Month: July 2013

Not more than a year ago Lockheed Martin’s Bob Stevens was all but pulling at his hair and gnashing his teeth in anticipation of sequestration. Clearly doing the Republican warhawks’ bidding ahead of the presidential election, he warned that Lockheed may not be able to support U.S forces in the field and that working families might be devastated by layoffs — 123,000 in fact — if congress didn’t do something to stave off the $459 billion in prospective budget cuts over the next decade.

Stevens, who took home more than $23 million in compensation in 2011, wasn’t the only defense contractor CEO to play chicken little last year, but he was one of the most melodramatic, threatening to issue 123,000 layoff notices before the major contractor even scheduled any. He also joined an immense lobbying effort that peddled the hyper-narrative (based in part on this industry-generated report)  that sequestration would shave  1% off the U.S. gross domestic product, raise the unemployment rate by 0.7%, and kill 1 million jobs.

Well we knew the layoff notices were a kabuki dance from the beginning, and that was confirmed when Stevens’ abruptly withdrew the threat just before the election. We also got an inkling that things couldn’t be so bad when it was reported in April that CEOs from all these major contractors were getting raises, including Stevens, whose compensation went up to $27.5 million in 2012.

Now, according to The Washington Post this morning, we’ve learned that these defense contractors have been “weathering the federal budget sequester far more easily than they projected, in part because they have gradually eliminated jobs over the past few years in anticipation of spending cuts.”

That’s right, while they tried to keep our attention on the falling sky, these cry babies had been trimming budgets for years (plenty of people were reporting this, by the way) to whether the storm. The bloviation and bluster was all a political show. In fact, good old Lockheed reported $859 million in profit in the second quarter of 2013, a 10 percent increase year-over-year.  It also reported $1.6 billion in profit for the last six months ending in June, up 12 percent over the year before. In addition:

Lockheed Martin had predicted that sequestration would wipe out $825 million in revenue this year, but it no longer expects such a big hit. In fact, the company said, profit will be higher than initially projected.

Of course, none of the contracts that were already set before sequestration were affected, a small fact that also got lost amid the roar of lamentations inside the Beltway last summer and fall. So far, no major programs have been eliminated or big cuts exacted where it could really count. All that is still being deliberated with much hand wringing and more political theater. But for right now, the only ones who seem to be really suffering are the 650,000 civilian defense workers slapped with 11 days of unpaid leave, resulting in a 20 percent cut in their paychecks from now until September or maybe longer.

That includes people like LaWanda White, a DoD employee and single mom, who says she is struggling to keep up with her bills and had to seek help through the Federal Employee Education & Assistance Fund to pay the rent. Maybe she is in a better place than say, the Lockheed workers who had been laid off over the last five years, but she is infinitely worse off than CEO Bob Stevens and his multimillion dollar pay package.

Interestingly, The Washington Post story noted that while being at a standstill, the Beltway defense contractor job market is holding relatively steady.

“..the region and the industry are not experiencing anything close to the economic cataclysm that defense lobbyists warned about,” the paper said.

Yeah, the real pain may be “trickling down” as analysts note, but let’s face it, “trickling up” might be a better phrase right now. Basically, the whole thing just exposes the industry for what it is: a bunch of crybabies who turn blue to get what they want, and then play “baby alright now” when no longer politically necessary or when soothed and coddled by their nanny benefactors.

Yuck.

Earlier this week I noted with approval Rep. Justin Amash’s effort in the House to add an amendment to an upcoming defense appropriations bill that would block NSA’s “indiscriminate collection” of Americans’ telephone records by “limit[ing] the government’s collection of records under Section 215 of the Patriot Act to those records that pertain to a person who is subject to an investigation under that provision.”

Instead of abiding by the Fourth Amendment, which requires individualized warrants, “probable cause…and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,” the NSA has collected all Americans’ telephone data and stored it. The rationale given by NSA Director General Keith Alexander is that “you need the haystack to find the needle.”

Amash’s amendment would restrict this method. And it’s being voted on today.

I’m not sure of the amendment’s chances for passage, but it is real enough that Keith Alexander met in closed door emergency meetings with key members of Congress to urge them not to support it. To boot, President Obama issued a statement opposing the legislation, saying it is a “blunt approach [that] is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process.” Right, because a vote in the House of Representatives isn’t “open” and “deliberative” compared to the completely secret violation of the Constitution without the knowledge of the American people or most of Congress. Because, seriously, Obama “welcomes the debate” [that never would have happened without the leak he has condemned].

The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf writes that this vote is “a significant, potentially history-altering effort to rein in the surveillance state built in secret by the executive branch,” mainly because “America will have every Congressional representative on record either supporting or opposing the surveillance state’s collection of customer data on all phone calls,” whether or not it succeeds.

The ACLU’s Alexander Abdo says the Amash amendment would be a “vital shield form unwarranted NSA surveillance.”

Click here to see Rep. Amash’s quick fact sheet on the amendment. Click here to find out how to call your congressman and urge support of the measure.

The Obama administration is violating international law and United Nations resolutions in conducting its largely secret war in Somalia.

At Foreign Policy, Colum Lynch writes that, “the Obama administration earlier this year expanded its secret war in Somalia, stepping up assistance for federal and regional Somali intelligence agencies that are allied against the country’s Islamist insurgency” in “a move that’s not only violating the terms of an international arms embargo,” but may also be emboldening al-Shabab.

This is not exactly news. In a number of articles in 2011, The Nation‘s Jeremy Scahill uncovered Obama’s secret war, which included secret prisons run by CIA proxies, harsh interrogations, and directing funding and training of unscrupulous militants, many of whom were former (and current?) warlords. The “counter-terrorism” effort in Somalia also included “targeted strikes by U.S. Special Operations forces, drone attacks and expanded surveillance operations.

Scahill noted “U.S. policy on Somalia [since “Black Hawk Down”] has been marked by neglect, miscalculation and failed attempts to use warlords to build indigenous counterterrorism capacity, many of which have backfired dramatically.”

At times, largely because of abuses committed by Somali militias the CIA has supported, U.S. policy has strengthened the hand of the very groups it purports to oppose and inadvertently aided the rise of militant groups, including the Shabab. Many Somalis viewed the Islamic movement known as the Islamic Courts Union, which defeated the CIA’s warlords in Mogadishu in 2006, as a stabilizing, albeit ruthless, force. The ICU was dismantled in a US-backed Ethiopian invasion in 2007. Over the years, a series of weak Somali administrations have been recognized by the United States and other powers as Somalia’s legitimate government. Ironically, its current president is a former leader of the ICU.

Emphasis mine. The fact that U.S. policy in the past has demonstrably strengthened the supposed militant threat is incredibly important, especially in today’s scenario where we are repeating those same mistakes.

Al-Shabab “poses no direct threat to the security of the United States,” Malou Innocent, Foreign Policy Analyst at the Cato Institute wrote last year. “However, exaggerated claims about the specter of al Qaeda could produce policy decisions that exacerbate a localized, regional problem into a global one.”

Even the Obama administration has quietly acknowledged the fact that military involvement in Somalia may create more problems than it solves, with one administration official telling the Washington Post back in 2011 there is a “concern that a broader campaign could turn al-Shabab from a regional menace into an adversary determined to carry out attacks on U.S. soil.”

Al-Shabab was nothing until the U.S. decided to flood Somalia with drones, special operations forces, proxy warriors and CIA foot soldiers. Then al-Qaeda’s number 1, Ayman al-Zawahiri, saw the attention they were paid and decided to formally welcome them into the al-Qaeda club. A sign of weak desperation no doubt, but also a sign of getting exactly the opposite set of consequences intended.

But the reality blowback still fails to render the appropriate consideration in the halls of power in Washington. Beyond the backwards strategy in Somalia, the ongoing secret war there should – but doesn’t – bring up other questions about the ability of President Obama to wage covert wars without the consent of the people or Congress and to knowingly flout international law with impunity.

According to the nation’s top military officer, direct U.S. intervention in Syria would be extremely costly, risk mission creep, lend itself to unintended consequences, and may be ineffective.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey has written a letter spelling out all the costs and risks of various kinds of U.S. military interventions in Syria. He writes that the decision to take military action shouldn’t be taken “lightly” and that such action would be “no less than an act of war.”

• Dempsey estimates that “training, advising, and assisting the opposition” would cost “$500 million per year initially,” and perhaps more after that. The risks in this option, he says, “include extremists gaining access to additional capabilities, retaliatory crossborder attacks, and insider attacks or inadvertent association with war crimes due to vetting difficulties.”
• The option of “conducting limited stand-off strikes” would be no small task, as some have suggested. It would require American “force requirements” including “hundreds of aircraft, ships, submarines, and other enablers,” and “the costs would be in the billions.” The Assad regime may not even be too damaged in this option, Dempsey informed. “Retaliatory attacks are also possible,” he added, “and there is a probability for collateral damage impacting civilians and foreigners inside the country.”
• Establishing a no-fly zone would cost about $1 billion per month and “would require hundreds of ground and sea-based aircraft, intelligence and electronic warfare support, and enablers for refueling and communications.” “Risks include the loss of U.S. aircraft, which would require us to insert personnel recovery forces,” according to Dempsey. “It may also fail to reduce the violence or shift the momentum because the regime relies overwhelmingly on surface fires—mortars, artillery, and missiles.”
• Setting up “buffer zones” or “safe areas” would require “thousands of U.S. ground forces,” and cost over $1 billion per month. While it could keep civilians safe, it could also put them at more risk if they “become operational bases for extremists” or if the “regime surface fires into the zones.”
• And finally, gaining control over the chemical weapons sites would require setting up a no-fly zone (with its associated costs), “thousands of special operations forces and other ground forces,” and would cost “well over” $1 billion per month. “Our inability to fully control Syria’s storage and delivery systems could allow extremists to gain better access,” Dempsey added.

After all of those considerations, Dempsey makes clear that even if they all worked, weakening or toppling the regime “is not enough.” The U.S. would then be in the position of cleaning up the mess and that could mean another decade-long nation-building (and probably counter-insurgency) effort.

“We have learned from the past 10 years,” Dempsey writes, “that it is not enough to simply alter the balance of military power without careful consideration of what is necessary in order to preserve a functioning state. We must anticipate and be prepared for the unintended consequences of our action. Should the regime’s institutions collapse in the absence of a viable opposition, we could inadvertently empower extremists or unleash the very chemical weapons we seek to control.”

To close observers, though, this should be review. Dempsey and other military officials have been repeatedly issuing these warnings about the costs and (in)effectiveness of U.S. intervention in Syria for over a year now.

Here’s Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel outlining some of the big picture risks at a Senate hearing last April:

From (of all places!) National Review:

“The House is scheduled to vote on Wednesday on amendments to the FY 2014 Defense Appropriations Bill, one of which will be the LIBERT-E Act, which would prohibit the National Security Agency from collecting telephone and e-mail meta-data from American citizens who are not under investigation. Representative Justin Amash, a libertarian Republican from Michigan, introduced the amendment in an effort to curtail the agency’s controversial data-collection activities, which were disclosed earlier this year by fugitive ex-NSA-contractor Edward Snowden….

“Meanwhile, the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim reports this morning that General Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, has scheduled a meeting with several members of Congress in an effort to build opposition to the amendment.”

Amash and insurgent libertarian Republicans are threatening to sink the whole Defense Appropriations bill unless this amendment is passed — and they need your help! Call your congressional representative(s) today — the vote is on Wednesday!

Don’t know what number to call? Find out here.