Prometheus 6

Multiday attacks against CNN and Yahoo in 2000 and against Estonia in 2007 cost tens of millions of dollars. The SANS Institute projects that increasingly sophisticated botnets will be the No. 2 cyber security menace for 2008. A DDOS attack against a net-centric military could stop or delay any operation it intended. How could the U.S. military build such a system?

Carpet bombing in cyberspace
Why America needs a military botnet
BY COL. CHARLES W. WILLIAMSON III

The world has abandoned a fortress mentality in the real world, and we need to move beyond it in cyberspace. America needs a network that can project power by building an af.mil robot network (botnet) that can direct such massive amounts of traffic to target computers that they can no longer communicate and become no more useful to our adversaries than hunks of metal and plastic. America needs the ability to carpet bomb in cyberspace to create the deterrent we lack.

America faces increasingly sophisticated threats against its military and civilian cyberspace. At the same time, America has no credible deterrent, and our adversaries prove it every day by attacking everywhere. Worse, our defensive concept is fundamentally flawed, and we have not learned the simplest lessons of history.

As much as some think the information age is revolutionary, local networks and the Internet are conceptually similar to the ancient model of roads and towns: Things are produced in one place and moved to another place where they have more value. The road-and-town model works well between cooperating states, but states also compete, and when they do, they sometimes have to defend themselves from attack. In today’s Internet, network “towns” are “fortified” with firewalls, gateways, passwords, port blocking, intrusion detection devices and law enforcement. This approach uses the same strategy as the medieval castle with its walls, moat, drawbridge, guards, alarms and a sheriff. While castles worked more or less for hundreds of years, they are now abandoned as completely ineffective except against the most anemic attack.

The time for fortresses on the Internet also has passed, even though America has not recognized it. Now, the only consequence for an adversary who intrudes into or attacks our networks is to get kicked out — if we can find him and if he has not installed a hidden back door. That is not enough. America must have a powerful, flexible deterrent that can reach far outside our fortresses and strike the enemy while he is still on the move.

Especially in a capitalist economy.

Spread of Nuclear Capability Is Feared
Global Interest in Energy May Presage A New Arms Race
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 12, 2008; A01

VIENNA -- At least 40 developing countries from the Persian Gulf region to Latin America have recently approached U.N. officials here to signal interest in starting nuclear power programs, a trend that concerned proliferation experts say could provide the building blocks of nuclear arsenals in some of those nations.

At least half a dozen countries have also said in the past four years that they are specifically planning to conduct enrichment or reprocessing of nuclear fuel, a prospect that could dramatically expand the global supply of plutonium and enriched uranium, according to U.S. and international nuclear officials and arms-control experts.

The Lucrative Art of War

Congress is finally moving to shut one of the more egregious forms of Iraq war profiteering: defense contractors using offshore shell companies to avoid paying their fair share of payroll taxes. The practice is widespread and Congressional investigators have been dispatched to one of the prime tax refuges, the Cayman Islands, to seek a firsthand estimate of how much the Treasury is being shorted.

No one will be surprised to hear that one of the suspected prime offenders is KBR, the Texas-based defense contractor, formerly a part of the Halliburton conglomerate allied with Vice President Dick Cheney. According to a report in The Boston Globe, KBR, which has landed billions in Iraq contracts, has used two Cayman shell companies to avoid paying hundreds of millions in payroll, Medicare and unemployment taxes.

Despite neoconservatism's close association in the public imagination with the Bush administration, and despite McCain's image as a moderate, a look at the record makes clear that McCain, not Bush, is the real neocon in the Republican Party. McCain was the neocons' candidate in 2000, McCain adhered to a truer version of the faith during the early years of hubris that followed September 11, and as president McCain would likely pursue policies that will make what we've seen from Bush look like a pale imitation of the real thing. McCain, after all, is the candidate of perpetual war in Iraq. The candidate who, despite his protestations in a March speech that he "hates war," not only stridently backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq but has spent years calling on the United States to depose every dictator in the world. He's the candidate of ratcheting-up action against North Korea and Iran, of new efforts to undermine the United Nations, and of new cold wars with Russia and China. Rather than hating war, he sees it as integral to the greatness of the nation, and military service as the highest calling imaginable. It is, in short, not Bush but McCain, who among practical politicians holds truest to the vision of a foreign policy dominated by militaristic unilateralism.

Mullen Cites U.S. 'Vulnerability'
Transition to New President in Wartime Concerns the Military
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 1, 2008; A04

The nation's top military officer warned yesterday that the transition to a new American president will mark a "time of vulnerability" as the United States fights two wars, and he said military leaders are already actively preparing for the changing of the guard.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, said the U.S. political transition will be "extraordinarily challenging," particularly as the military is engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan and faces interference in both countries from Iran.

"Iran is not going away," Mullen said. "We need to be strong and really in the deterrent mode, to not be very predictable" regarding Iran, he said in a meeting with editors and reporters at The Washington Post.

While Clinton has hammered Obama for supporting military strikes in Pakistan, her comments on Iran are much more far-reaching. She seems not to realize that she undermined Iranian reformists and pragmatists. The Iranian people have been more favorable to America than any other in the Gulf region or the Middle East.

A presidential candidate who lightly commits to obliterating Iran - and, presumably, all the children, parents, and grandparents in Iran - should not be answering the White House phone at any time of day or night.

Hillary Strangelove
April 27, 2008

AMERICANS have learned to take with a grain of salt much of the rhetoric in a campaign like the current Democratic donnybrook between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Still, there are some red lines that should never be crossed. Clinton did so Tuesday morning, the day of the Pennsylvania primary, when she told ABC's "Good Morning America" that, if she were president, she would "totally obliterate" Iran if Iran attacked Israel.

This foolish and dangerous threat was muted in domestic media coverage. But it reverberated in headlines around the world.

On the other hand

The hosts of the Beijing Olympics should bring home the freighter and its unwanted cargo and reflect on whether China intends to become a compassionate global citizen or the very type of capitalist predator it fought a revolution to defeat.

...any American chastising any other nation about becoming a capitalist preditor ought to be ashamed of his hypocrisy.

Stopping the weapons flow
Three African nations bar the 'Ship of Shame' from delivering its deadly cargo to Zimbabwe.
April 24, 2008

It's a rare moment when three African nations, in an effort to forestallviolence, block a shipment of weapons to a neighboring country in political turmoil. It's perhaps even a historic development when those weapons were sold by a great power and were bound for a government that is not under United Nations sanctions and has every legal right to buy arms -- though no moral right to do so. So let us praise the courageous peoples of South Africa, Mozambique and Zambia for refusing to allow the Chinese freighter An Yue Jiang to unload its deadly cargo: 77 tons of rockets, mortars and ammunition, manufactured by a Chinese state-owned enterprise, purchased by the government of Zimbabwe and virtually certain to be used by President Robert Mugabe to repress his opposition following an election that he may have lost.

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Oops. That was Hillary.

I keep getting those two mixed up...

Meet John 'Dubya' McCain
If you like George Bush's foreign policy, you'll love the GOP's current candidate.
By J. Peter Scoblic
April 23, 2008

John McCain knows a lot less about foreign policy than he'd have us believe. This, anyway, is the impression that's been growing in recent weeks, not least because of a much-discussed New York Times story published recently that painted a growing divide in his campaign between "pragmatists" and "neoconservatives." The candidate reportedly lacks firm ideological convictions, so a battle for "McCain's soul" may be in the offing.

Military Waivers for Ex-Convicts Increase
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 22, 2008; A01

The Army admitted about one-fourth more recruits last year with a record of legal problems ranging from felony convictions and serious misdemeanors to drug crimes and traffic offenses, as pressure to increase the size of U.S. ground forces led the military to grant more waivers for criminal conduct, according to new data released yesterday.

Such "conduct waivers" for Army recruits rose from 8,129 in fiscal 2006 to 10,258 in fiscal 2007. For Marine Corps recruits, they increased from 16,969 to 17,413.

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley....

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

Behind Military Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand
By DAVID BARSTOW

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

For McCain, the growing pressure is not the kind of attention he has been seeking. His status as a Vietnam War hero has helped broaden his appeal with independents and some Democrats. His campaign takes as a given his support among veterans.

But on Monday, the group VoteVets.org, backed by the political action committee of retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark and the liberal documentary film production company Brave New Films, delivered petitions with nearly 30,000 signatures to McCain's Senate office, imploring him to back Webb's updated GI bill....

"We are working on proposals of our own. I'm a consistent supporter of educational benefits for the men and women in the military," McCain said. "I want to make sure that we have incentives for people to remain in the military as well as for people to join the military."...

...it is not the price tag that gives Defense Department officials pause. It is the fear that a generous education benefit would persuade soldiers and Marines ending their tours to pursue an education rather than reenlist in the overstretched military.

McCain Seen as Key to Troop-Benefit Bills
As a Veteran, Candidate and Senator, He Faces Pressure From All Sides
By Jonathan Weisman and Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, April 17, 2008; A06

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is basing his bid for the White House on his credentials as a decorated veteran and leader on defense policy, has become the target of veterans groups pushing hard for more aid and relief for troops returning from conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At issue is a growing slate of legislation to boost veterans' education assistance and to rest troops between combat assignments. Two of the bills were written by Sens. James Webb (D-Va.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), both fellow Vietnam veterans, and are expected to see votes in Congress soon. Those bills would substantially boost college assistance for returning war veterans to cover fully tuition at a state university, while mandating that troops spend a month out of the combat zone for every month in it.

Batiste testified that he was merely trying to con the informant out of $50,000 that was to be used to finance the "plot." Further, the government was not able to prove that the group had any weapons, ammunition or explosives on them at the time of their arrest in June 2006.

2nd Mistrial in 'Liberty City 7' Case
By Julienne Gage
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 17, 2008; A02

MIAMI, April 16 -- A federal judge in Miami declared a second mistrial Wednesday in the case of six men accused of plotting to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower, and attack other targets, when a second jury failed to reach a verdict on the charges.

The decision is a setback for the Bush administration, which had touted the case as an example of the government's ability to prevent terrorist attacks but has failed to win convictions in two attempts.

And there goes any moral standing the USofA could even pretend to have.  

U.S. Army Set to Recruit Citizens
The Nation (Nairobi)
6 April 2008 |
By Angelo Izama
Kampala

Ugandans who want a career in the United States military, can sign up at the annual convention of the Uganda North American Association, organisers say.

American military recruiters will set up a booth at this year's UNAA convention in Orlando, Florida, and seek out professional Ugandans, said Lt. Frank Musisi, himself an officer in the US Army.

Lt. Musisi, who comes from Kalangala District on Lake Victoria, is the current president of UNAA. He said the US military would also advise Ugandans on the "proper channels" to follow in enlisting. The announcement, which is also on the UNAA website (www.unaa.net), is set to cause a rush to this year's convention that takes place from August 29 to September 1.

“It maybe too strong a term to say a fight is going on over John McCain’s soul,” said Lawrence Eagleburger, a secretary of state under the first President George Bush, who is a member of the pragmatist camp. “But if it’s not a fight, I am convinced there is at least going to be an attempt. I can’t prove it, but I’m worried that it’s taking place.”

In addition, Mr. Eagleburger said, “there is no question that a lot of my far right friends have now decided that since you can’t beat him, let’s persuade him to slide over as best we can on these critical issues.” 

Sorry, Lawrence...

You already lost. 

2 Camps Trying to Influence McCain on Foreign Policy
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and LARRY ROHTER

WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain has long made his decades of experience in foreign policy and national security the centerpiece of his political identity, and suggests he would bring to the White House a fully formed view of the world.

But now one component of the fractious Republican Party foreign policy establishment — the so-called pragmatists, some of whom have come to view the Iraq war or its execution as a mistake — is expressing concern that Mr. McCain might be coming under increased influence from a competing camp, the neoconservatives, whose thinking dominated President Bush’s first term and played a pivotal role in building the case for war.

The president has frequently spoken in public and private about his desire to leave a stable Iraq for his successor, an objective that seemed implausible amid spiraling sectarian violence in 2006. Aides said this impulse animated his decision to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Iraq last year and that it colors every aspect of his Iraq policy, from negotiations on the security agreement to efforts to forge political compromises in Iraq. 

Next President Will Discover If U.S. Footprint Stabilizes Iraq
By Michael Abramowitz and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, April 10, 2008; A16

In deciding to leave behind a large presence of U.S. forces in Iraq at the end of his term, President Bush has made clear that he believes he will be doing the next president a favor, with more troops boosting the chances that his successor will inherit a more stable country.

But many leading Democrats -- and even some Republicans -- worry that the president is squandering a unique opportunity to pressure the Iraqi leaders toward critical political compromises. Democrats, in particular, believe that Bush's decision to embrace Gen. David H. Petraeus's recommendation to postpone further troop withdrawals this summer could backfire, leaving the next commander in chief with an overstretched military and a more intractable political situation inside Iraq.

And damn near a third are either rich or retarded.

Twenty-eight percent of respondents said they approved of the job he was doing, a number that has barely changed since last summer.

81% in Poll Say Nation Is Headed on Wrong Track
By DAVID LEONHARDT and MARJORIE CONNELLY

Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll.

In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

Although the public mood has been darkening since the early days of the war in Iraq, it has taken a new turn for the worse in the last few months, as the economy has seemed to slip into recession. There is now nearly a national consensus that the country faces significant problems.

The USofA backed an invasion to unseat a new government in Somalia that brought peace and commerce back after ousting an ineffective "internationally supported" government (like that government actually got any international support).

Why? Because they are "Islamicists." And this is what we get...this is what SOMALIA got...as a result.

Somalia’s Government Teeters on Collapse
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

MOGADISHU, Somalia — The trouble started when government soldiers went to the market and, at gunpoint, began to help themselves to sacks of grain last week.

Islamist insurgents poured into the streets to defend the merchants. The government troops took heavy casualties and retreated all the way back to the presidential palace, supposedly the most secure place in the city. It, too, came under fire.

Mohamed Abdirizak, a top government official, crouched on a balcony at the palace, with bullets whizzing over his head. He had just given up a comfortable life as a development consultant in Springfield, Va. His wife thought he was crazy. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

“I feel this slipping away,” he said.

By its own admission, the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia is on life support. When it took power here in the capital 15 months ago, backed by thousands of Ethiopian troops, it was widely hailed as the best chance in years to end Somalia’s ceaseless cycles of war and suffering.

But now its leaders say that unless they get more help — international peacekeepers, weapons, training and money to pay their soldiers, among other things — this transitional government will fall just like the 13 governments that came before it.

Despite the Fighting in Basra, Bush Emphasizes Progress
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 28, 2008; A15

DAYTON, Ohio, March 27 -- The images from Baghdad and Basra bristled with explosions, burning buildings, angry street protests, rocket smoke wafting from the Green Zone. The words from Dayton were "remarkable" and "victory" and "rebirth."

Whose victory? Whose rebirth? Maybe Bush is right. Maybe perpetual war is the new normal.

McCain declares himself to be a "realistic idealist," presumably to separate himself from the Wilsonian idealism associated with Bush, which suggests that freedom will naturally emerge in societies under U.S. tutelage. (Lately, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has asserted that the administration's foreign policy is best described as "American realism.") But then McCain restates Bush's argument that an "axis of evil" of terrorists and rogue states is working against the United States -- but avoids the words so clearly linked to the president.

The Contrarian Loyalist
Thursday, March 27, 2008; A08

Sen. John McCain's foreign policy speech yesterday was designed to both embrace the overall direction set by President Bush and subtly distance McCain from the elements that have turned off moderate voters.

Yeah, right.

Serious hat tip to Darkstar for spotting this serious hypocrisy.

The 9/11 killers were over here because we are over there. We were not attacked because of who we are but because of what we do. It is not our principles they hate. It is our policies. U.S. intervention in the Middle East was the cause of the 9/11 terror. Bush believes it is the cure. Has he learned nothing from Iraq?

In 2003, we invaded a nation that had not attacked us, did not threaten us, and did not want war with us to disarm it of weapons it did not have. Now, after plunging $200 billion and the lives of 1,400 of our best and bravest into this war and killing tens of thousands of Iraqis, we have reaped a harvest of hatred in the Arab world and, according to officials in our own government, have created a new nesting place and training ground for terrorists to replace the one we lately eradicated in Afghanistan....

On the campaign trail, it's bad politics to admit that there are limits to U.S. power. But failure to warn voters that the looming military manpower shortage may limit our foreign policy options could well come back to haunt the next commander in chief.

The Army's manpower squeeze
The service is being held together by lowered standards and bonuses. But for how much longer?
March 23, 2008 

Everyone knows the U.S. Army is overstretched by the simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The dirty little secret is that nobody knows how much longer it can keep it up before its fighting capability declines. A year? Probably, with lowered recruiting standards and big bonuses. Three years? No one in Washington will answer that question. But recent indicators are making some tough generals queasy.

The US state department finds it much harder nowadays to be taken seriously when it criticises other countries for their use of torture and arbitrary arrest.

People the world over have been repelled by things that have been done here: things that are now associated with place-names like Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and Falluja.

Above all, we have seen how hard it is for the Americans to deal with a few thousand lightly armed volunteers.

Iraq war shows limits of US power
By John Simpson
World affairs editor, BBC News

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 I have spent almost a year of my life here, reporting on the conflict.

I have witnessed a disturbing amount of death and injury, and several of my friends have lost their lives. Others have become refugees and asylum-seekers.

It has lasted almost as long as World War II and cost almost as much.

Only one of its original aims, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, has been achieved.

Of the other aims, one was unobtainable because Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction to be destroyed, and the other - bringing democracy to the Middle East - has been indefinitely postponed.