Category: Big Pentagon

Chief Tango sends us a link to Politico that pays tribute to the 40 years of service of Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who retired last week;

At the end of a long and storied career in uniform Dempsey was in a reflective mood, and the one reality he could not escape was just how much war and conflict there still was to be fought, and how many memorials to the fallen had yet to be erected.

I supported Dempsey up until he started blaming US troops’ lack of cultural sensitivities towards Afghans for the green-on-blue attacks of 2012. Folks in Afghanistan were telling me that their commanders had been told that some US troops in the war zone weren’t allowed to arm themselves with live ammunition out of deference to their allies who they were supposed to trust, but obviously, couldn’t. He helped to make US troops targets for the Taliban sympathizers in the Afghanistan National Army and Police ranks. On top of making them targets, he wouldn’t blame the actual perpetrators – he blamed the victims.

Of course, since then, there have been a hundred reasons to condemn Dempsey’s service as the Chairman. As recently as a few months ago, he said that the fall of Ramadi, Iraq was inconsequential and would be taken back by the Iraqis. Well, the Iraqis have been trying to take it back and they’re bogged down – it’s much harder to attack than to properly defend a town. Every private knows that.

Forty long years of effort—and yet now at the end Dempsey is blunt in admitting that some things are actually worse than when he started his unusually long four-year tenure as a member of the Joint Chiefs

Typical of Dempsey, actually. Instead of doing the hard work to fight the war, Dempsey would much rather reminisce about his failures. I’m glad he’s gone, but I’m pretty sure his legacy will be the near-irreparable damage he did to the political structure at the Defense Department while he was there.

We talked about it last month, but it looks like more than 50 intelligence analysts have complained to the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General that their reports have been skewed to paint a rosy picture of the war against ISIS, according to the Daily Beast;

Two senior analysts at CENTCOM signed a written complaint sent to the Defense Department inspector general in July alleging that the reports, some of which were briefed to President Obama, portrayed the terror groups as weaker than the analysts believe they are. The reports were changed by CENTCOM higher-ups to adhere to the administration’s public line that the U.S. is winning the battle against ISIS and al Nusra, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the analysts claim.

That complaint was supported by 50 other analysts, some of whom have complained about politicizing of intelligence reports for months.

From Business Insider;

Former CIA deputy director Michael Morrell explained on “CBS This Morning” how serious these allegations are.

“One of the central tenants, one of the key aspects of the policymaking process in the United States is that analysts get to say what they think without any interference, without anybody changing it, so this is a very, very serious charge. I think it needs to be fully investigated,” Morrell said.

“If there is truth that somebody has been meddling with their analysis, I think somebody needs to lose their job over it, and there needs to be full transparency into this because it is so important that analysts be able to say what they really think.”

Yeah, well, we had Martin Dempsey as the senior military policy adviser to Chuck Hagel until recently, so, really, what did they expect? They downplayed the fall of Mosul, Fallujah and Ramadi as insignificant. You know, even though the whole world saw it differently.

One analyst reportedly used the word “Stalinist” to describe the climate in the intelligence community in regards to the war against ISIS.

David sends us a link to Military.com which reports that the feckless boobs at the Army’s Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah sent samples of live anthrax to 194 labs in all 50 states (and the ancillary protectorates and the District of Columbia);

The number of countries that received live anthrax went up from seven to nine — Japan, United Kingdom, Korea, Australia, Canada, Italy, Germany, Norway and Switzerland, according to the Pentagon’s updated accounting of the shipments through Sept. 1.

There have been no deaths or serious illnesses reported from the military’s 10-year program to ship anthrax to private and military labs for testing to develop vaccines and detection devices, according to the Defense Department.

However, at least 31 military and civilian personnel were treated with antibiotics as a precaution after a lab in Maryland discovered in May that a supposedly irradiated anthrax sample contained live spores.

Initially, when the problem was discovered in May, the Defense Department had said that it only affected 24 labs, 11 states and two countries and that was determined to be optimistic.

You know, government has always been incompetent but in the last few years, they’ve taken that description to new highs, or lows. When our PII gets stolen by hackers, we’re told that it only affects a few of us, until we find out that it affects all of us. Across several agencies. Now this. We’re quickly becoming a third-world nation because we put our trust in a government that isn’t very trustworthy.

There’s a piece in the New England Journal of Medicine written by Aaron Belkin, Ph.D. entitled Caring for Our Transgender Troops — The Negligible Cost of Transition-Related Care to convince Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to lift the ban on transgender military personnel. Doctor Belkin, Ph.D says that the military can easily afford to allow transgender people to serve in the military. In fact, he figures that $.22/service member/month ought to cover it.

Of course, the cost will depend on how many transgender personnel serve and utilize care, and estimates are sensitive to certain assumptions, such as the expectation that the military will not become a “magnet” employer for transgender people seeking health care benefits. Though my utilization and cost estimates are quite close to actual data provided by an allied military force, it seems clear that under any plausible estimation method, the cost amounts to little more than a rounding error in the military’s $47.8 billion annual health care budget.

The $.22 is based on his estimate of 12,000 transgender folks currently serving. I’m not sure where he gets that figure from, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t either;

My calculations are as follows. In 2014, scholars estimated that 15,500 transgender personnel served in the military out of a total force of 2,581,000, but they included troops who were ineligible for health benefits.1 Moreover, the military has become smaller in recent years: as of May 31, 2015, a total of 2,136,779 troops served in the Active and Selected Reserve components and were thus eligible for health benefits. Assuming that the number of transgender personnel has declined along with the overall force size, and excluding those serving in Reserve components whose members are ineligible for medical benefits, I estimate that 12,800 transgender troops serve currently and are eligible for health care.

Because nameless “scholars” actually “estimated” the number last year, well, that provides a good basis for the assumption, doesn’t it? But, even if that number is correct, that doesn’t mean that it will remain static, does it?

[S]cientists agree that for many, transition-related care (gender-affirming surgery, cross-sex hormone therapy, or both) is medically necessary, and state regulators have found medical exclusions to be indefensible and in some cases unlawfully discriminatory.

That cements the contention that the military will be a ““magnet” employer for transgender people seeking health care benefits” doesn’t it? Everyone who wants free re-assignment treatment will join. He then averages the cost of treatment for Californians who underwent the treatment at $29,929 for six years of treatment, and that in the Australian Army they only spent $22,132 per person.

There are costs, in other words, of not providing transition-related care, due to potential medical and psychological consequences of its denial, paired with the requirement to live a closeted life.

[…]

Some observers may object to the concept that the military should pay for transition-related care, but doctors agree that such care is medically necessary. And though costs can be high per treated person, they are low as a percentage of total health spending, similar to the cost of many other treatments that the military provides. Even if actual costs exceed these estimates on a per-capita basis for persons requiring care, the total cost of providing transition-related care will always have a negligible effect on the military health budget because of the small number treated and the cost savings that the provision of such care will yield.

Yeah, well, there are other things that Doctor Ph.D hasn’t considered. Like the fact that there are a lot of mental health issues involved – a lifetime of treatment and monitoring which will carry over to the VA and drain funds unnecessarily from that agency as well. I recommend that if a transgender member of the military requires more than the Doctor PhD’s $.22/month estimate that he pay it out of his pocket. You know, putting his money where his mouth is.

But the overarching question that needs to be answered by the Defense Secretary before he lifts the ban on transgender lifestyle in the military is; How does this improve the military? How does this improve our chances to win the next war? I mean that’s their whole reason for existing – to kill people and break things. So how does spending this $.22/day/month/servicemember make the service better. If the answer sounds like it is written by a social engineer, then the Secretary should decide against it.

NBC News reports that the pentagon has admitted that Russian hackers have collected information from unclassified email accounts of the approximately 4,000 folks involved in working for the Joint Chiefs;

Sources tell NBC News that it appears the cyberattack relied on some kind of automated system that rapidly gathered massive amounts of data and within a minute distributed all the information to thousands of accounts on the Internet. The officials also report the suspected Russian hackers coordinated the sophisticated cyberassault via encrypted accounts on social media.

The officials say its not clear whether the attack was sanctioned by the Russian government or conducted by individuals. But, given the scope of the attack, “It was clearly the work of a state actor,” the officials say.

“The official” was adamant that no classified information was collected. I think it’s more egregious that there are 4,000 people working for the Joint Chiefs, actually. That’s a light infantry brigade plus messkit repairers and tent folders. They’re probably all five-jump chumps, too.

Chief Tango sends us a link to the Washington Post which reports that Ashton Carter, the Secretary of Defense, will authorize more troops to be armed in the wake of the attack last week on a recruiting station and a Reserve center in Chattanooga, Tennessee;

The decision was outlined in a two-page memo released at the Pentagon on Thursday. Carter in the memo said the ambush, in which an armed gunman opened fire at two military facilities, illustrates the threat posed to the service members in the United States by homegrown violent extremists.

“This incident and the ongoing threat underscore the need for DoD to revise its force protection and security policies, programs, and procedures, particularly for off-installation DoD facilities,” Carter said in the memo, signed Wednesday.

The Defense Secretary called for an evaluation from each of the services on their requirements for enhanced security precautions.

Carter’s memo authorizes commanders and civilian directors to “arm qualified DoD personnel for security, law enforcement and counterintelligence duties.” But it adds that those who are not engaged in law enforcement, such as military police, also may be armed “based on the threat and the immediate need to protect DoD assets and lives.”

The announcement also follows a report published by the Congressional Research Service which leaned heavily on a paper from the Federation of American Scientists which proposed that the Secretary of Defense could change the policy without Congressional approval.

The decision probably was made quickly because of the armed, untrained civilian folks who are standing outside recruiter offices with weapons.