Tag Archives: defense policy

More Foolishness

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The motorboat skipper who sits in our Secretary of State’s chair and his Russian counterpart, and some carefully selected “opposition and rebel groups,” have agreed to a cease-fire in Syria that is alleged to be effective Saturday next.

However.

The truce will not cover IS, the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, and any other militias designated as terrorist organizations by the UN Security Council. But where in Syria the fighting must stop and where counterterrorism operations can continue must still be addressed. And the five-page plan released by the US State Department leaves open how breaches of the cease-fire will be identified or punished.

In other words, there is no cease-fire. Only pretty words for the last months of a lame duck year in a lamed duck administration.

A Problem with Veterans Administration Management

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Leo Shane described one aspect of this in his piece in the Military Times. Shane centered his article on Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I, VT) role in making it nearly impossible to fire non-performing Veterans Administration executives.

Sanders—the independent Vermont senator who at the time was chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee—insisted on preserving the protection board’s appeals role, and held up reform legislation in his chamber until it was included.

That protection board is the Merit Systems Protection Board, an allegedly independent facility with a degree of judicial authority that supposedly ensures that nobody gets fired without due process. In the realization this Board, which Sanders was so desperate to protect, is a union facility that ensures that nobody gets fired.

The larger problem, though, is less Sanders’ union’s interference with the VA leadership’s inability to get rid of the trash and other non-performers in the VA leadership, than it is that inability to throw out the trash.

In recent weeks, the VA has seen a host of job actions against senior employees overturned by the Merit Systems Protection Board [see, for example, here]…. They include the demotion of two VA executives accused of gaming the department’s hiring system for personal benefit, and the dismissal of a New York VA director over patient safety concerns.

And

The appeals fight has grown into an escalating intra-administration showdown between VA leaders, who call the decisions off-base, and protection board officials, who blame bad legislative changes for the unsatisfactory rulings.

These union hacks even are trying to turn the problem back onto Congress:

They also accused lawmakers of overhyping problems within the department, saying lawmakers are conflating malice and malfeasance with mistakes made by under-trained supervisors.

Under-trained? The union hacks agree, then, that these supervisors are unfit for their positions, yet they insist these unfits must be retained, anyway. No trash out, not under-performers out, nobody out.

After all, our veterans are used to the idea of becoming casualties on a war’s battlefield. They and everyone else should just shut up, and our veterans should accept being casualties on an artificial VA battlefield, too.

Veteranos administratio delende est.

Security Tradeoffs

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Here’s one.

A federal judge has ordered Apple Inc to provide software to the Justice Department to help it unlock a phone used by one of the suspects in the San Bernardino, CA, terror attack because investigators suspect the device may hold critical details of the plotting behind the mass murder.

The government’s justification is this:

Law-enforcement agencies say companies such as Apple make it harder to solve crimes including terrorist attacks, child abuse and murder by putting security measures on phones that make it difficult or impossible for investigators to open them and examine data inside.

That’s an entirely valid concern.

The problem, though, is that forcing a back door into citizens’ communications encryption utterly destroys citizens’ privacy and security. There’s nothing to prevent Government from abusing that back door to engage in snooping on general principles and then actively and maliciously snooping in order to preserve the power of the men then in Government. The lawlessness of the present administration demonstrates that progression.

Of immediate effect, though, is that a backdoor for Government is a backdoor for hackers, whether these be script kiddies, terrorist hackers, financial or identity theft hackers, or any other sort.

The privacy and the security of our private identities, of our finances, of our health records, of any aspect of our lives we find useful to protect from prying eyes are critical to our ability to engage with our neighbors and our businesses and our government free from threats or attack.

The privacy of our communications, the security of our speech, must absolutely be preserved. There is no security at all without our individual liberties, of which speech is one, held secure.

“Law-enforcement agencies” and this Federal judge know this full well. And they know full well the truth of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s statement in his letter posted to Apple’s Web site:

We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack.

Maybe a Good Idea, Maybe Not

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Russian scientists are planning to tweak their ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) to target near-earth objects (NEOs), according to a report by news agency TASS. The news came from Sabit Saitgarayev, the leading researcher at the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau. The projectiles could be aimed at meteorites measuring 20-50 meters in size.

The ICBMs would need upgrades for the purpose. Also, those NEOs include our satellites—weather-watching, surveillance, and GPS, for instance.

There are, of course, cheaper and faster methods of striking satellites already extant. This sort of research, though, also is a necessary step toward developing means of targeting other systems farther out: industrial and other facilities in earth orbit (not necessarily close in, depending on the source of the factories’ inputs and raw materials), in lunar orbit or at a Lagrange point, or facilities on the moon.

Of course those facilities don’t yet exist, but Russia, and the PRC, would like to have weapons available for that eventuality, an eventuality that is coming.

Also of course, this proposed Russian development isn’t, of necessity, aimed at developing a new weapon system.

“Good idea” depends on your frame of reference.

“Innuendo fuels Clinton email saga”

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That’s the headline above Juan Williams’ op-ed at The Hill.

Williams is right, but the innuendo is his as he contributes to the Left’s attempt to cover up Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s misbehavior.

Mainstream news shows have now joined conservative websites and magazines in roiling political waters with the suggestion that Hillary Clinton could be indicted. Such charges, the theory goes, would pertain to her sending secret government information over her personal email account while she was secretary of State.

Or, the NLMSM finally is awakening to the depths of Clinton’s misbehavior.

The email story broke last March when the New York Times reported Clinton “used a personal email account to conduct government business as Secretary of State.” In July, the story escalated when the Times incorrectly reported that requests had been made for a criminal investigation of Clinton’s handling of email.

Even after a correction on that story, her totally legal use of a private server while at the State Department became an acceptable short-hand for political opponents….

Use of the private server may not be illegal, but it is against State Department regulations—her State Department regulations—to use a private email address, much less a private server, for government business. Private email addresses are allowed for private emails, but government business—government emails, for instance—must be handled through government addresses, and so via government servers.

Oh, and that non-existent criminal investigation? The FBI doesn’t do security reviews; they’re running an investigation into the potential of her criminal behavior.

…NBC News reported that emails that had been retroactively declared classified had also been sent to the personal email account of former secretary of State Colin Powell and to key aides of his successor, Condoleezza Rice.

No, they weren’t retroactively declared classified. They were classified from their inception because of the classified information contained in them. They were only marked classified retroactively, in belated recognition of their classified nature.

Therein lies the felony aspect of Clinton’s handling of these classified emails and of her handling them via her unprotected private email server. It’s a crime to mishandle classified information; any markings of classification or their lack is wholly irrelevant to that. Indeed, properly marking classified data is part of the required handling of classified data. Clinton, who has said she’s well trained and knows all about handling classified data—and who, as Secretary of State, is the ultimate classification authority of State-originated classified data—knew all of this at the time of her mishandling.

And that bit about Powell and Rice aides similarly mishandling: that’s the Liberal morality we’ve come to know and love. Somebody else did it, so it’s all right for Clinton to do it, too. The rightness or wrongness of her behavior isn’t at all intrinsic in her behavior. The comparison, also, is cynically disingenuous. Powell’s and Rice’s aides’ dozen or so mishandlings stacked against Clinton’s 1,700? The former are certainly wrong, but the numbers show their accidental nature. This is what’s being compared with Clinton’s deliberate disregard.

It has never been shown that Clinton shared information marked as classified at the time it was sent or received.

That’s Williams’ strawman; no one is arguing otherwise. He’ll have to play with his dolly without me.

And of course there is still no evidence that she broke any law.

On the contrary, there are 1,700 instances of mishandling classified information. 50 US Code § 783 makes this mishandling clear.

More broadly, many people beyond the campaign believe the furor contributes to the perception that Clinton is not honest.

Perhaps that’s because these events are showing her dishonesty. We’re up to those 1,700 emails with classified information in them on her private server, including another 81 in the just-released batch that have been—after the fact—marked classified at one level or another.