[note: a shorter version of this essay also appeared in Counterpunch here]
In the summer of 2002, during the lead up to the Iraq War, a White House official expressed displeasure about with article written by journalist Ron Suskind in Esquire. He asserted people like Suskind were trapped “in what we call the reality-based community,” which the official defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.”
President Bush announces the invasion of Iraq from the Oval Office, Mar. 19, 2003.
Suskind murmured something about enlightenment principles grounded in scientific empiricism, but the official cut him off, saying,
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
This is a revealing statement about the mentality in the Bush White House prior to the Iraq War.
Think about it: in effect, the official is claiming the mind of a decider, who is tasked with making decisions to cope with the constraints of the real world, has the power to create a new reality over and over again. Therefore the decider need not be worried about matching his actions against those constraints, or even observing those constraints, before making his decisions.
Arrogant? To be sure.
Unusual inside the Beltway? Not really, based on my experience in the Pentagon.
But this outlook also reflects an incredibly stupid and dangerous way to orient one’s decision cycle to events in the real world.
Military Times, Wednesday Mar 20, 2013 16:47:54 EDT
The Air Force has relieved a full colonel with an impeccable resume for failing his physical fitness test [Phi Beta Iota: he passed the physical test, it was his waist measurement that was found to be beyond USAF “standards,” such as they are.]
Effective immediately, Col. Tim Bush is no longer in command of the 319th Air Base Wing at Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D., said Maj. Mike Andrews, spokesman for Air Mobility Command, in a statement Wednesday afternoon. The wing’s vice commander, Col. Christopher Mann, will serve as interim commander until a replacement is found.
“Bush was not relieved for alleged misconduct or wrongdoing,” said a news release from Air Mobility Command.
North Korea: On 21 March at 0930 local time, the Korean Central Broadcasting Station made the following unscheduled announcement:
“We inform all soldiers and residents!
“This is an air raid warning. This is an air raid warning. This is an air raid warning. Military units and units of all levels must quickly take measures to prevent damage from the enemy's air strikes.”
“This is an air raid warning. This is an air raid warning. This is an air raid warning. Military units and units of all levels must quickly take measures to prevent damage from the enemy's air strikes. This is the Korean People's Army Broadcasting Station.”
At 1028 local time the Korean Central Broadcasting Station carried a second unscheduled announcement:
“This is the Korean People's Army Broadcasting Station. We inform all residents and soldiers: The air raid warning is lifted. The air raid warning is lifted. The air raid warning is lifted.
Comment: According to defectors queried by the Daily NK, this was the first use of the public radio system for broadcasting an air raid warning. It was a test because it was too brief to be a civil defense evacuation drill. In large cities they take up to a full day. This is significant because air raid warnings are never broadcast. This was probably a no-notice drill in response to the US announcement about B-52s operating over South Korea.
Air raid warnings were more common in the 1990s, but all were sent via the “Third Broadcast” which is a cable radio system, only accessible in North Korea. The Korean People's Army Broadcasting Station only has been known to use the Third Broadcast.
The use of a nationwide radio broadcast implies the North's leaders expect they will need such a system at a time when people would be away from their homes, in fields, on the street or in public conveyances. They expect the population to respond swiftly according to plan without advance warning. That is uncommonly realistic preparation. The B-52 announcement had effect.
North Korean drones. The Korean Central News Agency reported on 20 March that North Korea launched a drone attack on a simulated South Korean target. The press item touted that Kim Jong Un personally supervised the operation. The drone strike successfully shot down a target mimicking a South Korean cruise missile.
Comment: It is not clear just what transpired in the exercise, whether a drone actually flew. However, South Korean news sources in February 2012 reported North Korea had acquired older US drones, MQM-107D Streaker target drones built by Raytheon, from a Middle Eastern country. South Korea's Yonhap reported they possibly came from Syria. Photos of the drone are available on the Internet.
The North Koreans are extremely good at tinkering with older systems and finding value in materials that would end up on the cutting room floor in the US. Their entire missile program evolved from tinkering with obsolescent systems. They certainly have the science to boost the performance and capabilities of a target drone.
The North Korean news report disclosed information about the status of a fairly new weapons project. They are aware of the threat from Allied cruise missiles and have been working to counter them and probably build their own for over a year.
In July 2011, J. William Leonard, a former director of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), took the extraordinary step of filing a formal complaint with the Office he once led charging that a document used to indict former NSA official Thomas Drake under the Espionage Act had been wrongly classified in violation of the executive order on classification. (“Complaint Seeks Punishment for Classification of Documents” by Scott Shane, New York Times, August 2, 2011; “Ex-federal official calls U.S. classification system ‘dysfunctional'” by Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, July 21, 2012)
Last December, in a newly disclosed response, John P. Fitzpatrick, the current ISOO director, concluded that Mr. Leonard's complaint did not warrant the sanctions that Mr. Leonard had urged. Neither the original classification of the NSA document, titled “What a Wonderful Success,” nor its continued classification “rise to the level of willful acts in violation of the Order,” Mr. Fitzpatrick wrote in his December 26, 2012 response.
With that, the matter was officially closed. But the divergent views underlying the complaint remain unresolved and continue to fester.
“I have devoted over 34 years to Federal service in the national security arena, to include the last 5 years of my service being responsible for Executive branch-wide oversight of the classification system,” Mr. Leonard wrote in his 2011 complaint. “During that time I have seen many equally egregious examples of the inappropriate assignment of classification controls to information that does not meet the standards for classification; however, I have never seen a more willful example.”
March 19, 2013. Ten years ago today the Bush regime invaded Iraq. It is known that the justification for the invasion was a packet of lies orchestrated by the neoconservative Bush regime in order to deceive the United Nations and the American people.
The US Secretary of State at that time, General Colin Powell, has expressed his regrets that he was used by the Bush regime to deceive the United Nations with fake intelligence that the Bush and Blair regimes knew to be fake. But the despicable presstitute media has not apologized to the American people for serving the corrupt Bush regime as its Ministry of Propaganda and Lies.
It is difficult to discern which is the most despicable, the corrupt Bush regime, the presstitutes that enabled it, or the corrupt Obama regime that refuses to prosecute the Bush regime for its unambiguous war crimes, crimes against the US Constitution, crimes against US statutory law, and crimes against humanity.
In his book, Cultures Of War, the distinguished historian John W. Dower observes that the concrete acts of war unleashed by the Japanese in the 20th century and the Bush imperial presidency in the 21st century “invite comparative analysis of outright war crimes like torture and other transgressions. Imperial Japan’s black deeds have left an indelible stain on the nation’s honor and good name, and it remains to be seen how lasting the damage to America’s reputation will be. In this regard, the Bush administration’s war planners are fortunate in having been able to evade formal and serious investigation remotely comparable to what the Allied powers pursued vis-a-vis Japan and Germany after World War II.”
Includes 1947 US naval expedition led by Robert Byrd broken off after being attacked by objects that vertically take off from the sea. Russian scientists hypothesize US military HAARP bases on Antartica and Alaska are intended for identifying the characteristics of wormholes used by alien visitors to access and leave earth.
John Robb has referred to drones as the automation of repression and control over a populace, and such technology requiring far fewer players and much less money to implement and manage than regular police and armed forces. UAVs must be very appealing for the psychopathic policy elites of the 1%, but they forget that any repressive initiative is going to stimulate a counter-initiative, and, in this new story, we note a new counter-initiative to drones directed on behalf of, in this case, ordinary people, the intended targets of the psychopathic control freak elite:
An Oregon company says that it has developed and will soon start selling technology that disables unmanned aircraft.
The company, called Domestic Drone Countermeasures, was founded in late February because some of its engineers see unmanned aerial vehicles—which are already being flown by law enforcement in some areas and could see wider commercial integration into American airspace by 2015—as unwanted eyes in the sky.
“I was personally concerned and I think there's a lot of other people worried about this,” says Timothy Faucett, a lead engineer on the project. “We've already had many inquiries, a lot of people saying ‘Hey, I don't want these drones looking at me.'”
Domestic Drones Countermeasures was formed as a spin-off company from Aplus Mobile, which sells rugged computer processors to defense contractors—though the company won't discuss its specific technology because it is still applying for several patents. Faucett says that work has helped inform its anti-drone technology.
The company will sell land-based boxes that are “non-offensive, non-combative and not destructive.” According to the company, “drones will not fall from the sky, but they will be unable to complete their missions.”
Though Faucett wouldn't discuss specifics, he says the boxes do not interfere with a drone's navigation system and that it doesn't involve “jamming of any kind.” He says their technology is “an adaptation of something that could be used for military application” with the “combat element replaced with a nondestructive element.”
