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Bush's Worst Appointment Yet? Read Jeffrey St Clair's blazing expose of the new Interior Secretary nominee , Dirk Kempthorne, and make up your own mind. Even in the dingy history of Idaho's predators, Kempthorne stood proud as the dingiest of them all. Now he's poised to seize his place in history. Will he be the sleaziest Interior Secretary in history, sleazier than Watt, fouler than Fall? More on the great Israel Lobby debate! Norman Finkelstein blazes a new path, asks "Are the Neo-Cons really committed Zionists?" "Bliss was it in that dawn" Not in Michigan! Raymond Garcia describes Dem governor's appalling plan to scapegoat youth and teachers. Plus the full print version of Virginia Tilley's savage dissection on this website of the double-standard onslaught on Hamas by the US and EU. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! |
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Today's Stories May 19, 2006 Jonathan Cook May 18, 2006 Bill Simpich Patrick Cockburn Christopher Brauchli Nora Barrows-Friedman Victoria Buch Eric Ruder George Wuerthner Juan Santos Website of the Day
May 17, 2006 Lenni Brenner Carlos Villarreal Larry Everest CounterPunch News Service Lee Sustar Anthony Papa William S. Lind Bruce K. Gagnon JoAnn Wypijewski Website of the Day
May 16, 2006 Ward Churchill Ted Honderich Paul Craig Roberts Annie Nocenti Charles V. Peña Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Harvey Wasserman Michael George
Smith Harry Browne Website of the
Day
May 15, 2006 Alexander Cockburn William Blum Tanya Golash-Boza
and Douglas A. Parker Dave Lindorff Debra Schaffer
Hubert Patrick Cockburn Tom Turnipseed Ken Livingstone Gideon Levy Mickey Z. Jeff Faux Website of the Day
May 13 / 14, 2006 Vijay Prashad Joan Roelofs Kathy Kelly Michael Neumann Dr. Susan Block Daniel Cassidy Christopher Reed Mike Roselle Saul Landau Robert Fisk Ralph Nader Evelyn Pringle Fred Gardner Stanley Heller Conn Hallinan Valentina Palma Novoa David Krieger Col. Dan Smith Christopher Brauchli Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
May 12, 2006 Michael Snedeker Dave Lindorff Leah Fishbein
/ RJ Schinner Brian Kwoba Chris Kromm Kai Diekmann David Swanson Virginia Tilley Website of the
Day
May 11, 2006 Sunsara Taylor Jonathan Cook Tariq Ali Wayne S. Smith Mike Whitney Pratyush Chandra Joshua Frank Mickey Z. Francis Boyle Edward S. Herman
/ David Peterson Website of the
Day
May 10, 2006 Werther Larry Birns / Michael Lettieri Ramzy Baroud Kevin Zeese Evelyn Pringle Amira Hass Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Sharon Smith Website of the Day
May 9, 2006 Ray McGovern M. Shahid Alam Moshe Adler Walter MIgnolo Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor William S. Lind Todd Chretien Dave Lindorff Ishmael Reed Website of the
Day
May 8, 2006 Kate McCabe Paul Craig Roberts Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Ingmar Lee Robert Jensen Ricardo Alarcon Will Youmans / M. Kay Siblani Alexander Cockburn Website of the
Day
May 6 / 7, 2006 Jeffrey St. Clair Ariel Dorfman Joe Allen Fred Gardner Jeff Taylor Saul Landau Stephen Philion Trish Schuh Ralph Nader Robert Fisk Paul Cantor John Holt James Ryan Lawrence R. Velvel Greg Moses Laray Polk Ron Jacobs Ben Tripp Mickey Z. Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the Week
May 5, 2006 Vijay Prashad Robert Fisk David Swanson Mearsheimer / Walt Dave Lindorff Sarah Ferguson CounterPunch
News Service Corporate Crime Reporter Website of the
Day
May 4, 2006 John F. Sugg Jonathan Cook Roger Burbach Chris Dols Christopher Brauchli Tony Swindell Website of the Day
May 3, 2006 Robert Bryce Paul Craig Roberts James Petras Lee Sustar David Bolton Joshua Frank Jeffery R. Webber Website of the
Day
May 2, 2006 Evelyn Pringle Tariq Ali Saul Landau Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Ron Jacobs Sen. Russell
Feingold Anthony Papa Website of the
Day
May Day, 2006 Norman Finkelstein Christopher Reed Michael Donnelly Dave Zirin Mike Whitney Gilad Atzmon Missy Comley Beattie Alexander Cockburn Website of the
Day
April 29 / 30, 2006 Peter Linebaugh Ralph Nader Robert Bryce Rev. William
Alberts Lee Sustar John Chuckman Eric Ruder Seth Sandronsky Ron Jacobs Ben Tripp Fred Gardner Don Monkerud Tommy Stevenson Lettrist International Contratiempo St. Clair, Vest
and D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the
Weekend
April 28, 2006 James Ridgeway Ramzy Baroud Sarah Knopp William S. Lind Werther April 27, 2006 Winslow T. Wheeler Robert Fisk Juan Santos Robert Jensen Dave Lindorff Jose Pertierra
April 26,2006 Robin Philpot Sherry Wolf Pratyush Chandra Joshua Frank Gary
Leupp Bill
Quigley
April 25, 2006 Gary
Leupp Paul
Craig Roberts Linda
S. Heard Ralph
Nader Mike
Whitney Michael
Donnelly Sharon
Smith Website
of the Day
April 24, 2006 Tim
Wise John
Stanton Dave
Lindorff Steve
Shore Amadou
Deme Mickey
Z. Ralph Nader Alexander
Cockburn Website
of the Day
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May 19, 2006 Just as Ruinous as RepublicansDemocrats and the Defense BudgetsBy WINSLOW T. WHEELER All the conditions are ripe for a major debate on America's defense budget. A Republican White House and Congress have produced, at increased cost, a military establishment that is shrinking, aging and less ready to fight. The ruinous effects have shown up again and again, in the form of over-stretched, poorly supported forces in Iraq. There is, however, no debate. The Democratic Party, while happy to take easy potshots, is advocating more of the same. On track to exceed $530 billion this year, Pentagon spending is now higher than at any time since World War II, even though our military is smaller today than at anytime since 1946. America's huge defense budget now exceeds the rest of the world combined. Our largest potential adversary, China, spends barely more than a 10th of what we do, and North Korea and Iran each spend roughly 1 percent. Nonetheless, we are asked to support still larger budgets in future years, the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan notwithstanding. The Democratic Party complains that Americans want and deserve change, but their criticisms studiously avoid the fundamental issues. Consider some examples--examples, not so incidentally, that the Democrats seek to perpetuate. The Air Force's F-22 fighter
was started in 1983; it quickly gained weight and cost, thus
diminishing its performance as a fighter and the number we can
afford. As the price grew from less than $130 million to more
than $360 Nonetheless, the "modernization" plan of adding F-22s as we retire F-15s, which has broad bipartisan support, proceeds. The F-15 inventory, initially more than 700 aircraft, is now aging faster than the F-22 will ever "replace" them. The modernization plan literally shrinks the fighter force as it ages, and does so at increasing cost. Isolated example? Ask the Navy what has been happening to its overweight and over-cost DD/X destroyer. Ask the Army what is occurring with its galaxy of sensors and under-armored vehicles, dubbed optimistically the "Future Combat System." There are many more examples--all supported by both parties in Congress. As these money-hungry procurement programs scrounge for dollars inside the defense budget, Pentagon managers squeeze spending for manpower, thereby reinforcing the shrunken weapons inventory with fewer people. Also looted is the operating budget, thereby shorting money for training, maintenance and spare parts. Following this lead, Congress, with the Democrats as full partners, raids the manpower and "readiness" accounts to pay for what it loves most to add to defense budgets: pork costing billions and billions. The result is that as the shrinking and aging proceeds, the force is becoming less and less ready to fight. These trends flourish under the Pentagon's managerial incompetence, which is exposed for all to see by the Office of Management and Budget's quarterly rating of all major federal agencies on five measures of governance. The most recent "Executive Branch Management Scorecard" ranked the Defense Department "unsatisfactory," the worst designation, in three of the five measures; in the other two, the best it could do was "mixed results." Of the 25 agencies rated by the OMB, only Veterans Affairs ranked worse. Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office has identified more areas of concern in the Defense Department than in any other Cabinet-level department in its important "High Risk" reports about poor management. Two problems illustrate the incompetence further. Year after year, the Government Accountability Office and the Defense Department's own inspector general have reported that the Pentagon's financial transactions, supply system and payments to contractors are so chaotic that they cannot be audited. Note the wording: The Pentagon does not fail audits--it's simply unauditable. It would literally be an improvement for it to be able to flunk an audit. The Defense Department's managers have also produced a system that each year plots its programs out into the future, but then fails to plan the budget needed to pay for them. The process is known as "underfunding," and both the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office have reported on it for years. Unaddressed, it grows worse; the Congressional Budget Office now estimates the gap between projected and actual program costs to have grown from $50 billion to as much as $100 billion--per year. Perhaps worst of all is how we pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Protesting it can't predict what the wars are costing, the Pentagon submits to Congress late "emergency supplementals" to finance combat operations--along with several other things it can't wedge into its gigantic "baseline" budget. Congress, again with the Democrats as willful conspirators, proceeds to use the supplementals as a budget gimmick to enable still more pork while also failing to redress the inadequacies in the war funding accounts, such as insufficient payments for equipment repair and replacement. The temptation is to blame Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for all of it; his boastful pronouncements make that all the easier. However, while he deservedly reaps today what he has sown on the war, he didn't create the problems in our over-priced, shrinking military forces and incompetent Pentagon management. As decades of reports from the Government Accountability Office, Congressional Budget Office and Defense Department inspector general make abundantly clear, he inherited the problems from his predecessors, several of them Democrats. With the nation fighting a
war that both suffers from and exacerbates all the negative trends,
and with Rumsfeld and the Republicans in Congress doing nothing
about any of it, you might hope the Democrats would go after
the problems as aggressively as they exploit the rhetorical opportunities. "Real Security" pledges to "rebuild a state-of-the-art military by making the needed investments in equipment and manpower." The fine print in the 123-page white paper making the case for "Real Security" goes on to implicitly endorse the entire Bush defense acquisition plan, except for promising to accelerate and expand some programs. To pay for it all, not even the usual Democratic piñata, national missile defense, is suggested as an offset. Instead, the Democrats suggest the supplemental funding that now pays upwards of $100 billion per year for the wars should continue when the wars are finished. The term "financial management" appears nowhere in "Real Security" or its white paper. No hint exists that the Pentagon's undisciplined buying plan should be brought into alignment with its unrealistic budget. No weapon system--no matter how irrelevant to 21st century warfare, is suggested for termination, reduction or delay. To be fair, a minority faction of Democrats is dissenting. Called the Congressional Progressive Caucus, they advocate cutting the defense budget by $60 billion and transferring it to social programs that the progressives' constituency favors. This plan, which the Republicans slander as "anti-defense," has the virtue of recognizing there are some problems, and contrary to the calumny, would do no more harm to our defenses than ongoing business as usual. However, both "Real Security" and the Congressional Progressive Caucus miss the point. Readjusting defense dollars, whether up or down, will do nothing to address the problems, which are fundamentally questions of competence and ethics. More or less money will do nothing to make Defense Department programs and mangers accountable through rudimentary financial management. Managers in the private sector who fail on this measure are fired; some go to jail. In the Defense Department, none are held accountable; many are promoted. When that changes, competent program and financial management can begin. In today's political environment, it requires real moral spine on the part of civilians in the Pentagon or Congress to stand up to the military services' procurement bureaucracies. But with weapon systems being served up that have little to do with real world combat and a lot more to do with technological and careerist agendas, that is exactly what the situation calls for. Real political courage is needed, not dollar transfers to favored constituencies, to force Congress to stop junking up defense bills with pork and raiding the Defense Department's personnel and operating budgets to pay for it. The keys to reforming America's defenses are not in vacuous policy brochures or arguments about dollar amounts mostly directed at political pets. It lies in people understanding the nature of the problems and having the guts to apply real solutions. The Democrats want us to ignore
how they helped to create the mess and their current intention
to do nothing about it. In fact, they are not even thinking about
solutions--and the Republicans appreciate that. This commentary originally
appeared in The Forward
on May 18.
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. |