Category Archives: defense policy

We’re a Helpless Victim

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That’s OPM Director Katherine Archuleta’s claim regarding the hack of her agency’s computer systems that now appear to expose as many as 18 million…what shall we call these, since OPM has laid claim to the victimhood in this failure…Americans.

I don’t believe anyone is personally responsible[.]

Fox News cited her further:

Archuleta said only the perpetrators should be blamed—she said current failures result from decades of meager investment in security systems, but said changes are being made and in fact helped detect the latest breaches.

Then there are these, via The Wall Street Journal:

Way back in March 2014, OPM knew that Chinese hackers had accessed its system without having downloaded files.

And

While little noticed, the IRS admitted this spring it was also the subject of a Russian hack, in which thieves grabbed 100,000 tax returns and requested 15,000 fraudulent refunds. Officials have figured out that the hackers used names and Social Security data to pretend to be the taxpayers and break through weak IRS cyber-barriers. As Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has noted, the Health and Human Services Department and Social Security Administration use the same weak security wall to guard ObamaCare files and retirement information. Yet the Administration is hardly rushing to fix the problem.

There’s speculation elsewhere that Snowden’s thefts and travels have had a hand in these. Frankly, I think his hands are clean on this one, except perhaps as a sanity check for Russia and the PRC in the before and aftermath stages of these hacks. These hacks are the direct result of long-standing utter incompetence and of this administration’s disdain for anything having to do with security.

It’s long past time for folks to be fired for cause at the OPM and IRS—and elsewhere, if they show no concrete progress in a very short time—down to middle management level in the CIOs’ areas. Why so far down the food chain? If they haven’t been screaming bloody murder over these vulnerabilities, they’re either incompetent themselves, or they put their job security ahead of our nation’s security.

This incompetence also seems to necessitate a pretty thorough removal and replacement of Federal government officials and employees—through no fault of their own, but from OPM (et al.) incompetence. They’ve become vulnerable, and through them, our government has become vulnerable. The only way to reduce the threat to these people is to reduce their value to our enemies by removing them from government. That’s what Archuleta’s victimhood has wrought.

Paying Ransom

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President Obama on Wednesday announced a new US government policy for dealing with Americans who are kidnapped abroad, and as always he stressed compassion for the hostages and their families.

Compassion? Where’s Obama’s compassion for the kidnap victim, who’s exposed to further kidnapping, since snatching him clearly pays off? Where’s Obama’s compassion for other Americans, now at increased risk or kidnapping themselves, by ransom paying that is nothing more than aiding and abetting the criminals/terrorists masqueraded as “compassion?”

…a government-wide review of US hostage policy, which has drawn criticism for inconsistency and lack of coordination. “The families of hostages have told us—and they’ve told me directly—about their frequent frustrations in dealing with their own government: How different departments and agencies aren’t always coordinated,” Mr. Obama said[.]

Those departments also don’t inform very much, if at all, the victim’s families of the status of efforts to get the victim back. The right answer, though, is not to reward the kidnappers for their efforts but to create consistency and coordination—and to summarily fire those bureaucrats who fail at this—and to pass information freely and on demand to the victims’ families. Certainly, many efforts are and should remain secret, but in those events, swear the families to secrecy—they need to be inside the loop, not outside of it.

No Heart

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According to Defense Secretary Ash Carter, the US has successfully trained about 7,000 Iraqi soldiers and about 2,000 counterterrorism service personnel out of a goal of 24,000 in total. Carter said this about that rather large shortfall:

We simply haven’t received enough recruits[.]

Hmm….

Yet President Barack Obama thinks it’ll be cool to send 450 more US soldiers to Iraq to train the Iraqis.

Again I say, Hmm….

Iran and our State Department

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The guy who sits in the Secretary of State’s chair, John Kerry, had this to say regarding this administration’s “negotiations” about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. In particular, he was talking about this administration’s give a hoot attitude toward nearby history.

The possible military dimensions, frankly, gets distorted a little bit in some of the discussions in that we’re not fixated on Iran specifically accounting for what they did at one point in time or another.

We know what they did. We have no doubt. We have absolute knowledge with respect to certain military activities they were engaged in. What we’re concerned about is going forward. It’s critical to us to know that going forward, those activities have been stopped, and that we can account for that in a legitimate way.

But that’s how you know they might be telling the truth about “those activities” going forward. You match what you know with absolute knowledge (Kerry’s naïveté regarding the perfection of intelligence would be cute if it weren’t so dangerous) with what the Iranians tell you. Deviations between the two—since you already know these things without doubt—are demonstrations of Iran lying, and so you have no way of knowing that they’ve stopped “those activities.”

One more thing regarding “military dimensions…gets distorted a little bit:” for what do you think the Iranians are building their nuclear weapons except for those weapons’ military dimension?

It’s going to be a long and dangerous 18 months.

Some Thoughts on US-Israeli Relations and Iran

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An Israeli has some. Michael Oren, lately Israeli Ambassador to the US and current Member of Knesset had this, in part, from his op-ed in Monday’s Walls Street Journal.

The abandonment of the “no daylight” and “no surprises” principles climaxed over the Iranian nuclear program. Throughout my years in Washington, I participated in intimate and frank discussions with US officials on the Iranian program. But parallel to the talks came administration statements and leaks—for example, each time Israeli warplanes reportedly struck Hezbollah-bound arms convoys in Syria—intended to deter Israel from striking Iran pre-emptively.

Finally, in 2014, Israel discovered that its primary ally had for months been secretly negotiating with its deadliest enemy. The talks resulted in an interim agreement that the great majority of Israelis considered a “bad deal” with an irrational, genocidal regime. Mr Obama, though, insisted that Iran was a rational and potentially “very successful regional power.”

The daylight between Israel and the US could not have been more blinding. And for Israelis who repeatedly heard the president pledge that he “had their backs” and “was not bluffing” about the military option, only to watch him tell an Israeli interviewer that “a military solution cannot fix” the Iranian nuclear threat, the astonishment could not have been greater.

What he said.

Then he concluded:

Now, with the Middle East unraveling and dependable allies a rarity, the US and Israel must restore the “no daylight” and “no surprises” principles. Israel has no alternative to America as a source of security aid, diplomatic backing and overwhelming popular support. The US has no substitute for the state that, though small, remains democratic, militarily and technologically robust, strategically located and unreservedly pro-American.

The past six years have seen successive crises in US-Israeli relations, and there is a need to set the record straight. But the greater need is to ensure a future of minimal mistakes and prevent further erosion of our vital alliance.

That, Sir, must unfortunately await a change in the administration. I hope and pray that Israel can hang on that long.