As top American officials and a Navy SEAL who was on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden grapple over whether the al Qaeda leader “resisted” before he was shot, the SEAL said in a recent interview that in the heat of battle, the men on the ground weren't going to take any chances with their target.
It wasn't until other members of the team entered the room and saw a man twitching on the ground that they realized he had been hit in the head. Then, after shooting the man in the chest a few more times until he stopped moving, they realized it was bin Laden, the book says. America's most wanted man was unarmed and though there was a rifle and a handgun in a room nearby, neither had a bullet loaded in the chamber.
“He hadn't even prepared a defense. He had no intention of fighting,” Owen writes.
About POGO's Federal Contractor Misconduct Database (FCMD)The government awards contracts to companies with histories of misconduct such as contract fraud and environmental, ethics, and labor violations. In the absence of a centralized federal database listing instances of misconduct, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is providing such data. We believe that it will lead to improved contracting decisions and public access to information about how the government spends hundreds of billions of taxpayer money each year on goods and services. Report an instance of misconduct »
Top 10: Lockheed, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon, L-3, United Technologies, Oshkosh Truck, SAIC, BAE
Phi Beta Iota: The database is severely deficient in that fraud, waste, and abuse are generally recognized as applying to 50% of every dollar spent. Until “audit” includes “root” questions such as “should we be doing this at all? the “system” will continue to be outrageously corrupt and dysfunctional.
Mike Lofgren on Dysfunction in Our Political Parties
August 31, 2012
Bill talks with Mike Lofgren, a long-time Republican who describes the modern dysfunction of both the Republican and Democratic parties. In Lofgren’s view, Republicans have become overly obsessed with obstructing President Obama, and the Democrats suffer from political complacency. Lofgren’s new book is The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted.
When Canada's left-of-center New Democratic Party (NDP) invited me to testify before a mock hearing (on Parliament Hill with only NDP members present) addressing the country's purchase of the U.S. F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, I was confident I knew what to expect.
I expected the Canadian politicians, like members of the U.S. Congress, to give vaguely informed (sometimes stunningly misinformed) statements about the F-35, even when they agreed with my position. I expected their questions to be read off of staff memos in a manner so clumsy that it was clear the questioner had only the dimmest understanding, if any, of the words he or she was reading. Follow-up questions based on my responses would be a concept the questioner had never seen any use for. In other words, I didn't expect much, but the opportunity to inform the debate in Canada about the high cost and low performance of the F-35 was important; so I accepted the invitation.
My expectations were completely wrong. The differences between Canadian politicians and members of Congress are utterly stunning. Unlike here, oversight in the Canadian Parliament is alive and well. In Canada, I found two political behaviors unheard of in the United States: Opposition politicians actually try to understand the issue they are talking about, and they take offense at being lied to.
Phi Beta Iota: “Intelligence” (decision-support) should not be limited to secret collection against a sub-set of foreign challenges. Knowing oneself is just as important — perhaps even more important — than knowing the enemy. This is especially true when public policy and acquisition and operations are completely disconnected from the public interest. DoD acquisition today is divorced from reality, divorced from need, and divorced from ethics. A “perfect storm” is brewing within the Pentagon.,
Summary: As a followup to yesterday’s rant by Richard A Pawloski (Captain, USMC, retired) about our bloated corps of senior generals, today we look at the actual numbers. They show that if anything Pawloski understated the situation, and that only many more rants can reform our military. It’s not just expensive, but might become a risk to the Republic.
“In place of that optimax of 5% {officers} that the MI never can reach, many armies in the past commissioned 10% of their number, or even 15%! This sounds like a fairy tale but it was a fact, especially during the 20th century. What kind of an army has more officers than corporals? And more noncoms than privates! An army organized to lose wars — if history means anything. An army that is mostly red tape and overhead, most of whose soldiers never fight.”
— Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959). Heinlein was Annapolis class of 1929, discharged in 1934 due to TB.
Contents
About our bloated roster of generals
Our economy has not grown, but our officers corps has
Comparing our Army to successful & unsuccessful past armies
Research about inflation in our officers corps
Other articles about our senior officers
Other posts about our military, & the potential risk to the Republic
Phi Beta Iota: The review charts the rather troubling migration of Pentagon flag officers and Pentagon methods of fraud, waste, and abuse, over to the Department of Homeland Security, the new pork-fest. Our focus is always on the public interest, and in the military, the public interest cannot be separated from the welfare of the enlisted force, and particularly that portion of the force, the infrantry, 4% of the total force, taking 80% of the casualties, and receiving 1% of the Pentagon budget. This is a crime by politicians and policymakers and so-called professional flag officers, against our very own. On a positive note, we are meeting more and more “insiders” that confirm our view that the US Government is comprised of good people trapped in a bad system — senior grades — who have pretended to drink the kool-aid, abhor all that they do, and would be profoundly appreciative of any leadership oriented toward reform.
Includes analysis of the new jobs (not enough to provide for those new to the employment market such as immigrants and graduates). Bottom line: bar tenders and home health service–the bottom of the barrel.
Phi Beta Iota: For those of you applying for government jobs, be warned. Apart from needing an active TS/SCI to be considered (but it helps to have an OPM SSBI completed in past six months), you have to get through what is now an out of control automated system that dumps you if you do not have enough keywords. Beyond that you have a line of low-level clerks without a clue about substance [in fairness to USAJobs, the problems appear to be at the receiving agency level, not with USAJobs). So here are two guidlines:
1. Read the position description carefully, and tailor your USAJobs resuem for that specific job. You are dealing with a really really stupid system.
2. If you have the connections, or care to send in a copy directly to the hiring official as an alert, do so. Our contacts are telling us that they are getting crummy selections from the system, and when they go back and ask to see ALL applications, they get another 15-20 among whom are 5 world-class stars the system was too stupid to recognize. This is particularly true of DIA. Our advice to hiring managers: insist on ALL applications without exception being delivered to you.
The Pentagon says that none of the nearly 70,000 members of the DoD-affiliated population (service members, DoD civilian employees and contractors, and family members of service members and civilian employees) who were on or near the mainland of Japan between March 12 and May 11, 2011, are known to have been exposed to radiation at levels associated with adverse medical conditions.
The quake was centered 3 to 4 miles beneath Mineral, a town of fewer than 500 people about 50 miles northwest of Richmond. Yet it was believed to have been felt by more people than any other in U.S. history.
It was the first time ever in this country that a nuclear power station had gone through an emergency shutdown because of an earthquake. In this case it was a rare 5.8 magnitude seismic event with an epicenter a few miles away that ruined Louisa County school buildings, cracked the Washington Monument and shook the North Anna beyond what it was designed to deal with.
Three of the largest and deadliest earthquakes in recent history occurred where earthquake hazard maps didn’t predict massive quakes, scientists say. A combination of bad assumptions, bad data, bad physics, and bad luck is why hazard maps have failed to predict three of the largest and deadliest earthquakes in recent history.
In hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, are injected into rock thousands of feet underground to extract natural gas. Frohlich said the most likely explanation for the quakes is that once injected, the fluids apply pressure to faults in the area and unstick them.
The molten cores at Units 1, 2 & 3 have threatened all life on Earth. The flood of liquid radiation has poisoned the Pacific. Fukushima’s cesium and other airborne emissions have already dwarfed Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and all nuclear explosions including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But at Unit 4, more than 1500 rods remain suspended in air. Called “a bathtub on the roof” by CNN anchor Jon King, the damaged pool teeters atop a building decimated by seismic shocks and at least one hydrogen explosion. The question is not if, but when it will come crashing down.
