Category Archives: defense policy

Missile Violation?

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Iran has begun launching ballistic missiles as part of their intermediate-range and intercontinental-range ballistic missile development program.  The motorboat skipper who sits in the Secretary of State’s chair insists that these launches, while “inconsistent” with UN requirements, are not actually violations of the recently concluded nuclear weapons deal.

Here’s what that Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action actually says (the document can be seen here and here).

The E3/EU+3 and Iran commit to implement this JCPOA in good faith…and to refrain from any action inconsistent with the letter, spirit and intent of this JCPOA that would undermine its successful implementation.

It’s certainly true, though, that the letter of the agreement does not proscribe ballistic missile development efforts, but such a program plainly is “inconsistent” with JCPOA requirements, central as missiles are for delivery of nuclear warheads.  Such developments, then, are clear violations of the “intent” not to “undermine” the agreement.

As backdrop to these missile test launches, the JCPOA also says this:

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will be requested to monitor and verify the voluntary nuclear-related measures as detailed in this JCPOA.

Iran has refused to allow the IAEA to conduct inspections on the military bases that house parts of Iran’s nuclear weapons development program, and it has refused to allow the IAEA to inspect the nuclear reactor at the heart of its program.

And this, buried at the bottom of the first link’s article:

Iranian Revolutionary Guards senior commander was quoted as saying last week that its latest round of missiles were being designed to hit Israel.

Hmm….

Henry Stimson Has Returned

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As Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of State, Henry Stimson shut down the department’s cryptanalytic office saying, “Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail.”  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, apparently in much the same vein, did Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and innumerable others a solid by not maintaining American secrets, choosing instead to use an unsecured privately administered personal email server in her private residence.

Now we get Barack Obama’s CIA Director.  John Brennan now says that the CIA shouldn’t be viewed as an espionage agency; indeed,

I don’t support government spying….  We don’t steal secrets….   We uncover, we discover, we reveal, we obtain, we elicit, we solicit.  All of that.

This is yet another episode in Obama’s American Retreat.

Smart Diplomacy

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Iran has resumed test launching ballistic missiles, in contravention of UN resolutions and of Iran’s nuclear weapons development agreement with the Obama administration and the rest of the P5+1. But here’s the kicker:

Iranian leaders now say that they are poised to walk away from the deal if the United States and other global powers fail to advance the Islamic Republic’s “national interests.”

“If our interests are not met under the nuclear deal, there will be no reason for us to continue,” Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister, warned during remarks delivered to a group of Iranian officials in Tehran.

Senator Mark Kirk (R, IL) has the right of it:

The administration’s response to Iran’s new salvo of threatening missile tests in violation of international law cannot once again be, it’s “not supposed to be doing that.”

And, yet, that’s all John Kerry (D, SecState) has had to say about it.

There’s some smart diplomacy here. Just not by the Obama coterie.

The VA and the IG

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I’ve disparaged Inspectors General as not being truly independent—they work directly for the boss of the organization they’re presumably inspecting and on which they’re engaging in oversight. I’ve also said that the Secretary of the Veterans Administration should be terminated for cause. Here’s an example of the particularly incestuous relationship between Veterans Administration MFWICs and their IGs and the damage that relationship can do.

A top government watchdog on Thursday accused the central agency tasked with holding Veterans Affairs accountable of dropping the ball—by failing to properly investigate whistleblower claims of secret wait lists at Shreveport, LA, and Chicago hospitals where thousands of veterans languished up to 15 months without care.

Further, Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner said the VA’s Office of Inspector General even tried to “discredit the whistleblowers” who brought the allegations by focusing on a narrow aspect of the case.

And

[T]he focus and tone of the OIG investigations appear to be intended to discredit the whistleblowers by focusing on the word “secret,” rather than reviewing the access to care issues identified by the whistleblowers and in the OSC referrals.

The OSC’s letter and reports can be seen here. (Note: osc.gov is handing out a taking too long to respond error as I schedule this yesterday.  Make of that what you will.)

Veteranos administratio delende est.

A USN Admiral Smeared the PRC?

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Really?

In Vice Admiral Harry Harris Jr’s (Commander, United States Pacific Command) testimony before Congress regarding needed Navy funding, he said among other things that the PRC’s terraforming islands in the Spratly and Paracel island groups and their building runways and radar installations on them followed by deploying fighter aircraft to them amounted to militarization of a region that’s key to ship-borne trade.

That got the PRC’s knickers twisted. Ministry of National Defense spokesperson Colonel Wu Qian fretted

I have noted that according to media reports, Adm. Harris made his remarks while seeking additional defense budget funds from Congress.

We don’t interfere in your seeking defense budget funds, but you can’t carelessly smear China while asking for more money.

What smear? The truth is never a smear.