| Special Report: The Gathering Storm |
| Hack's Target For The Week: |
Will Congress Blink Again? By David H. Hackworth History has repeatedly shown that the military solution is the least-desirable way to resolve conflict. Smart leaders know that “supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting’ – as the Chinese general, Sun Tzu, wrote years ago – and exhaust all other options before they unleash the dogs of war. Instead, our president seems single-mindedly obsessed with attacking So far, the emir of Since it will soon be impossible to hide the buildup or cost, Bush clearly needs congressional consensus before the boys, bombs and bullets become the lead story on prime-time television. Now it looks as though Congress is about to give Bush the green light for his shootout with Saddam rather than standing tall and insisting that United Nations weapons inspectors get another go at defanging the monster. Almost 40 years ago, Congress kowtowed to another president from Texas and approved the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution – based on the repeated lies of Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara that Red patrol boats had attacked U.S. warships on a supposedly routine mission off North Vietnam, which the senior admiral in the Pacific had predicted months before would provoke exactly this type of response and result in an escalation of the Vietnam War. Only Sens. Wayne Morse of Before Congress blinks again, rubber-stamping one of the few wars in our country's history in which we've fired the first shot, the members should visit the Vietnam Memorial and read every name aloud on that black wall before blindly accepting their party machines’ go-along-to-get-along directives. They should ask themselves: “Do I want to be remembered as a William Fulbright – who pushed LBJ's bad resolution through the Senate, knowing all the while that he was repeating McNamara's spin – or as a Morse or Gruening? They should also match what the ordinary folks who elected them are saying against the national polls’ war chanty, “Let's Push With Bush Into Baghdad.” Last week I visited four states, and all of the hundreds of average Joes and Janes I spoke with were for U.N. inspectors returning and our tightening the choke leash on Iraq enough that nothing gets in or out without going through a U.S.-manned checkpoint. A “Who'll pay for it?” asks another citizen. “We all know it'll be our kids. They're the ones who will pay, as it has been since the Revolutionary War. Those who reap the rewards are of a different category.” Congressmen and congresswomen, which category are you? Will you vote for your own political future or the future of our country and its current generation of defenders? Will you challenge the rush to war along with Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who said last week that giving Bush the same broad, unchecked authority Congress gave LBJ is tantamount to allowing him to start a war and saying, “Don't bother me, I'll read about it in the newspapers”? http://www.hackworth.com is the address of David Hackworth's home page. Send mail to P.O. Box 11179, Greenwich, CT 06831. Look for his new book, “Steel My Soldiers' Hearts,” (Rugged Land LLC, New York City). © 2002 David H. Hackworth |
| Special Report: The Gathering Storm |
| ARTICLE 01 |
Set Wartime Defense Spending Priorities By Jim Simpson The conclusion of every major conflict in the 20th century has seen a dramatic reduction in both Some reduction in spending after a conflict is appropriate but U.S. politicians have repeatedly cut service budgets to virtual empty husks, while maintaining of course, those programs that the military may or may not need, but contribute to the politician’s annual serving of pork. But our current situation, with a war in The graph below shows defense spending plotted as a percentage of annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 1940 to 2002. This measurement is not affected by inflation because it simply shows in any given year, what amount of our national production, what piece of the total pie so to speak, was devoted to defense. It also doesn’t suffer from the measurement errors that occur when trying to adjust spending for inflation. In a very real sense it illustrates the priority we place on defense relative to everything else we do.
In 1940, before World War II, defense was at extremely low levels, consuming less than two percent of our total output. After the war began however, it ramped up quickly, consuming almost 40 percent for most of the war years. No doubt about our priorities then. After the war, spending rapidly declined to near pre-war levels. At the beginning of the Korean conflict, defense spending comprised five percent of GDP. The price we paid at the beginning of those conflicts is a shameful chapter in our history. The only real exception to this trend is the post-Korea period. The drawdown was not as significant and spending remained relatively high, close to ten percent of GDP. Not that he was any expert, but JFK thought ten percent of GDP to be the optimal level of peacetime defense spending, and it remained close to that during most of his administration. Since then, excepting a small uptick during the Vietnam War, the general trend has been down. Ronald Reagan’s defense buildup is the only period of major defense spending increases in the 20th century not related to a shooting war. Contrary to liberal propaganda, that increase was paltry by historical standards: Spending increased about 40 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars from 1981 to 1987, before it began to decline again, but this was from a spending level insufficient to fuel airplanes and tanks! Consider that in the height of Reagan’s spending spree, the defense budget was taking only a slightly greater percentage of GDP than when the Korean War began. It never exceeded six percent, far below the rate during the 1955-65 period. And this spending level remained in effect for only a few years, beginning its long slide back in 1988. Now let’s right now settle some confusion over the “Cold War”, because I know what you’re thinking. No – Reagan’s defense buildup did not cause the collapse of the The truth is it has always been much higher than that. Lenin said: “Quantity has a quality all it’s own.” It is common knowledge that quantitatively, Soviet forces and equipment outnumbered us by many magnitudes. The Richard Perle, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy under Reagan, claimed that Soviet defense spending was more like 30 percent of GDP. I would put it even higher. Many of their so-called “civilian” production facilities were (are?) in fact dual-use, right down to the doll factories used to create “doll bombs” which maimed thousands of Afghan children during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. During the height of the Cold War, the CIA fielded at most a few thousand agents overseas. The KGB fielded an estimated 100,000. Consider that. Comparing the CIA to the KGB in size is like comparing a guppy to a moose. The point is, how can increased defense spending break the bank of an adversary who is already spending much more than you on defense? Furthermore, if “ This is not intended to imply that one of these countries has immediate malevolent intentions, but a prudent leader would be foolish to ignore their behavior and track record. We need to engage in a healthy dose of honest reflection about our relations with these countries, recognize their massive firepower and treat them with the caution and skepticism they deserve. Today, we find ourselves at spending levels almost as low as pre-World War II, but conditions are even worse. Unbudgeted continual deployments to places like
While recent spending increases may have reduced the magnitude of these problems somewhat, it has only begun to reverse the chronic shortfalls that the military has endured over the past decade. The Army claims 10 active-duty divisions available for combat today, compared with the start of Desert Storm in 1991 when we had 18. And we know their claim of “readiness” for many of those divisions to be questionable at best. Given our troop commitments elsewhere, to invade Furthermore, a recent study, cited in The Washington Post claimed that following a successful war with The These are not the sexy, expensive, big-ticket items that Congress loves to haggle over, but the more humble, yet essential requirements for adequate training, reliable equipment, good battlefield communications, and adequate troop strengths – deficiencies in which have hobbled the We do not need another Task Force Smith. Contributing Editor Jim Simpson, a former White House budget analyst, is a widely published commentator on military and security issues. He can be reached at one.wonders@verizon.net. |
| Special Report: The Gathering Storm |
| ARTICLE 02 |
October and the Ongoing al Qaeda Threat By Christian M. Weber The ongoing congressional investigation of the intelligence failures that preceded the 9/11 terrorist attacks is charging forward at full stream to cast the net of blame over whoever was responsible. However, while this makes for great print, the committee is failing to address the critical flaw that leaves us vulnerable to future attacks: Intelligence agencies have simply failed to understand the basic tenets of al Qaeda’s strategy and “Red Team” possible scenarios. This lapse becomes even more ominous in light of information gathered from al Qaeda operatives captured in the recent wave of worldwide sweeps that has indicated a major attack upon By examining al Qaeda patterns of operations over the past ten years, one can piece together a logical and chilling picture of their potential next attack on First, our homeland security experts still apparently fail to comprehend how al Qaeda chooses when to attack. While they have taken advantage of targets of opportunity such as the USS Cole, there is a longstanding al Qaeda strategy of launching terrorist attacks to coincide with days of significant importance to Islamic extremists. This is a calculated tactic designed to mask their horrific actions under the auspices of vengeance for perceived past wrongs or injustices. As acts of terrorism are clearly in violation of Islamic law, the linkage to these dates of notoriety is an integral tool for their apologists in the Muslim world to claim these acts are justified. Likewise, evidence points to the Two dates of significant importance to al Qaeda are fast approaching. Captured al Qaeda training manuals dictate a series of criteria for preferred targets. The most ideal locations contain a large number of Americans, a fairly condensed area with economic or cultural significance, and available media coverage. Here are two scenarios for a renewed al Qaeda assault on the If we overlap the training manual criteria with our two significant dates next week, we see that the New York Yankees are scheduled to play Game 2 of the American Division playoffs in New York on Oct. 2, 2002, and Oct. 7, 2002 is a Monday Night Football game between the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears in Chicago. These two events represent the strongest targets of opportunity for an impending attack, most likely a suicide bombing via private plane with secondary car bombs in the parking lot. Secondly, the highly publicized, yet deeply flawed, “Dark Winter” senior-level bio-warfare exercise conducted by the The exercise focused on a Middle Eastern terrorist group using aerosol delivery to launch a smallpox outbreak in three suburban malls in the A far more likely scenario – considering the nature of al Qaeda – would entail a smallpox assault upon urban centers within one month of an Oct. 2 or Oct. attack so as to capitalize on the historic seasonal high for transmission of the virus in November and December. The initial infection could be achieved by dispersing smallpox contaminated blankets to segments of the homeless population, most likely those on subways and in nexus’ of mass transit. Targeting the homeless population would enable al Qaeda to infect a segment of society that is far less likely to immediately seek medical attention at the onset of symptoms, thus increasing the window of time between the spread of contagion and awareness of and reaction to the outbreak. Al Qaeda would justify the attacks by two rationales that would play strongly in the Muslim world. First, by utilizing contaminated blankets the terrorists would claim vengeance for Al Qaeda would strategize that in the wake of an October 2002 attack, the lethal and communicable smallpox virus would result in a domestic deployment of reserve and National Guard forces. Renewed al Qaeda-Taliban attacks in Now let’s Red Team. Contributing Editor Christian M. Weber is a 1st lieutenant specializing in military intelligence in the |
| Special Report: The Gathering Storm |
| ARTICLE 03 |
Pre-emption Strategy’s Hidden Dangers By Charles Clune Is the President Bush has spoken often about the scope of the war against terrorism. The president last week published a new strategic doctrine that endorses seeking out and destroying individual terrorists and rogue states wherever they may In the wake of the al Qaeda terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the president said (and it has been echoed several times by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld), “You are either with us in this effort or against us.” This was soon followed by offers of generous financial rewards to supporters, and veiled threats against those in opposition. But as of today, the nations “clearly” with us can be counted on one hand. In In the If the president and his advisors would be held to the letter of their words, nearly two-thirds of the world is currently “against” us in the campaign against al Qaeda and now, How can that be true if we are indeed serving the causes of justice and peace? The immediate answer is that the Bush administration’s words are not meant to be taken literally, and in fact are jingoistic and demeaning of the other We use the phrase, “war against terror,” to strike back at those who attacked and killed thousands of innocent men and women on our own homeland soil. Since the perpetrators could not be formally linked to a specific nation-state, we could not declare war and punish the country of origin. We did mounted a major military campaign into But where will the Bush administration’s new strategic doctrine take us? The administration states we will no longer allow our military superiority to be challenged, an implicit reference cited by most analysts to focus on The assertion inevitably raises a legitimate question: Why is the Bush administration issuing such a challenge to the other leading nations of the world? Is the administration expecting all of the nations of the world to cow-tow to American might? Are we entering a new world of nuclear “gunboat diplomacy”? Lastly, if we are to continue serving as the model of democracy and freedom to the entire world, why do we need to insist on the ability to strike any who oppose us? The administration in my view has gone far beyond any acceptable definition The This is not to ignore that small, well-organized terrorist cells can still potentially attack us with deadly effect. The detection, deflection and ultimate destruction of these criminals is the responsibility of international and domestic intelligence and law enforcement agencies, assisted overseas by the But that remains a far cry from the administration’s overly broad statement that the The president and his advisers have painted with too broad a brush. No nation in recorded history has been able to maintain its “Pax” – imposed peace – for long. Those who think Contributing Editor Charles Clune retired from the Table of Contents |
| Special Report: The Gathering Storm |
| ARTICLE 04 |
By Patrick Hayes As usual, even with a socialist government in power and a very loud, very anti-American and very pro-al Qaeda Muslim community in its midst, Great Britain is the one country that immediately chose to stand by the United States without waffling, not only in the war on terror, but also in dealing with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. That's a great deal more than can be said of our "friends and allies" to the north - For all their show of sympathy and support the day after Coming from a country that allows Muslim terrorists to enter with barely a wave, this thinking not only angers many Americans, but should be a wake-up call about who we can depend on in the war on terror. Even more, this should be cause for concern given the obviously porous border between the The question asked in the poll was, “How much responsibility do think the Some 69% Don't know 2% The belief that Americans are responsible in any part for the 9/11 attacks, the pollsters say, is based on the Canadian perception that How hypocritical can one country be? As many intelligent Canadians - those not hung up on a sense of false nationalism - realize, the United States gives more to the world community (primarily Third World states, including the Middle East) based on its gross national product (GNP), than any other country in the world. By comparison, Canada's offerings are meager indeed, based on its own GNP, yet many Canadians, including Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, have the nerve to infer that Americans brought the 9/11 attack down on themselves - an attack that also killed 24 Canadians! One point that Chrétien and his followers seem to overlook is that many of the terrorists in question, and the nations from which they originate, are wealthy! Most of the 9/11 murderers were from The results of the Ipsos-Reid poll are taking the long-standing anti-American sentiment, found in much of One issue that could cloud Canadian thinking in the short term, as evidenced by these dramatic poll results, may be a knee-jerk reaction to the “friendly fire” bombing incident of Canadian soldiers on the ground in No, maybe this unfortunate accident rekindled the flames, but the underlying anti-Americanism is probably as old as the Declaration of Independence, when those living in British Canada (and those who moved north during the American Revolution) were British Tories and Royalists, in no way enamored by the Rights of Man and the fledgling experiment in democracy. As renowned Canadian columnist and commentator Robert Fulford wrote in The National Post on Sept. 22 last year, “Anti-Americanism in In the same piece Fulford added, “Many Canadians are deeply conflicted on the As evidence of the hypocrisy of many Canadians, Fulford said he receives numerous responses to his articles. One such writer was a man from “I've been astonished by the number of Americans who feel they are objects of contempt. In private life, this runs deeper than even I suspected,” Fulford continued. “One reader: ‘As a Canadian-American living in It might also be noted that while 90 percent of Canadians live within 75 miles of the One overriding difference between the On the other hand, However, Canadians are not alone in their misguided anti-Americanism. Less than 60 years after Americans stormed Hitler's Fortress Europe to free the French, the Dutch, the Belgians and many others, Europeans also take shots at Americans. “Why do people attack Americans?” asks Tiny Waslandek, a social worker in The In a recent article in Policy Review magazine, Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in All this while American troops still serve in Yes, the Canadian nationalists – for “nationalism” and anti-Americanism are one and the same – may consider what they would be without the It's under arduous conditions, such as combat, that individuals know who they can depend on. Obviously it's the same for nations. Patrick Hayes is a contributing editor to DefenseWatch. He can be reached at gyrene@sftt.us. |
| Special Report: DefenseWatch Magazine's First Year |
| ARTICLE 05 |
| For the Record: Iraqi Weapons Inspections Will Fail Editor’s Note: The following are excerpts from the statement to the House Armed Services Committee on Sept. 19, 2002, by Dr. Khidir Hamza, the former head of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program and currently director of the Council on Middle Eastern Affairs in New York. By Khidir Hamza I will comment briefly on two points. 1) The status, goals, and extent of 2) How Status, Goals and Extent of The nuclear weapons program is now almost complete waiting for the enrichment sector, which makes 90 percent of the program to finish its job and put together a working production facility. The bottlenecks in the enrichment are already resolved. German sources provided The whole centrifuge technology was acquired for a little over a million dollars. This included state-of-the-art carbon fiber cylinders. The recent announcement of interception of large orders for aluminum cylinders indicates that the process of putting together large enough units for full production is not complete yet. At the same time, it also indicates that My estimate is that Iraq may be in actual [warhead material] production in two years with enough accumulated product for two to three nuclear weapons in three years. The problem however remains that we are dealing with a series of indicators but no first-hand witness. This I will deal with later in this statement. This makes it one of the most intensive single-minded objectives of the Iraqi regime. It dwarfs many times over both the BW and CW programs combined. By the time I left, hiring was intensive especially among college graduates in engineering and science. A program declared publicly by Saddam created a series of graduate groups trained in nuclear and other weapon technologies dedicated to working in the program after graduation. This step among others turns the university system which is forced to award degrees based on classified research unseen by its faculties into an integral part of the Iraqi WMD industry. On the other hand Atomic Energy Establishment (AEE) teams were turned into civilian contracting entities that actually engage in contract work for the civilian sector. They helped rebuild On the one hand, I wish to point here that Dr. [Richard] Spertzel's [another committee witness] hunch about the role of The center started as a military research and development organization that had extensive cooperation with the Even Atomic Energy was not immune from their power. They infiltrated AE and took under their wings many of its staff at will. As such we were aware of some of the developments going inside this terrible organization. Later I acted as a liaison with this agency regarding their acquisition of proscribed nuclear materials and presumably classified reports. I found it to be corrupt, deceitful and totally without human values. Thus the BW program replaced the research in physics as priority for Mukhabarat because of its potential for terrorism. An angle rarely reported and I found extensive incidents regarding it when I left Before they can obtain their passports they are usually “inoculated” against some of the standard infections. There were many incidents of whole families infected this way with HIV and other diseases. It should be noted that any Iraqi infected with HIV was transferred to a remote region in Western desert called Salman Hole presumably for treatment. However nobody ever came back and most were reported dead within a year of going there. Since HIV is rarely a cause of death this fast, it was assumed that they were subject to many kinds of experiments. If smallpox is to be sent abroad from Iraq one should expect unwitting carriers being sent to the destination targets – possibly not even Iraqis – to achieve deniability. When I was transferred to the military industry, some of my workers were questioned about the effects of radiation and how to cause disease and death by what kind of radiation sources. Later I heard of many incidents of people with radiation burns treated in Iraqi hospitals. Work on the Iraqi dirty bomb, which was tested in 1988 in Muhammediyat, had an Iraqi Mukhabarat angle. How This is critical to understand if any use is to be made of the inspectors to uncover the Iraqi WMD. Comparison with Inspections became a serious problem when inspectors in later years began to demand more access to the scientists. After several incidents some of which were described in earlier testimony This points out a critical factor for inspections to be of any meaning. With little or no human intelligence about The defector, who brought with him official Iraqi contracts, reports duplicate sites built mostly underground with specifications that included lead-impregnated concrete and resin covers that mean radioactive work. A back-up system of support does the rest. Any inspection process is monitored carefully as to its intentions. Once a possible target is identified, a special team with its transport vehicles and technicians will descend on the target of inspection, dismantle all equipment and any possible incriminating evidence and carry it to the back-up site. This is the more sophisticated version of what inspectors already experienced through denial of access and standoffs. Good luck for any future inspection team that wants to beat this system… |
| Special Report: The Gathering Storm |
| ARTICLE 06 |
For the Record: Al Gore on Editor’s Note: The following excerpts reflect the ever-changing opinion of former Vice President Al Gore toward Saddam Hussein and That Was Way Back Then: ‘Free “Despite our swift victory and all our efforts since, there is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein still seeks to amass weapons of mass destruction. You know as well as I do: as long as Saddam Hussein stays in power, there can be no comprehensive peace for the people of “We have made it clear that it is our policy to see Saddam Hussein gone. We have sought coalitions of opponents to challenge his power from within or without. I have met with the Iraqi resistance, and I have invited them to meet with me again next month – when I will encourage them to further unite in their efforts against Saddam.” “We have maintained sanctions in the face of rising criticism, while improving the oil-to-food program to help the Iraqi people directly. We have used force when necessary. And we will not let up in our efforts to free -- Gore speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, That Was Recently: Supports ‘Final Reckoning’ with “I also support the president’s stated goals in the next phases of the war against terrorism as he laid them out in the State of the -- Gore speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, This Is Now: Don’t ‘Hurry’ to War I am deeply concerned that the policy we are presently following with respect to |