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I'm not getting where you think that terrorism is rare in the US. Are you one of these people who ignores terrorism when it's not being done by brown people?

https://www.theatlantic.com/id...
https://www.csis.org/analysis/...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/1...

Have you already forgotten about the massacres at the Orlando Yoga studio, the Tree of Life synagogue, Cesar Altieri Sayoc, Jr's attempts to bomb 13 Democratic politicians and CNN, Gregory Bush's murder at a Kroger grocery store of two black men following a failed attempt to shoot up a church, the murder of MeShon Cooper, the terrorist threats against the Jamaat ul Muttaqeen mosque in Pembroke Pines, Florida, the Waffle House restaurant killings, the Parkland shootings, and the murder of Blaze Bernstein (killed by a self-described Nazi because he was gay and Jewish)?

Because those were all LAST YEAR. I didn't even mention anything from this year.

You think America has "near zero" "attempted" terrorism in the US? Really?

The U.S. is more dependent on space than any other nation. Yet, the threat to the U.S. and its allies in and from space does not command the attention it merits from the departments and agencies of the U.S. Government charged with national security responsibilities. Consequently, evaluation of the threat to U.S. space capabilities currently lacks priority in the competition for collection and analytic resources. Failure to develop credible threat analyses could have serious consequences for the United States. It could leave the U.S. vulnerable to surprises in space and could result in deferred decisions on developing space-based capabilities due to the lack of a validated, well-understood threat.....The ability to restrict or deny freedom of access to and operations in space is no longer limited to global military powers. Knowledge of space systems and the means to counter them is increasingly available on the international market.

This was a clearly recognized threat 18 years ago.

A Space Corps within the Department of the Air Force may be an appropriate model in its own right or a useful way station in the evolution toward a Space Department. One model is the Army Air Force’s relationship to the Army during World War II. Existing Air Force space forces, facilities, units and personnel, and military space missions could be transferred to a Corps. A Space Corps could have authority for acquisition and operation of space systems, perhaps to include both DoD and Intelligence Community systems, while leveraging existing Air Force logistics and support functions. Alternative approaches might be modeled after the relationship of the Marine Corps to the Department of the Navy. A Space Corps would have many of the same advantages and disadvantages of a Space Department. However, unlike a Space Department, a Corps within the Air Force would not eliminate the competition for resources between air and space platforms that exists within the Air Force today. Nor would it by itself alleviate the concerns of other Services and agencies over Air Force space resource allocations.

And there is the recommendation. Form a space corps and then transition to a separate department.

You can have that by promoting everyone currently involved in mil space infrastructure, and having the person at the top start reporting directly to the commander-in-KFC.

I can tell you've never been in the military or worked as a civilian contractor even. It doesn't work that way and your pointless and lame joke shows you are just another moron who can't see past Trump. Orange Man Bad! Amirite?

Easily done by congress declaring how the money shall be spent. Also easily undone by congress declaring how the money shall be spent. So no, there's no guarantees there.

Once again you show your ignorance. Congress already does that. What, do you think the military budget is a blank check? Of course not, its all earmarked. And the generals find ways to spend it on what they want anyways. I recommend you read Pentagon Wars, its a good account of how it works in the real world. It was made into a hilarious movie too but I'd re

China is still in the development phase. Far from everyone has been brought up to a first world standard of living there, in fact the majority have not.

According to the World Bank, China has over 420 million middle-class citizens, and that's based on purchasing-power parity. They have a larger middle class than the entire population of the US and Canada combined.

I don't know when was the last time you were in China (I'm heading back for the 6th time this year - I spend 4-5 months total year in China), but the bigger cities are quite "first world" when you compare them to many places around the EU and the US. Yes, they still have hundreds of millions of poor, but China as a whole is high-2nd-world if anything, a lot better off than most of the rest of the BRIC nations and the 3rd world.

Spin this as him being smart all you want, but in reality it's him throwing away the best chance at peace on the Korean peninsula in history because his ego is so big that he couldn't deal with the North Koreans legitimately pointing out that telling them Kim Jong Un would end up dead like Gaddaffi isn't a smart move.

Bolton and Pence did that on purpose. Back in 2011 the DPRK explicitly told Robert King, the US Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights, “No, will not follow the example of Libya.” Bolton and Pence wanted to kill any chance of deal so the said the one thing knew would really piss off the DPRK. Even then the DPRK didn't pull out so Donny with the Bad Hair was left with complaining that his own kitchen was too hot.

Can you point to any sound debunking?

The book lays out the strategy Putin has in fact been following, and the general view of the world is what the state-controlled Russian media is pushing every day.

Putin's foreign minister published an article based on the same general views.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/...

And tell me, what do you think of Putin? You think he is a great leader?

"Would be nice if it crashed in downtown Beijing."

No. Hopefully in the middle of the ocean, someplace like Fiery Cross Reef.

If you track its orbit, it does not cross Beijing ( or Washington DC ). The only US states it crosses is the southern parts from Californian to Texas. Aside from crossing parts of North and South America, its orbit is mostly over water.

"Would be nice if it crashed in downtown Beijing."

No. Hopefully in the middle of the ocean, someplace like Fiery Cross Reef.

In the 1950s, brave American scientists shunned by the climate establishment of the day discovered that the Earth was warming as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, leading to potentially devastating natural disasters that could destroy American agriculture and flood American cities. As a result, the country mobilized against the threat. Strong government action by the Bush administration outlawed the worst of these gases, and brilliant entrepreneurs were able to discover and manufacture new cleaner energy sources. As a result of these brave decisions, our emissions stabilized and are currently declining.

Unfortunately, even as we do our part, the authoritarian governments of Russia and China continue to industralize and militarize rapidly as part of their bid to challenge American supremacy. As a result, Communist China is now by far the world’s largest greenhouse gas producer, with the Russians close behind. Many analysts believe Putin secretly welcomes global warming as a way to gain access to frozen Siberian resources and weaken the more temperate United States at the same time. These countries blow off huge disgusting globs of toxic gas, which effortlessly cross American borders and disrupt the climate of the United States. Although we have asked them to stop several times, they refuse, perhaps egged on by major oil producers like Iran and Venezuela who have the most to gain by keeping the world dependent on the fossil fuels they produce and sell to prop up their dictatorships.

We need to take immediate action. While we cannot rule out the threat of military force, we should start by using our diplomatic muscle to push for firm action at top-level summits like the Kyoto Protocol. Second, we should fight back against the liberals who are trying to hold up this important work, from big government bureaucrats trying to regulate clean energy to celebrities accusing people who believe in global warming of being ‘racist’. Third, we need to continue working with American industries to set an example for the world by decreasing our own emissions in order to protect ourselves and our allies. Finally, we need to punish people and institutions who, instead of cleaning up their own carbon, try to parasitize off the rest of us and expect the federal government to do it for them.

Please join our brave men and women in uniform in pushing for an end to climate change now.

-- Five Case Studies on Politicization

AFAIK, the U.S. only had enough material for the 2 bombs (after testing), which of course was not made public.

Uh, not true. They were pumping out new bombs on a production line, and the third bomb would have been ready to go soon after the second was dropped; Truman vetoed any further use. If I remember correctly, they were up to about one bomb a month by that point, and accelerating.

Correct, but the U.S. had used up it's inventory...

" Charles Sweeney published his memoirs as War's End: An Eyewitness Account of America's Last Atomic Mission (Avon, 1997). During the party following the successful Hiroshima drop, he recalled that Paul Tibbets took him aside and told him that he was to command the second atomic mission, with Kokura as the primary and Nagasaki as the secondary target. Timing was important, Tibbets said: "It was vital that [the Japanese] believed we had an unlimited supply of atomic bombs and that we would continue to use them. Of course, the truth was that we only had one more bomb on Tinian. Delivery of the third bomb was several weeks away.""

http://www.warbirdforum.com/third.htm

http://csis.org/blog/understanding-decision-drop-bomb-hiroshima-and-nagasaki

There is magnitudes more money on the other side.

Do the math. Wikipedia claims half a trillion in fossil fuel subsidies versus almost 90 billion just in renewable energy subsidies in 2011. That's not an order of magnitude, much less several orders. And I mentioned a number of other big business sectors than just renewable energy.

Most of the fossil fuel subsidies are provided by oil producer nations such as OPEC memberes and Russia. Not everyone can get the subsidies and rent seeking opportunities that state-owned Gazprom or Saudi Aramco have. For example, at least 40 billion was due to Saudi Arabia alone (it's domestic oil consumption subsidy (which incidentally is significant enough to impair production!) and subsidies for oil-based electricity and water desalinization). I see that Gazprom had around $5 billion per year just in subsidies to former Soviet republic members. Venezuela has similar consumption subsidies kicking in about $4 billion a year currently.

In comparison, those renewable energy and other subsidies are ripe for the taking and not previously claimed by a state actor. And there's no reason a business can't claim both fossil fuel subsidies and climate change-related subsidies. It's not that hard.

I was the AC. You are an asshole[7], going by your remark.[5] It looks like you couldn't even read past the first paragraph before you started your reply.

The President IS in charge and he can order the US Military anywhere at anytime.[1] There is no question about it. The US Army would just groan and rollout. '"Pulling out" of a war isn't like pulling out of the fat girl in your class after you prematurely....' Is your argument that it takes years for the US Military to leave? That cannot be true. Think about how much time it took to invade in the first place.[2] How long does it take to deploy thousands of troops and their support? Just days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_deployment_force and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Grenada_(1983) [4] However most of the deployed units were not RDF, their timelines are measured in weeks, especially non-coastal units who need to move equipment via rail/HET. Extreme speed requires air and that has a very limited capacity. Ships are slower but we're talking about the ability to move thousands of tanks, not just hundreds.

(Warning, large PDF) http://csis.org/files/publication/090812_Cordesman_WithdrawalIraq_Web.pdf TL;DR the US is taking a very long time to leave in order to support Iraq. Against Iraq's wishes. [3]

Here's a good reference for how much US Military are deployed and where: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_deployments

Also, your ability to write a program to argue with me is in serious doubt.[6] I don't want to forget anything from that pyramid. [1] being top and [7] being bottom, btw.

Have a nice weekend : ) Honestly man, you did come off as an ass.

That's really great rhetoric. Did you know that the United States gets 1/3 of its crude oil imports from Canada?

Your point? We also get quite a bit from Mexico. I have to ask: are you Canadian? It always seems that the Canucks bring up this factoid to pump their ego. Yes, I already knew that we get a shit ton of oil (and resources) from Canada.

That's more than it gets from any other nation -- Saudi Arabia included. Are they killing themselves in Canada over petty differences?

Honest question, do the Canadians give us "special pricing", or do they sell at market rates? A disruption in the Middle East still affects the U.S.

By the way, could you tell me what's so unstable about Saudi Arabia? George W. Bush seemed to think they were okay.

Are you serious?

"The correct response is to say that there are indicators we cannot safely ignore that poor cybersecurity and weak responses to economic espionage have created an opportunity for significant intelligence breaches that we would be well advised to remedy." From: http://csis.org/publication/does-chinas-new-j-20-stealth-fighter-have-american-technology

Statistical analysis shows that the amount of terrorist incidents is actually quite small, but the governments around the world like to exaggerate how many there actually are, to deprive decent hard working people of their freedom and democracy, and pee a lot of money up a wall in the process.

Your sig is, "Take Nobody's Word For It." Very fitting. You don't know what you are talking about.

The list of terrorist attacks in just 2008 isn't short, and doesn't include the many arrests and foiled plots. Wikipedia notes that it is incomplete.

Remember Mumbai? 166 killed, and 370 or so wounded? Al Qaeda would like to do the same in Europe. Why hasn't it happened? Active security measures and intelligence.

Remember 9/11? Why hasn't that occurred? Al Qaeda hasn't lost interest in using aircraft to attack buildings or stadiums. Active security measures and intelligence.

Without proper measures, Iraq's recent history of terrorism could be our future.

Civil Rights Theater seems to be at least as popular as Security Theater.

I remember after the cold war there was actually serious talk about reducing the military budget from utterly ludicrous to just slightly ludicrous. That is until we found a new boogieman and started the "war on terror".

US defense spending was 6.1% of GDP in 1985, in 2000 it was 3% GDP (currently ~ 4.7%). The Army went from 18 Divisions to 10, and there were similar cutbacks in the other services. (Western Military Balance and Defense Efforts Deep cuts actually happened, you may have heard of the "Peace Dividend". Unfortunately the cuts were so deep we are now short of manpower, and its a significant burden on our military.

So, "we" started the "War on terror"? Really? Bin Laden's declaration of war, the attacks on the Cole, our two African embassies, 9/11, they didn't have anything to do with it?

Now that we're fighting an abstract concept instead of an actual definable (and beatable) enemy,

So, you can't actually figure out who we are fighting? I take it you would have had the same problem about 70 years ago after Pearl Harbor (9/11), declarations of war against us from Germany and Italy (fatwas?), when that was referred to as the war against fascism (terror)?

Wow.

. . . our military-industrial complex can continue to grow without limit forever.

That is a great trick. We should capture that magic and apply it to our social welfare programs and solve all of our budget woes. That would seem a pretty urgent issue since social welfare spending is several times larger than the total of military spending and will be bankrupting us in a few decades if some major changes aren't made soon. (Social Security alone wasn't supposed to be in the red for another 5 years or so, and it already is now. The good news is that we have all those IOUs to pay them with.)

the vast majority of the money can simply be tossed into a giant hole called "classified operations" and we don't even have to bother with all that tedious itemized budgeting we had to do with the traditional military.

The fact that you can't inspect the line itemized classified budgets doesn't mean that they don't exist. (Do we need to develop an ontological argument for the existence of classified budgets? Will be soon be arguing about invisible budgets to provide for invisible pasta creatures?)

On the other hand, at least with the old military-industrial complex we got some cool hardware that we got to see at air shows and parades.

Sort of like the Predator / Reaper and other drones? Well, most of the improvements are probably things like better analytical software, pattern matching, facial recognition, and a lot of other stuff you can't see. Still, it is probably a good thing we have them even if we can't see them. (Sort of like classified budgets?)

But hey, at least we're all safer now, right?

I would say so. It is certainly a good thing that Al Qaeda no longer effectively has sovereignty over a nation, where it can openly run training camps to turn out thousands and thousands of trained terrorists per year. Unfortunately we are going to be dealing with this problem for another 10-50 years. That is, unless someone can get the whole "cover your eyes and pretend it isn't happening" thing to work out better than the beheading or bombing it typically ends in.

I'm not questioning the amount of money you have quoted here, as the number feels correct too. It just seems like NASA is incredibly wasteful of the money they have, and that it practically is the very definition of how to spend money in the most foolhardy method possible.

Ack, this is really embarrassing on my part, but it looks like the "$4.5 billion a year" figure is inaccurate. I had it from this source, which was one of the first items to pop up in my Google search: "In the years after the Shuttle retires, the annual operation costs of the ISS will be $4.5 billion per year.1"

The footnote says that the figure came from one of these two GAO sources:

* NASA: Challenges in Completing and Sustaining the International Space Station

* Space Station: Actions Under Way to Manage Cost, but Significant Challenges Remain

However, after reading your comment I've searched through the text of both GAO sources and I can't find anything to support the first source's claim. I did find the following through from the first GAO report: "NASA estimates that assembly and operating costs of the ISS will be between $2.1 billion to $2.4 billion annually for FY2009-FY2012. The ISS as of February 19, 2008, is approximately 65 percent complete."

I ended up looking through the final report of the White House/NASA Augustine Commission (published late 2009) and found this in section 6.4.2:

The choice of ending U.S. participation in the ISS in 2015 really provides only one benefit, that of freeing up the roughly $2.5 to $3 billion per year needed to
run the ISS, which can then be invested in the more rapid development of the exploration systems. The Committee's Integrated Option analyses show that if coupled to the choice of commercial crew launch system to low-Earth orbit and the Ares V Lite heavy lift choice, this expenditure on the ISS would delay the exploration of the Moon until the mid-2020s, only a few years after the most aggressive, unconstrained profile would accomplish it.

In any case, $2.5-$3 billion a year is still a huge chunk of change. I totally agree with your original sentiment.

Here is a quote from the article:

David Maynor, CTO with Errata Security, says '09 could be the year when the first large-scale and widespread attack occurs on the Internet's infrastructure. "I think with the [hacking] work being done on Cisco and routing gear in general we'll see the first wide-scale 'e-bomb' that will break peering between ISPs and make large portions of the Internet unreachable," Maynor says.

Obama's IT security plan (seen here: http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/081208_securingcyberspace_44.pdf) also spends several pages talking about a worldwide attack against BGP, or perhaps against something inherent in Cisco or Juniper gear that is attackable.

Other than the attack earlier this year where Pakistan accidently blackholed Youtube worldwide when they injected bogus routes and PCCI stupidly forwarded them on, what exactly do they think can be done? In case they don't know, BGP peers are usually in access lists. And ACLs are fast or ASIC switched, so they are extremely resistant to DDOS attacks (i.e. sending a bunch of packets against a router interface violating an ACL isn't going to do much to a big router), and the rest of BGP is pretty strong based on the trust relationships. I have more confidence in the operators on Nanog fixing any storm than I do sysadmins worldwide.

If they think BGPv5 with PKI is the answer, they have another thing coming. Did you see the root CA spoof this week? Trust via ACLs is monitored and refined with peers and operators, trust via a certificate? A mess waiting to happen.

It sounds to me like David Maynor is just looking to short some Cisco and Juniper stock, and doesn't know anything about how the internet actually works.

His responses to my questions are not encouraging at all....let's start at the top:

There is one specific area that the government can establish some credibility with the private sector: become the gold standard for network security.

I've seen government security from the inside...since there are no actual consequences for failure, there is very little incentive to succeed. You will never manage this.

Next, and the most discouraging:

the Commission did not recommend that the government issue strong credentials to individuals.

Yes, yes you did. Quoting from page 14, point 17 of the pdf at http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/081208_securingcyberspace_44.pdf :

The United States should allow consumers to use strong government-issued credentials (or commercially issued credentials based on them) for online activities, consistent with protecting privacy and civil liberties.

If that isn't what you meant, you shouldn't have written it that way.

Hate to say it, but sending food grown in the US (subsidised by US taxpayers) and shipped from the US (on US flagged vessels at great cost) is just about the stupidest thing you can do. It turns most US food aid into a huge subsidy for US farmers and dumps excess production or unsaleable grain on local populations who may not normally even eat those grains. Additionally, as the parent says, it destroys local production. So send money instead! (Bush, would you believe, actually got this one right.)

This is all nothing, though, compared to what the "normal" subsidies do in the first place by making it so developing countries cannot compete.

US subsidised crops and the entire European Common Agricultural Polict (CAP) are all evil things that need to be abolished. Level the playing field - stop subsidising inefficient farmers in US/EU and give producers in countries like Ghana a chance.

And if you don't think this can be done without destroying the US/EU countryside economy or way of life, it's worth reading this article on New Zealand.

Get rid of farm subsidies in the US/EU. Everyone wins.

Iraq is not as safe as, say, downtown Singapore, but it's a whole lot safer than downtown Washington D.C. or Mexico City.

This shows what a cynic you are. I don't hear of regular autobomb explosions, and jets bombing urban centers in both that cities. You are an apologist.

For the free media: There are newspapers, but most of them are organs of policy of a political force (see here, in German ).

People signing up for police and army have deserted on a lot of various occasions. A need for jobs triggered by mass poverty should not be equated to actual support.

Iraq's economy stronger? If you take away business going from US government that goes into the hands of US corporations and similar stuff, I guess that drops a lot. There are billions moved, but to no benefit of the Iraqis. How many of the rest of the economy is subsidized and not actually sustainable on its own?

The interim government is targetted because it is viewed as a US puppet regime. So every strike against the puppet regime is hoped to get "good PR", because the populace in general resents the Americans and their allies.

Oh yeah, and there is actually little or no progress in rebuilding Iraq: here, a study .

One could also say that poverty and hunger lead to social unrest

The problem is that generally, people don't blame their leader for the sanctions. After all, it was not Saddam who made it impossible for Iraqi's to trade with foreigners. 'We' decided that Saddam did bad things and effectively punished his population (Ba'ath leaders got everything they wanted through illegal imports anyway). Now, I'm not saying that I agree or support this viewpoint, but realistically looking, this is how the populace generally feels when confronted by sanctions.

However, that doesn't have to mean that sanctions always fail. There are certainly cases where they can work, but too often, they only support bad regimes. See Cuba for example.

I could never prove your theory is impossible, but the empirical facts are on my side- the only time a mass uprising occured during the 25 years of Saddam's rule was right after Gulf War I, when he had been defeated and his army was reeling. What makes you at all think Iraqis would have done this again and been more sucessful if Saddam had rebuilt his army and security apparatus, and been able to bribe the people with increased rations, benefits, etc.?

I consider it more likely that the opposition wasn't able to build itself up effectively. We know that the regime was doing plenty of illegal trading for their benefit. The opposition didn't have that luxury. They would be better off by having a decent economy, so people can afford to give money to the opposition without seeing their children starve. As for the uprising, one of the reasons why they might not have tried again is because the US let them down so badly (Bush Sr. urged for a rebellion, but didn't provide any support), resulting in a slaughter. It might have ended differently with some decent air support.

And if sanctions never work, why were sanctions against South Africa so popular among the left during the 80's?

Chomsky didn't say that sanctions never work, he was commenting on how sanctions worked out in this case. Putting words in his mouth doesn't strenghten your case.

We now know that Saddam's army and weapons program were in a decrepit condition thanks to the sanctions regime.

But he was still in power and the state of his army and weapons programs is not really relevant. The USSR and South Africa had plenty of weapons, but those regimes still fell.

Chomsky's argument is insane, but really just the product of a mind too arrogant to ever admit mistakes.

There are arguments to be made for both standpoints and I don't think we can ever know what would have happened without sanctions. But to claim a contrarian standpoint to be insane, with so little proof is utterly ridiculous.

I find it appalling that his followers, who think of themselves as so free thinking and contrarian, refuse to see this.

There are plenty of non-extreme lefties who also believe that the current US sanctions policy is wrong, including communists like Reps. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz) and Jon Christensen (R-Neb).

No, the parent said what he meant -- Ed Yourdon was one of the pundits that was most visibly going off about the Y2K issue. I was taking a course in object-oriented software development in the fall of 1999, and the course textbook -- much to everyone's amusement, including that of the professor -- was written by Ed "the digits are about to hit the fan" Yourdon. We all had a hard time taking anything the guy had to say seriously, and I understand that the textbook was changed the next time the course was offered.

On the other hand, the grandparent is right too -- Peter de Jager was also one of the prominent Y2K pundits. He was much different from Yourdon though: where Yourdon was running around like a crazed apocalyptic nihilist ready to run for the hills at the stroke of midnight, de Jager was much more level headed about the situation, with a general tone of "this is the problem as it stands, but with a little bit of hard work it can and will be fixed."

The fact that the Y2K story got sensationalized out of all proportion wasn't de Jager's fault, but it can be (partly) blamed on Yourdon.

I remember seeing a press conference at the time on C-SPAN, with de Jager, Senator Bob Bennett, and a few others. It was the Center for Strategic and International Studies' 1998 conference, The Y2K Crisis: A Global Ticking Time Bomb?. Looks like the text of the proceeeds are still available on that page, if anyone is interested.

At that conference -- which Ed Yardini spoke at as well, by the way -- de Jager gave a sober but not sensational overview of the extent of the Y2K issue, the kinds of things that could (not "would") go wrong, and what kind of effort it would take to fix the problem.

At the time of that conference, 2 June 1998, the problem did seem alarming, and a degree of concern was prudent. However, the message was heard, the problem was largely corrected with plenty of time to spare, and a year later de Jager was on the record with remarks that showed much less concern than he was expressing in 1998.

By that point, the public relations damage was done, and people like Ed Yourdon weren't making it any better. By the summer of 1999, the previous couple of years of necessary scare mongering -- some measured, some alarmist -- had had two results: thee techies understood & fixed the problem, and the public was scared senseless. But at that point, the problem was fixed but the meme was still lodged in the public consciousness -- where, apparently, it's still stuck today.

...each series of crises only becomes predictable when it is over and is followed by a new and unfamiliar one.

While uncertainty is the dominating motif, the "Buffy paradigm" has the following additional characteristics:

• What expertise there is consists largely of bad or uncertain advice and old, flawed, and confusing technical data.
• The importance of any given threat changes constantly, past threat behavior does not predict future behavior, and methods of delivery keep changing.
• Arcane knowledge is always inadequate and fails to predict, detect, and properly characterize the threat.
• The more certain and deterministic an expert is at the start, the more wrong they turn out to be in practice.
• The scenarios are unpredictable and have very unclear motivation. Any effort to predict threat motivation and behavior in detail before the event does at least as much
• Risk taking is not rationale or subject to predictable constraints and the motivation behind escalation is erratic at best.
• It is never clear whether the threat is internal, from an individual, or from an outside organisation.
• The attackers have no firm or predictable alliances, cooperate in nearly random ways, and can suddenly change method of attack and willingness to take risks.
• All efforts at planning a coherent strategy collapse in the face of tactical necessity and the need to deal with unexpected facts on the ground.
• The balance between external defense, homeland defense, and response changes constantly.
• No success, not matter how important at the time, ever eliminates the risk of future problems.

Roadmap for War on Iraq and the New American Empire brought to by:

Elliott Abrams , Gary Bauer
William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush
Dick Cheney , Eliot A. Cohen
Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky
Steve Forbes , Aaron Friedberg
Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney
Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan
Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby
Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle
Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen
Donald Rumsfeld , Vin Weber, George Weigel, Paul Wolfowitz

xyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzy

The US is in a global economy. Tiny turbulations around the world can change domestic prices. For two very simple reasons: 1) Oil moves around the world. If Europe is paying $50 a barrel, then Texas is going to export oil to Europe, not sell it domestically for $25; 2) A tiny change in supply can cause a huge change in prices. Industries and economies are locked into rates of consumption that cannot be changed easily. They simply have to have the oil and will therefore start bidding wars for it. Knocking out 5% of US imports would screw the economy.

For more info: CSIS report on US Use of Energy and Energy Imports

War will raise prices.

I got the 3.8% number from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) document "Western Military Balance and Defense Efforts" Here it is as a PDF form. I was only looking at their latest numbers which were for the year 2000.

I'm sure like all such worldwide statistics it is easy to manipulate. I'm not exactly sure what biases CSIS has, they claim to be bipartisan and their congressional Advisory board is made up of congressmen from both parties and both conservative and liberal. (I thought there might be a slight liberal tilt since many of the republicans are "gypsy moth republicans" but there are a few western and southern conservatives too). I'd imagine that the Stolkohlm Peace Research Institute has it's own axe to grind too.

I'm perfectly willing to assume that the US is spending somewhat above the worldwide average, frankly I was suprised that the CSIS numbers showed the opposite. I had assumed that it would be higher since we have a significant military presence worldwide that most other nations don't. Not only that but some of the nations where we have a military presense we are effectively subsidizing the host nations defense budget. They don't need to spend as much of their own money to effectively defend themselves as they would have to if we were not present. For instance South Korea would probably have to spend much more on defense to effectively deter North Korea if it weren't for our troops on the border. I suppose this may be cancelled out by North Korea (and other nations in a similar postition) feeling the need to increase their defense spending, but N. Korea is spending more than it can afford as it is and It's likely that they would have to max out their spending whether we were there or not. To some degree we are in a Pax Americana and should the USA decrease it's spending it is likely that at least some of our allies that previously had lower spending would have to increase their spending to offset the loss of American troops & influence.

In any event if the USA is spending more on the military than the rest of the world (as a percentage of GDP) it is not spending very much from a historical perspective. It's overwhelming military superiority is not primarily a result of that higher percentage being spent but is a result of how much bigger a GDP that percentage is being drawn from.

Check out this CSIS report

Then Read this interview with Tom Cruise, sorta.

tcd004

Okay, help me out: What POSSIBLE profit could be taken by keeping Afghanistan/Rwanda/Honduras/etc. poor? If any of those places have any real oil or other resources, they're sure keeping it hidden pretty well.

Afghanistan has, AFAIK, no resources, but they pipeline a lot of gas and oil over their land.

"U.S. interest in Afghanistan is stability with at least minimally competent government." (ref) Here, competent government means a government that can't inspire the Gulf countries to oppose U.S.A. or cut off their oil supply.

Honduras and Rwanda don't have any resources either. You don't profit from keeping them poor, you avoid loosing, just as in the case of Afghanistan, Iraq, Nicaragua etc.

Your analogy is one of the worst I have ever seen. There are more holes in it than I wish to address, but I will point out a few:

* A single person commiting an act of unprovoked violence is not comparable to a complex political situation that sometimes involves violence.

* The US is the puncher, not the receiver of the punch. Our cold war and oil interests cause us to meddle in the affairs of almost every country in the middle east. We aided Osama Bin Laden and put the Taliban into power. They used to be called "freedom fighters" in the past. Our sanctions in Iraq have caused the deaths of over 500,000 CHILDREN. We sponsored and trained terrorists in Nicaragua that resulted in over 30,000 civilian deaths. The list goes on. Now who is the aggressor here?

* A true pacifist is willing to die before hitting back. If someone thinks violence is evil, how can you combat evil with violence?

* And why would anyone take advice and learn lessons from an asshole who punches peaceful people in the face?

Turn your radio dial away from Rush Limbaugh and start finding out the true story, instead of knee-jerking off.

What plane was that? Or are you just exaggerating and pulling numbers out of the air? If you are referring to the B-2 bomber, the costs are much less than that as is shown by this document. Also, the per plane cost includes all costs associated with the program. R&D, base construction, training, spare parts, etc. It does not cost the Air Force $2 billion to build a new B-2. In fact, several years ago I ran across an article in the Federal Computer News that in actual raw materials, fabrication, labor, & other production costs, a B-2 is only about 10-20% more expensive to build than a B1-B. However, since we spent nearly $30 billion in R&D before a plane ever rolled off the assembly line and that they need special hangers/bunkers and can't just sit outside in like the B1-Bs or B-52s do, the per unit cost of the program is very high. In fact, the fewer we build, the price per plane goes up!

As far as why do politicians vote for things that some of the military branches don't want, it can all be boiled down to jobs. If a defense contractor is in a congressman's district, he will likely vote for it.

You are also wrong that we are spending to much on defense. It's one of the few items that the Constitution explicitly grants funding for and it amounts to only about 16% of the Federal Budget and 3% of the GDP. The only time we spent less on the military in the last century was during the Great Depression and the pre-WWI isolationism period. Just a few highlights from here and here

• Procurement is funded at $40 billion/year when it should be at $65-70 billion.
• US forces and spending has been cut 40% since the end of the Cold War. The much smaller force is constantly being deployed overseas, making it harder for recruitment and retention.
• Military pay as fallen 13% compared to civilian pay. Most of the military's budget is spent on people and it's not uncommon for military families to be on public assistance.
• Special deployments like Bosnia, Iraq, Haiti, etc. aren't budgeted for and are taken out of the readiness and training budgets. Replacements for weapons expended during those deployements have not been budgeted either.
• Readiness and maintenance is only funded at 60-70% of what it should be.

IMHO, we spend far too much money on useless activities such as high school, college, and professional sports. Municipalities seem to have no problem coming up with the tax dollars for a sports facility for the benefit of a private corporation, but balk at improving educational facilities. Intramural sports and/or physical education classes to insure that the entire student body gets some form of exercise is fine. Spending a ton of money on facilities, coaches, equipment, etc. so a few individuals can play a game while also letting their education slide is a hideous waste [even given minimum grade requirements, we all _know_ this still happens]. It seems are priorities are on entertainment and entitlements rather than strategic things like education, infrastructure, and defense.

Fucked up priorities.

What plane was that? Or are you just exaggerating and pulling numbers out of the air? If you are referring to the B-2 bomber, the costs are much less than that as is shown by this document. Also, the per plane cost includes all costs associated with the program. R&D, base construction, training, spare parts, etc. It does not cost the Air Force $2 billion to build a new B-2. In fact, several years ago I ran across an article in the Federal Computer News that in actual raw materials, fabrication, labor, & other production costs, a B-2 is only about 10-20% more expensive to build than a B1-B. However, since we spent nearly $30 billion in R&D before a plane ever rolled off the assembly line and that they need special hangers/bunkers and can't just sit outside in like the B1-Bs or B-52s do, the per unit cost of the program is very high. In fact, the fewer we build, the price per plane goes up!

As far as why do politicians vote for things that some of the military branches don't want, it can all be boiled down to jobs. If a defense contractor is in a congressman's district, he will likely vote for it.

You are also wrong that we are spending to much on defense. It's one of the few items that the Constitution explicitly grants funding for and it amounts to only about 16% of the Federal Budget and 3% of the GDP. The only time we spent less on the military in the last century was during the Great Depression and the pre-WWI isolationism period. Just a few highlights from here and here

• Procurement is funded at $40 billion/year when it should be at $65-70 billion.
• US forces and spending has been cut 40% since the end of the Cold War. The much smaller force is constantly being deployed overseas, making it harder for recruitment and retention.
• Military pay as fallen 13% compared to civilian pay. Most of the military's budget is spent on people and it's not uncommon for military families to be on public assistance.
• Special deployments like Bosnia, Iraq, Haiti, etc. aren't budgeted for and are taken out of the readiness and training budgets. Replacements for weapons expended during those deployements have not been budgeted either.
• Readiness and maintenance is only funded at 60-70% of what it should be.

IMHO, we spend far too much money on useless activities such as high school, college, and professional sports. Municipalities seem to have no problem coming up with the tax dollars for a sports facility for the benefit of a private corporation, but balk at improving educational facilities. Intramural sports and/or physical education classes to insure that the entire student body gets some form of exercise is fine. Spending a ton of money on facilities, coaches, equipment, etc. so a few individuals can play a game while also letting their education slide is a hideous waste [even given minimum grade requirements, we all _know_ this still happens]. It seems are priorities are on entertainment and entitlements rather than strategic things like education, infrastructure, and defense.

Fucked up priorities.

The Microsoft angle is only one part of the report, which also discusses open-source, mobile computing, distributed computing, and nanotechnology. The specific areas of concern are predictably:
1. threat of disruption of communication
2. threat of exploitation of information
3. threat of manipulation of information
4. threat of destruction of information or infrastructure