must reconsider how it arms and structures its forces and give serious thought to alternative models of organization. But focusing enormous resources on the replacement of pre-Covid ships and tanks with post-Covid killer robots for endless rounds of foreign wars is hardly in America’s ultimate security interest. There is, sadly, something highly robotic about such military thinking when it comes to this changing world of ours.Michael T. Klare, a <a href="https://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176712/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_is_there_a_chinese_missile_crisis_in_our_future" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">TomDispatch regular</a>, is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. He is the author of 15 books, the latest of which is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1627792481/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change</a>.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/we-are-witnessing-the-birth-of-a-movement-and-the-downfall-of-a-president/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/we-are-witnessing-the-birth-of-a-movement-and-the-downfall-of-a-president/</a></div><div>
</div><div>They almost always begin to right wrongs: illegitimate wars; decades of discrimination on the grounds of gender or racial or sexual identity; killings of innocents by police or gun-toting lunatics; oppression by governments wielding unequal laws; the deeply embedded legacy of centuries of racism.This article <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/06/06/we-are-witnessing-the-birth-of-a-movement--and-the-downfall-of-a-president/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">first appeared in Salon</a>.They are imperfect. Arising out of rage, they can be unfocused, inchoate, contradictory. Protesting violence, they often involve violence. Protesting oppression, they sometimes oppress by destroying public spaces, small businesses, even entire neighborhoods.But sometimes they are large enough and powerful enough and righteous enough to bend the arc of history. We are in such a moment. There has been a turning. A protest against the murder of a black man by police in Minneapolis has become a movement. Demonstrations, which began almost two weeks ago, are ongoing. They are huge. They are nationwide. They are peaceful. They show no signs of stopping.Among the extraordinary things about this moment is the fact that every single person who has taken to the streets to demonstrate is risking his or her life. People who only days ago were huddled inside their homes, afraid of a virus that has taken in excess of 110,000 lives in this country, are putting on their face masks and gathering by the tens or even hundreds of thousands, unafraid of the virus or the forces arrayed on the streets against them. They are protesting the death of a man who should not have had to die, and they are protesting the man who seemingly gave permission for him to be murdered by the intolerance and racism he has openly promoted for more than four years.If we had any doubts that our fellow citizens would turn out to vote in November because they would be afraid of the virus or intimidated by attempts to block their votes, we have our answer. More people will turn out to vote, not less, and this has Trump very, very worried.The show of courage on the streets has frightened Trump and his allies in the Republican Party. If you have any doubts, all you have to do is watch the scene of <a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2020/06/sorry-im-late-for-lunch-reporter-asks-13-republicans-about-trumps-church-photo-op-then-posted-their-answers/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Republican senators scurrying away from MSNBC reporter Kasie Hunt</a> on Capitol Hill when she asked them to comment on Trump’s disgusting and disreputable photo-op at St. John’s Church on Monday.Trump has turned Washington into an armed camp. He has built a three-mile-long wall around the White House and cowered in a basement bunker as protests grew on the streets outside. But Trump’s threat to use active-duty soldiers to suppress dissent has encountered some profound pushback from an unexpected source: the United States military.It began with a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">statement by former Secretary of Defense James Mattis</a> in reaction to the use of force, including National Guard soldiers, to clear peaceful demonstrators from a street near the White House so Trump could make his now-infamous “walk” to St. John’s Church for his Bible-waving photo-op. “I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled,” Mattis wrote in The Atlantic:<blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;">When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values — our values as people and our values as a nation. We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.</blockquote>And then something extraordinary happened. Mattis’ clarion call was joined by more senior military figures, beginning with Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who had been the object of strong criticism for standing next to Trump during his Bible photo-op. Esper held a press conference at the Pentagon on Wednesday and announced that he was against invoking the Insurrection Act, which would (hypothetically) authorize the deployment of active-duty military on the streets of America. Trump is said to be very, very unhappy with Esper and reversed his order for elements of the 82nd Airborne Division to return to their base in North Carolina. By week’s end, however, Esper had prevailed, and the 82nd was on the way home.Retired Adm. Mike Mullen, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Barack Obama, was next. He wrote a piece for The Atlantic entitled, “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/american-cities-are-not-battlespaces/612553" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">I cannot remain silent</a>.”<blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;">“t sickened me yesterday to see security personnel — including members of the National Guard — forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president’s visit outside St. John’s Church. I have to date been reticent to speak out on issues surrounding President Trump’s leadership, but we are at an inflection point, and the events of the past few weeks have made it impossible to remain silent.Whatever Trump’s goal in conducting his visit, he laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country, gave succor to the leaders of other countries who take comfort in our domestic strife, and risked further politicizing the men and women of our armed forces.”</blockquote>Retired General John R. Allen weighed in next, <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/03/trump-military-george-floyd-protests/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">writing ominously in Foreign Policy magazine</a>, “The slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun on June 1, 2020. Remember the date. It may well signal the beginning of the end of the American experiment.”More retired generals weighed in later in the week, including two former chairs of the Joint Chiefs, Martin Dempsey and Richard Meyers. Both were critical of Trump’s handling of protests and opposed the use of the military to suppress dissent.But even more extraordinary than the retired officers who spoke out was the letter from the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark A. Milley, which was <a href="https://www.journaloftheplagueyear.ink/blog/did-america-s-military-stop-a-coup-d-etat?fbclid=IwAR0RkIO0tZKpypnd5LhfMJyUIVgveZysmwW1Upu9yU6Q5uQ6H5QqzrXGKFs" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">leaked to conservative pundit Bill Kristol</a> on Thursday. Milley is said to have had a contentious meeting with Trump in the Oval Office on Monday before joining him in his infamous “walk” down the street cleared by police and National Guard soldiers. According to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-mattis-and-mullen-toppled-their-bridge-of-silence/2020/06/04/c71b8f58-a698-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">David Ignatius of the Washington Post</a>, Milley, “whose temper can match Trump’s…was vocal in reiterating his advice to the president against mobilizing troops, according to three knowledgeable sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.”  That is Washington-speak for “they were yelling at each other.”Sent to all of the other chiefs of staff for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, National Guard and commanders of combatant commands, Milley’s letter is unlike anything I have seen, and I’ve been around the military since I was born in an Army field hospital in occupied Japan in 1947.He reminded everyone in uniform of their oath to support and defend the Constitution. I’ve never seen that done before. All service members take the same oath, but they don’t go around reminding each other about it. Milley wrote of the Constitution, “This document is founded on the essential principles that all men and women are born free and equal, and should be treated with respect and dignity. It also gives Americans the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly. We in uniform — all branches, all components, all ranks — remain committed to our national values and principles embedded in the Constitution.” He went on to note specifically that the National Guard “is operating under the authority of state governors.”For a military man, this comes close to a call for insurrection. Milley’s message is written in a code that everyone in uniform will understand implicitly. By reminding every member of the military that the soldiers currently deployed on the street around the country are not there under the authority of the president, and by reminding them of their oath to the Constitution, he is telling them that the military will not be carrying out any un-American orders issued by Donald Trump. Late Friday, Secretary of Defense Esper disarmed the National Guard doing riot duty in Washington, ordering them to turn in their weapons and ammunition.  He also ordered all active duty troops amassed outside the capital earlier in the week by the White House to be sent home.  He issued both orders without consulting the White House.These generals are not politicians, but all their statements are as political as any I’ve ever seen by senior officers, retired or active duty. It’s the equivalent of lining up howitzers on Pennsylvania Avenue and aiming at the White House.I’ll bet Trump rues the day he appointed “Mad Dog” Mattis as secretary of defense. They don’t go out and make statements like this without talking to one another. Mullen and Mattis were said to have been aware of Milley’s confrontation with the president at the time they wrote their articles on Tuesday and Wednesday. Milley and his fellow generals and admirals are giving a clear sign that the military leaders are turning against Trump. Colin Powell will reportedly be next, in an appearance on one of the Sunday morning shows.The military is the most reliably conservative institution this country has. But inside the military establishment, the signals are being sent. They have announced that they are more reliable as defenders of the rights of their fellow citizens than the police. Without stepping over the line into insubordination, they have made it as clear as they can that their loyalty isn’t to the president. It’s to the Constitution.I don’t think we have to worry about the military following illegal orders from Trump. At least for now, they’re on our side.</div><div>--</div><div>=</div><div>esper waffles/caves, sec of army better? jt chief milley in st john foto op</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/james-mattis-writes-a-devastating-rebuke-to-trumps-handling-of-protests/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"> Mattis writes a devastating rebuke to Trump’s handling of protests</a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/james-mattis-writes-a-devastating-rebuke-to-trumps-handling-of-protests/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;">
</a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/cody-fenwick/" title="Posts by Cody Fenwick" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="text-align: right; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Cody Fenw</a></h3></div><div><div>=</div><div>some say work for doj?</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/department-of-justice-deploys-rogue-force-of-unidentified-armed-militia-to-patrol-dc">https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/department-of-justice-deploys-rogue-force-of-unidentified-armed-militia-to-patrol-dc</a></div><div></div></div>=<div>sec of def and navy repeated change.fire/quit acting?
<div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">so much for respect for military  crozier got her's farewll from sailors</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/its-not-shocking-the-navy-fired-a-commander-for-warning-of-coronavirus-threat-its-part-of-a-disturbing-pattern/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/its-not-shocking-the-navy-fired-a-commander-for-warning-of-coronavirus-threat-its-part-of-a-disturbing-pattern/</a></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div></div>=see also DN 3/9/20  fighting threatens peace deal w/ taliban<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/afghanistan-papers-reveal-how-presidents-and-generals-misled-the-american-public-on-wars-progress/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/afghanistan-papers-reveal-how-presidents-and-generals-misled-the-american-public-on-wars-progress/</a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/five-top-pentagon-officials-have-resigned-in-the-last-week-should-we-be-worried/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/five-top-pentagon-officials-have-resigned-in-the-last-week-should-we-be-worried/</a>unclear why]...net result is that, as in the State Department, the ranks of top Pentagon officials have been dwindling. <a title="" href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/18/pentagon-policy-chief-john-rood-under-fire-senior-officials-leave/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Over a quarter of all Senate-confirmed defense positions are now vacant</a>, and there seems little chance that most of those will be filled before the November 2020 election because (1) Team Trump has no need for policy experts to begin with, and (2) few sane people would agree to sign up for top positions in the last year of a maybe-survives-impeachment, maybe-doesn’t administration now famous for ignoring and belittling its own top experts—when Trump isn’t tweeting demands that they be thrown in jail because reasons...<h2 style="line-height: 1.375em; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.propublica.org/e/125411/l-utm-campaign-dailynewsletter/6yqfm6/411005241?h=-k7otS-5HNOQYARyo2fyQsDytYP5hm0vrJc7UXNuRAI" style="text-decoration-line: none;">How Amazon and Silicon Valley Seduced the Pentagon</a></h2>Tech moguls like Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt have gotten unprecedented access to the Pentagon. And one whistleblower who raised flags has paid the price.<div class="yiv9101970470byline" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0.25em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0.25em 0em;">by James Bandler, Anjali Tsui and Doris Burke</div><div class="yiv9101970470button-holder" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a rel="nofollow" class="yiv9101970470button" target="blank" href="https://go.propublica.org/e/125411/l-utm-campaign-dailynewsletter/6yqfm6/411005241?h=-k7otS-5HNOQYARyo2fyQsDytYP5hm0vrJc7UXNuRAI" style="text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block; border: 1px solid rgb(33, 124, 227); font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 40px; padding: 10px 20px; margin-top: 15px; border-radius: 3px;">View Story</a></div><a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/pentagon-budget-mystery-807276/">https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/pentagon-budget-mystery-807276/</a><h1 class="l-article-headerrow l-article-headerrow--title t-bold t-bold--condensed" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.3125rem 0px; letter-spacing: -1px; flex: 0 0 auto; width: 940px; line-height: 3.125rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Pentagon’s Bottomless Money Pit</h1><h2 class="l-article-headerrow l-article-headerrow--lead t-semibold t-semibold--condensed" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.3125rem 0px; letter-spacing: -0.0221em; flex: 0 0 auto; width: 940px; line-height: 1.4375rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">When the Defense Department flunked its first-ever fiscal review, one of our government’s greatest mysteries was exposed: Where does the DoD’s $700 billion annual budget go?</h2><div class="l-article-headerblock l-article-headerblock--byline" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; padding: 0.625rem 0.625rem 0.625rem 0px; flex: 1 1 auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="c-byline" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;"><div class="c-bylineauthors" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;">By <div class="c-bylineauthor" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; position: relative; display: inline-block; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/author/matt-taibbi/" class="c-byline__link t-bold t-bold--upper" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; transition: color 0.24s cubic-bezier(0.215, 0.61, 0.355, 1) 0s; text-decoration-line: none; text-transform: uppercase; word-break: break-word; box-shadow: 0px -1px 0px 0px inset;">MATT TAIBB</a>i</div></div></div></div>...The Air Force, which had an $85 billion budget that year, nearly created in one stroke an accounting error more than a third the size of the U.S. GDP, which was just over $10 trillion in 2001. Nobody lost money. It was just a paper error, one that was caught.<p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.9375rem 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">“Even the Air Force notices a trillion-dollar error,” Andy says with a laugh. “Now, if it had been a billion, it might have gone through.”<p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.9375rem 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Years later, Andy watched as another massive accounting issue made its way into the military bureaucracy. The Air Force changed one of its financial reporting systems, and after the change, the service showed a negative number for inventory — everything from engine cores to landing gear — in transit.<p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.9375rem 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Freaked out, because you can’t have a negative number of things in transit, Air Force accountants went back and tried to reverse the mistake. In doing so, they somehow ended up adding more than $4 billion in value to the Air Force’s overall spare-parts inventory in a single month.<p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.9375rem 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">This suspicious number is still there. You can see a sudden spike in the Air Force’s working-capital fund’s stagnant spare-parts numbers. It was $23.2 billion in 2015, $23.3 billion in 2016, $24.4 billion in 2017, and then suddenly $28.8 billion in September 2018.<p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.9375rem 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">That doesn’t mean money was lost, or stolen. It does, however, mean the Air Force probably has less inventory on hand than it thinks it does.<p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.9375rem 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Now retired, Andy sometimes visits his neighborhood library, which uses RFID smart labels, or radio frequency identification, allowing it to know where all its books are at all times.<p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.9375rem 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Meanwhile, the Air Force, which has a $156 billion annual budget, still doesn’t always use serial numbers. It has no idea how much of almost anything it has at any given time. Nuclear weapons are the exception, and it started electronically tagging those only after two extraordinary mistakes, in 2006 and 2007. In the first, the Air Force accidentally loaded six nuclear weapons in a B-52 and flew them across the country, unbeknownst to the crew. In the other, the services sent nuclear nose cones by mistake to Taiwan, which had asked for helicopter batteries.<p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.9375rem 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">“What kind of an organization,” Andy asks, “doesn’t keep track of $20 billion in inventory?”<p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.9375rem 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">Despite being the taxpayers’ greatest investment — more than $700 billion a year — the Department of Defense has remained an organizational black box throughout its history. It’s repelled generations of official inquiries, the latest being an audit three decades in the making, mainly by scrambling its accounting into such a mess that it may never be untangled.<p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.9375rem 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">Ahead of misappropriation, fraud, theft, overruns, contracting corruption and other abuses that are almost certainly still going on, the Pentagon’s first problem is its books. It’s the world’s largest producer of wrong numbers, an ingenious bureaucratic defense system that hides all the other rats’ nests underneath. Meet the Gordian knot of legend, brought to life in modern America.<p class="p3" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.9375rem 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">AT THE TAIL end of last year, the Department of Defense finally completed an audit. At a cost of $400 million, some 1,200 auditors charged into the jungle of military finance, but returned in defeat. They were unable to pass the Pentagon or flunk it. They could only offer no opinion, explaining the military’s empire of hundreds of acronymic accounting silos was too illogical to penetrate.<p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.9375rem 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">The audit is the last piece in one of the great ass-covering projects ever undertaken, also known as the effort to give the United States government a clean bill of financial health. Twenty-nine years ago, in 1990, Congress ordered all government agencies to begin producing audited financial statements. Others complied. Defense refused from the jump.<p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.9375rem 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">It took a Herculean legislative effort lasting 20 years to move the Pentagon off its intransigent starting position. In 2011, it finally agreed to be ready by 2017, which turned into 2018, when the Department of Defense finally complied with part of the law ordering “timely performance reports.”<p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.9375rem 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Last November 15th, when the whiffed audit was announced, Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan said it was nothing to worry about, because “we never expected to pass it.” Asked by a reporter why taxpayers should keep giving the Pentagon roughly $700 billion a year if it can’t even “get their house in order and count ships right or buildings right,” Shanahan quipped, “We count ships right.”<p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.9375rem 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">This was an inside joke. The joke was, the Pentagon isn’t so hot at counting buildings. Just a few years ago, in fact, it admitted to losing track of “478 structures,” in addition to 39 Black Hawk helicopters (whose fully loaded versions list for about $21 million a pop).<p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0.9375rem 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">That didn’t mean 478 buildings disappeared. But they did vanish from the government’s ledgers at some point. The Pentagon bureaucracy is designed to spend money quickly and deploy troops and material to the field quickly, but it has no reliable method of recording transactions. It designs stealth drones and silent-running submarines, but still hasn’t progressed to bar codes when it comes to tracking inventory. Some of its accounting programs are using the ancient computing language COBOL, which was cutting-edge in 1959....“These systems,” as one Senate staffer puts it, “were not designed to be audited.”If and when the defense review is ever completed, we’re likely to find a pile of Enrons, with the military’s losses and liabilities hidden in Enron-like special-purpose vehicles, assets systematically overvalued, monies Congress approved for X feloniously diverted to Program Y, contractors paid twice, parts bought twice, repairs done unnecessarily and at great expense, and so on.Enron at its core was an accounting maze that systematically hid losses and overstated gains in order to keep investor money flowing in. The Pentagon is an exponentially larger financial bureaucracy whose mark is the taxpayer. Of course, less overtly a criminal scheme, the military still churns out Enron-size losses regularly, and this is only possible because its accounting is a long-tolerated fraud.We’ve seen glimpses already. The infamous F-35 Joint Strike fighter program is now projected to cost the taxpayers $1.5 trillion, roughly what we spent on the entire Iraq War. Overruns and fraud from that program alone are currently expected to cost taxpayers about 100 times what was spent on Obama’s much-ballyhooed Solyndra solar-energy deal.Meanwhile, the Defense Department a few years ago found about $125 billion in administrative waste, a wart that by itself was just under twice the size of that $74 billion Enron bankruptcy. Inspectors found “at least” $6 billion to $8 billion in waste in the Iraq campaign, and said $15 billion of waste found in the Afghan theater was probably “only a portion” of the total lost.Even the military’s top-line budget number is an Enron-esque accounting trick. Congress in 2011 passed the Budget Control Act, which caps the defense budget at roughly 54 percent of discretionary spending. Almost immediately, it began using so-called Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), a giant second checking account that can be raised without limit.Therefore, for this year, the Pentagon has secured $617 billion in “base” budget money, which puts it in technical compliance with the Budget Control law. But it also receives $69 billion in OCO money, sometimes described as “war funding,” a euphemistic term for an open slush fund. (Non-defense spending also exceeds caps, but typically for real emergencies like hurricane relief.) Add in the VA ($83 billion), Homeland Security ($46 billion), the National Nuclear Security Administration ($21.9 billion) and roughly $19 billion more in OCO funds for anti-ISIS operations that go to State and DHS, and the actual defense outlay is north of $855 billion, and that’s just what we know about (other programs, like the CIA’s drones, are part of the secret “black budget”).In a supreme irony, the auditors’ search for boondoggles has itself become a boondoggle. In the early Nineties and 2000s, the Defense Department spent billions hiring private firms in preparation for last year. In many cases, those new outside accountants simply repeated recommendations that had already been raised and ignored by past government auditors like the Defense inspector general.After last year’s debacle, the services are now spending even more on outside advice to prepare for the next expected flop. The Air Force alone just awarded Deloitte up to $800 million to help the service with future “audit preparation.” The Navy countered with a $980 million audit-readiness contract spread across four companies (Deloitte, Booz Allen Hamilton, Accenture and KPMG).Taxpayers, in other words, are paying gargantuan sums to private accounting firms to write reports about how previous recommendations were ignored....<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/pentagon-report-on-climate-change-2626395731.html" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" csvg="Csvg" height="%2213%22" width="%2213%22" version="%221.1%22" cg="Cg" transform="%22translate%28-36.467808%2C-258.39005%29%22%3E" cpath="Cpath" d="%22m40.55%2C263.9c0-0.6213%2C0.6213-0.6213%2C0.6213-0.6213%2C1.864%2C0.6213%2C3.107%2C1.864%2C3.728%2C3.728%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C0.6213-0.6213%2C0.6213-1.243-1.864-1.864-2.485-3.728-3.728z%22/%3E" c="C" g="g" e="E" rgb="rgb" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" font-size="font-size" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:cc="%22http://creativecommons.org/ns%23%22" xmlns:data="data" xmlns:dc="%22http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/%22%3E" xmlns:rdf="%22http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns%23%22">Pentagon: Climate Change Is Real and a 'National Security Issue'</a> 1/19.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Pentagon released a Congressionally mandated <a href="https://climateandsecurity.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/sec_335_ndaa-report_effects_of_a_changing_climate_to_dod.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">report</a> (pdf) that warns <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/flooding" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">flooding</a>, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/drought" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">drought</a> and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildfires" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">wildfires</a> and other effects of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">climate change</a> puts U.S. military bases at risk.The 22-page analysis states plainly: "The effects of a changing climate are a national security issue with potential impacts to Department of Defense (DoD or the Department) missions, operational plans, and installations."The DoD said it is working with other nations "to understand and plan for future potential mission impacts," adding that this is a "global issue."The report, titled Report on Effects of a Changing Climate to the Department of Defense, reveals that two-thirds of the 79 mission-essential military installations that were reviewed are vulnerable to current or future recurrent flooding, more than half are vulnerable to current or future drought, and about half are exposed to wildfires. Six sites are also facing desertification and one is vulnerable to thawing permafrost.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div>=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2018/12/meet-the-defense-contractor-trump-picked-to-take-over-the-pentagon/">https://www.alternet.org/2018/12/meet-the-defense-contractor-trump-picked-to-take-over-the-pentagon/</a>
Patrick Shanahan, the man who will become acting Secretary of Defense on Jan. 1, is best known in Washington circles for the decades he spent employed with one of America’s most powerful defense contractors — Boeing.<div class="p0_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Shanahan began working for Boeing in 1986 and continued to be employed with them for more than <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/24/politics/who-is-patrick-shanahan-acting-defense-department-secretary/index.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">three decades</a> prior to his tenure at the Department of Defense. His most recent position there was as Boeing’s senior vice president of supply chain and operations, and he had also served on previous occasions as vice president and general manager of two of the company’s defense divisions, Boeing Missile Defense Systems and Rotorcraft Systems. During his time at Boeing, Shanahan earned the nickname “Mr. Fix-It” due to his history of turning around faltering programs like the 787 Dreamliner.When Shanahan was being confirmed for his current position as Deputy Secretary of Defense, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., expressed concern about Shanahan’s background.<div class="p2_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“I have to have confidence that the fox is not going to be put back into the henhouse,” McCain told Shanahan.<div class="p3_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In response to this and other criticisms, Shanahan recused himself from all issues involving Boeing and signed an ethics agreement saying he would divest himself from all financial interests related to Boeing.<div class="p4_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One edge that Shanahan will bring to his job, at least in terms of possibly getting it permanently, is that he has been supportive of Trump’s proposed Space Force, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/us/politics/patrick-shanahan-defense-secretary.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">according to The New York Times</a>. The newspaper went into detail about how Shanahan wound up supporting a policy that many critics ridiculed as patently ridiculous.<div class="p5_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;">When it was first announced last spring, President Trump’s proposal for a new Space Force was resisted by the Pentagon and ridiculed by late-night comics who envisioned Luke Skywalker in the military. But it found a champion in Patrick M. Shanahan, the deputy secretary of defense who will soon become the Pentagon’s acting chief.<div class="p6_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“We are not the Department of No,” Mr. Shanahan told Pentagon officials after Space Force was announced, arguing that it was a presidential priority and could help develop new military capabilities more quickly. “There is a vision, and it makes sense.”</div></blockquote>The departure of Secretary of Defense James Mattis has raised questions about whether there will be anyone to rein in Trump’s worst instincts. Last year, when speaking to Salon about concerns that the president’s erratic nature could cause global conflict, former presidential adviser David Gergen — who worked for Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton — illustrated Mattis’ value through a story about Nixon’s presidency during the nadir of Watergate.<div class="p8_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Nixon was the commander in chief, and [former Secretary of Defense Jim] Schlesinger in effect was saying, ‘We’re going to override the commander in chief if in fact we think it’s coming from some sort of aggressive personality or he’s just pissed off. Whatever it may be,'” <a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/12/23/trump-is-pushing-mattis-out-on-january-1/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Gergen told Salon</a>. “And I’ve asked people in the Defense Department, ‘Do you think there’s a similar arrangement today between [Secretary of Defense Jim] Mattis and the four-star generals?’ And the answer they’ve given me back — I don’t think there’s any reason to believe he’s giving such an order … [is] that if they’re given an order that they think comes from an erratic personality, they will double-check it with the secretary before they carry it out.”<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.americansecurityproject.org/congress-climate-security/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.americansecurityproject.org/congress-climate-security/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">11/17</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">...Cli<a href="https://www.americansecurityproject.org/climate-security/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer;">mate change is a threat to national security</a>. The military and national security community has been preparing for the effects of climate change for over a decade. However, for several years, there has been notable push-back from Congress; as recently as 2016, the House of Representatives had voted along purely partisan lines to support an amendment prohibiting any action by the Department of Defense on climate change.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div>In a remarkable turnaround, the Republican-led Congress has now begun to ask for the military to plan for the effects of climate change, and President Trump has signed legislation requiring that they do so. Below, is a of list legislation considered in 2017, by their committee of jurisdiction. House Armed Services CommitteeIn the House version of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) (<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2810" class="external" title=" - Link will open in new window" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer;">H.R. 2810</a>), the committee accepted an <a href="https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-amendment-climate-change-national-security-threat-passes-house-committee" class="external" title=" - Link will open in new window" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer;">amendment sponsored by Congressman Langevin</a> (RI) that <a href="https://langevin.house.gov/sites/langevin.house.gov/files/documents/LANGEVIN_CLIMATE_CHANGE_AMENDMENT.pdf" class="external" title=" - Link will open in new window" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer;">stated</a> that it was the sense of Congress that climate change “is a direct threat to the national security of the United States” and that military installations “must be able to effectively prepare to mitigate climate damage.”The Amendment requires a report to Congress on vulnerabilities to climate damage in military infrastructure and how climate change is affecting missions like humanitarian assistance and disaster response. The report would detail how much addressing climate change is expected to cost the Department.The amendment was accepted by voice vote in committee.Full House of RepresentativesWhen the full House considered the NDAA on July 13, Representative Perry offered an <a href="https://www.congress.gov/amendment/115th-congress/house-amendment/179" class="external" title=" - Link will open in new window" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer;">amendment</a> that would strip the bill of any language on climate change, including the report. After floor debate that included discussions from Rep. Langevin, Rep. Peters, and GOP Representatives <a href="https://twitter.com/RepStefanik" class="external" title=" - Link will open in new window" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer;">Stefanik</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/RosLehtinen/status/885595064168329216" class="external" title=" - Link will open in new window" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer;">Ros-Lehtinen</a>. The amendment to strip the climate security section failed by a <a href="http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2017/roll368.xml" class="external" title=" - Link will open in new window" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer;">vote of 185-234</a>, with 45 Republicans voting against. This vote on the House floor was an important signal that Congress is ready to support the military’s actions in preparing for the effects of climate change.House Appropriations CommitteeIn the report to accompany the <a class="external" title=" - Link will open in new window - Link will open in new window" href="https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/115th-congress/house-report/188" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer;">2018 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Bill</a> (<a class="external" title=" - Link will open in new window - Link will open in new window" href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2998?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22Hr2998%22%5D%7D&r=1" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer;">H.R. 2998</a>), the House Appropriations committee <a href="https://www.americansecurityproject.org/appropriators-dod-should-plan-for-climate-change/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer;">called on the Department of Defense</a> to plan for the effects of climate change on its bases and its operations.The report directs the Department of Defense to take into account the impacts of climate change, both “as a driver of instability” and as a threat to the military’s infrastructure. Noting the 2015 report to Congress about the <a class="external" title=" - Link will open in new window - Link will open in new window" href="http://archive.defense.gov/pubs/150724-congressional-report-on-national-implications-of-climate-change.pdf?source=govdelivery" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer;">national security implications of climate change</a>, the report asks the Secretary of Defense to report back to Congress (not later than 120 days after enactment of this Act) on the “adaptation strategies developed for vulnerable installations.”Furthermore, the report includes strong support for the Department of Defense to continue its work planning for the impacts of climate change. In a section titled “Climate and Security for Military Installations” the report states:<blockquote style="margin: 10px 0px 10px 50px; padding: 10px 5px 10px 15px; border-left: 3px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); display: inline-block; background: rgb(238, 238, 238);">The Department of Defense must pay close attention to potential adverse impacts of climate change as a driver of instability. From sea level rise to increased drought and flooding across the country and the world, proper defense planning must include considerations related to climate change impacts. The Committee urges the Secretary of Defense to plan infrastructure and other projects using the best available data and science on climate change to mitigate risks to our armed forces serving domestically and abroad.</blockquote>The <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3354" class="external" title=" - Link will open in new window" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer;">Omnibus Appropriations bill</a> in which this bill was folded into has not yet been signed into law.Senate Armed Services CommitteeIn the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/115th-congress/senate-report/125/1?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22s1519%22%5D%7D&r=1" class="external" title=" - Link will open in new window" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer;">report </a>to accompany the Senate version of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) (<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/1519?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22s1519%22%5D%7D&r=1" class="external" title=" - Link will open in new window" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer;">S.1519</a>), the committee asks that the Secretary of Defense performs a “comprehensive threat assessment” and “implementation master plan” by March 1, 2018. The report looks both at how to address overseas stability issues as well as infrastructure impacts. The committee is worried about how climate change will threaten readiness for the military as a whole. One particularly interesting area is that it asks for the report to asses how “public-private partnerships” could be used to build resiliency.House-Senate Conference ...=waste/fraud:
<div style="">=</div><div style="">Pathologizing poverty has been a long-term, ongoing—and sadly, highly successful—project of the right in this country. From Scott Walker’s <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/walker-trump-drug-test-food-stamps-53c377019225#.j49lcg898" style="text-decoration: none;">recent appeal</a> to PEOTUS Donald Trump to allow the state of Wisconsin to drug-test food-stamp recipients, to House GOP plans to make it harder to <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/house-republicans-plan-overhaul-nations-food-stamps-program/" style="text-decoration: none;">qualify for</a> aid, the goal is to punish and stigmatize the poor while eliminating programs that help lift them out of poverty.Fox News essentially functions as the media arm of the Republican Party, and on Wednesday it did its part to undermine a program that helps 44 million poor Americans. To that transparent end, an episode of “Fox & Friends” featured a segment titled, “Food Stamp Fraud at All-Time High: Is It Time to End the Program?” The <a href="http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/12/27/food-stamp-fraud-all-time-high" style="text-decoration: none;">piece goes</a> on to claim that USDA figures reveal “$70 million of taxpayer money was wasted in 2016 due to food stamp fraud.”There are a number of problems with this episode, from the false fact buried in the query to the absurd answer it proposes. Obviously, no, we shouldn’t scrap a program that serves 44 million needy people, because that would be disastrous for families, children and communities around the country. Especially since it’s an argument based on lies and obfuscation, as <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/12/fox-news-screws-its-latest-lie" style="text-decoration: none;">Mother Jones</a> writer Kevin Drum points out:<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">First, I have no idea where Fox's $70 million figure comes from—and I looked pretty hard for it. The Fox graphic attributes it to "2016 USDA," but as near as I can tell the USDA has no numbers for SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] fraud more recent than 2011.</blockquote>Drum goes on to note that even if the imaginary figure were real, it would account for a tiny fraction of cases.<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That's not all: $70 million is a startlingly low figure. In the most recent fiscal year, SNAP cost $71 billion, which means that fraud accounted for a minuscule 0.098 percent of the program budget.</blockquote>So, less than 1 percent of program costs went to fraudulent cases. As Drum notes, that’s not to suggest that having $70 million go to people who weren’t eligible to receive the money isn’t problematic. But as the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/28/fox-news-wonders-if-we-should-cancel-food-stamps-since-0-09-percent-of-spending-is-fraudulent/?utm_term=.bc0042e99dd2" style="text-decoration: none;">Washington Post</a> points out, if we really wanted to make sure federal funds aren’t being wasted in unnecessary places, there are a few other sites we might want to look first.<blockquote>Earlier this month, The Washington Post revealed that the Defense Department had deep-sixed recommendations that might save the agency up to $125 billion over the course of five years. “Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power,” our Craig Whitlock and Bob Woodward wrote. “But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.” That's a potential savings of $25 billion a year — 357 times the amount of waste in the SNAP program.Another example. On Wednesday, we reported about a long-running scam operated by Leonard Francis, a Navy contractor who, over the course of several years, defrauded the government to the tune of $35 million.</blockquote>“As of writing, Fox News has not questioned whether we should disband the Navy,” the Post wryly notes.In fact, we can be 100 percent certain that the network would attack any messenger who suggests American military spending should be cut, though the U.S. spends more on its armed forces than the <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/13/barack-obama/obama-us-spends-more-military-next-8-nations-combi/" style="text-decoration: none;">next eight</a> nations combined. Yet Fox has no problem suggesting, based on flimsy evidence and illogical reasoning, that we should let millions of American adults and children go hungry. If the election of Trump wasn’t enough proof of the right’s complete and utter lack of morals, there’s new evidence emerging all the time.<div wibbitz="embed-main-player" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="bio-new body_story" style="width: 630px; line-height: 22px; height: auto; border-top: 3px solid rgb(223, 223, 218); clear: both; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="author-bio">Kali Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.<a href="http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/fox-news-caught-using-out-and-out-lie-push-end-food-stamps">http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/fox-news-caught-using-out-and-out-lie-push-end-food-stamps</a>
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<a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2016/12/2/veterans_helped_trump_win_but_critics">https://www.democracynow.org/2016/12/2/veterans_helped_trump_win_but_critics</a>

univ of phoenix

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<div style="">pivot to asia china</div>

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<div style=""><a href="http://www.alternet.org/economy/defense-department-ruining-america-big-budgets-militarization-and-real-story-behind-our-asia">http://www.alternet.org/economy/defense-department-ruining-america-big-budgets-militarization-and-real-story-behind-our-asia</a></div>

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