Category: Uncategorized

Editorial

Embedded danger

Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:55:00 10/02/2009

The death of two American soldiers in Sulu last Tuesday refocuses the nation’s attention on the need to revisit the Visiting Forces Agreement. The agreement has been so loosely interpreted by both the Philippine and American governments as to provide carte blanche for US forces to engage in operations never contemplated by the Senate (and the public) when it was asked to give consent for the agreement. It essentially allows the Americans to undertake military operations in tandem with members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, under the camouflage of training activities.

The US government is fully capable of assessing the danger posed to their investments and the tens of thousands of people with US citizenship who reside in the country by the activities being undertaken by their troops. What remains to be answered is whether our own government has carefully thought-out the implications of its permissiveness.

Our government’s policy, particularly since it embarked on tying itself to the Bush administration’s apron-strings after Sept. 11, then cut those strings in a panic in Iraq, has been to compensate the Americans by essentially giving them a free hand in Mindanao. Asean basically wants this, too, as governments in the region, such as Malaysia, Australia and Indonesia, have a low opinion of Filipino capability in securing Mindanao and terrorist networks that find refuge there. And the Philippine government wants it because it is unable to achieve either a military or political solution to the cases of conflict in Mindanao.

This quid pro quo permits the government to eke out aid from the Americans, and our officialdom’s lapses in bringing development to Muslim Mindanao in particular, where its political alliances with warlords matters more than giving our Moro brethren opportunities to improve their lives, can be compensated, at least partially, by foreign assistance.

This foreign assistance, as all assistance does, comes at a price, and the price is the abdication of much of our sovereignty and control over the security situation in Mindanao. It comes at the price of an agreement intended, officially speaking, to beef up our armed forces by giving them access to training with friendly forces. It comes at the price of a Constitution observed more in the breach by keeping a round-the-clock foreign military presence here while skirting the basic law’s actual provisions on the conditions that should apply for such a presence.

The Americans have been effective in putting a lid on things, but medals and citations have been issued since the Bush administration to servicemen and officers wounded in actual encounters with rebels and terrorists in Mindanao. American troops are not sheltered in training camps or simply directing spy drones to provide intelligence to Filipino troops. Far more than will ever be officially acknowledged, there’s a close coordination down to the patrol level between Filipino and American soldiers.

This makes the Americans a target for forces fighting our government’s troops, and it puts US troops in many combat or near-combat situations. We only have to point to the case of Americans firing their weapons when an explosion rocked the pier in Jolo some weeks ago. And now comes the death of the two American soldiers together with a Philippine Marine.

As the Americans focus on the offensive in Afghanistan, sympathetic groups will try to take the edge off the attacks on al-Qaida and the Taliban by mounting attacks on American troops and civilians everywhere else around the world. Unless our government begins by reexamining the VFA, this situation will only continue as an irritant in RP-US relations. It will bring back the specter of the Philippines becoming part of the front line in the confrontation between the terrorist organization and the West.

And considering the motivations of our government, it means the country is increasing its risks for all the wrong, because mainly mercenary, reasons.

Source: http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/editorial/view/20091002-227925/Embedded-danger

2 US soldiers killed in Jolo

Attack spurs call for VFA scrapping

By Julie Alipala
Inquirer Mindanao

First Posted 01:02:00 09/30/2009

ZAMBOANGA CITY-Two American soldiers and a Filipino Marine were killed early Tuesday in an explosion that went off as a US military vehicle passed in Barangay Kagay, Indanan, Sulu.

Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner, Armed Forces spokesperson, said a number of American soldiers escorted by Filipino Marines had just inspected a school project in Sitio Laum Saing and were heading back to a Marine detachment in a US Hummer when the explosion occurred at around 8:30 a.m.

He said it was as yet unclear whether the explosive was buried in the road or by the roadside. Two other Filipino soldiers were injured in the blast.

Brawner told reporters in Camp Aguinaldo that the slain Americans were members of the Seabees, the construction battalion of the US Navy.

The Sulu police late Tuesday released the identities of the two American soldiers and the Filipino Marine trooper, who were killed in the blast in Indanan town.

Senior Superintendent Alibuddin Esmail, Sulu police chief, identified the US soldiers as Staff Sergeant Jack Martin and Sergeant First Class Christopher Shaw. The Filipino soldier was only identified as a Private First Class Estrada.

Esmail said the police have yet to identify who was behind the blast.

Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago told reporters that the explosion should prompt the Philippine government to abrogate the RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).

“Why are [the Americans] in an area where there are land mines?” said Santiago, who chairs the Senate foreign relations committee.

She said the attack showed that the Americans were in “a conflict or battle area,” and “absolutely” proved that US troops were taking part in Philippine operations against separatist insurgents.

“What else can you conclude?” Santiago said.

Sulu is a known lair of the Abu Sayyaf bandit group which, according to the Philippine military, is coddling operatives of the regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah.

The US Embassy in Manila is “still investigating the incident” that involved an improvised explosive device, according to spokesperson Rebecca Thompson.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack and the Philippine military and police have no suspect as yet, Brawner said in a text message.

Fire fight

Maj. Gen. Ben Dolorfino, chief of the Western Mindanao Command, disclosed that before the explosion, a 45-minute fire fight between government forces and unidentified gunmen occurred in Barangay Bitanag in Panamao, Sulu.

Dolorfino said there was no reported casualty among the troops.

Tuesday’s explosion was the second recent attack involving US forces in Sulu.

In the first, a grenade was lobbed at US troops unloading supplies at the Jolo pier. No one was injured but the incident became controversial because the Americans fired their weapons in the purported direction of the attacker, which was near a mosque.

Temojen Tulawie, the coordinator of the Consortium of Bangsamoro Civil Society in Sulu, said he saw the bodies of the two Americans in a military truck.

“They were white and they wore the usual light brown uniform,” Tulawie said by phone.

“While returning [from Sitio Laum Saing], they passed between Kagay and Bato-bato and that’s where the explosion occurred,” he added.

‘Big slap on VFA’

Sulu police chief Esmail said a red alert had been declared all over the island.

“Although the situation has somehow normalized, we cannot as yet discount the possibility of another attack,” Esmail said.

But two hours after the explosion, suspected Abu Sayyaf bandits bombed a police outpost in Patikul town.

Tulawie said members and officers of various civil society groups in Sulu had been called to an emergency meeting.

He admitted that the situation was worrisome “because this is the first time a US soldier was killed in Sulu, and in an area where there was a fresh fire fight.”

He warned that US and Philippine troops “may launch offensive actions in the area although we still cannot determine who was behind the attack.”

Tulawie also said the attack was “a big slap on the VFA.”

‘Serving others’

In a statement, the US Embassy said the explosion occurred at 8:45 a.m. while the American soldiers were conducting a re-supply mission for a school construction project.

The embassy and the US members of the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines expressed condolences to the families of the killed and wounded.

“They lost their lives serving others and we will always be grateful for their contributions to improve the quality of life on Jolo,” US Ambassador
Kristie Kenney said.

According to Kenney, US forces are temporarily deployed at the invitation of the Philippine government to conduct activities such as training exercises, professional exchanges and civic action projects with the Philippine military.

Land mine around schools?

Told of the US Embassy statement that the American soldiers were in the area to build schools, Santiago was incredulous.

“And Filipinos were so stupid to plant land mines in an area for a school where most of their children would go?” the senator said.

Asked if the incident would drag the US government into the Philippine conflict, she said America became involved “when [it] insisted on the VFA” 10 years ago.

Told further that US troops were arriving to help rehabilitation efforts in the wake of Saturday’s great flood, Santiago said any help was welcome.

But “I humbly contend that this is all part of psy-ops (psychological operations) to gather intelligence,” she said.

Santiago also said she had transmitted to Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo, Ambassador Kenney and the Presidential Commission on the VFA an approved Senate resolution seeking a review or renegotiation of the agreement.

On patrol?

At the House of Representatives, Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Satur Ocampo agreed that the explosion “proves that [the Americans] were in a combat area.”

“What was their mission there? Were they conducting a patrol?” Ocampo said.

He called for an inquiry into the attack, pointing out that the Constitution prohibits foreign troops from operating in combat areas.

Ocampo said the killing of the US soldiers could be a reason for American officials to retaliate against those they believed responsible.

“I am calling on the Americans not to take action,” he said. “The terms of reference of their participation must be clarified first.”

Ocampo echoed calls for a review of the VFA in order, he said, to prevent the Americans’ deeper participation in counterinsurgency operations in the country.

Muntinlupa Rep. Rufino Biazon, vice chair of the House committee on national defense, said the deaths of the US soldiers were a blow to the VFA and could lead to its abrogation.

Biazon said the government should not have sent US soldiers to combat zones where they would be put in the line of fire.

“Because of this incident, the fate of the VFA may have just been doomed. The US troops should be immediately pulled out from the combat zones now. Exercises should be suspended until this is thoroughly investigated,” he said.

‘Noncombatants’

But Brawner said the slain US soldiers were working on “development projects” and were not involved in combat activities.

“The soldiers were in that detachment because of ongoing projects … Specifically, they were working on the 5-kilometer Kagay road,” Brawner told reporters in Camp Aguinaldo.

He said that from information gathered by the Philippine military, the Americans were “noncombatants.”

“They were there to supervise the developmental projects in the area when they were attacked,” he said.

Brawner also said how the explosive was detonated, as well as its composition, was still being determined.

He denied that the explosive was a land mine, the use of which in warfare is banned under the Geneva Convention.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) expressed sadness at the killing of the three soldiers.

“It is with sadness that we learned of the death of a Philippine Marine and two US servicemen. What they were doing in Sulu-assisting Philippine military and local officials in undertaking civic engineering projects, protecting families and securing the peace, for which they paid the ultimate sacrifice-is important to the Filipino people,” DFA spokesperson Ed Malaya said.

With reports from Cynthia D. Balana, Leila B. Salaverria, Christine O. Avendaño and Alcuin Papa in Manila

Source: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20090930-227582/2-US-soldiers-killed-in-Jolo

Boeing C-17 vote delayed amid furor

McCain move to kill program draws supporters’ fire.

By Kristopher Hanson, Staff Writer
Posted: 09/29/2009 07:25:37 PM PDT

Lawmakers delayed a final vote Tuesday on efforts to extend production of Boeing’s C-17 following a rancorous debate during which Sen. John McCain introduced an amendment to kill the program supporting 5,000 jobs in Long Beach and thousands more across the nation.

Continued debate on the plane’s future is scheduled to begin early today, with a final vote set for late afternoon or early Thursday.

The massive jet, assembled at a sprawling plant in Long Beach adjacent to the airport, has been the subject of a heated debate between supporters and critics trying to pare down defense spending.

In early September, a Senate panel approved $2.5 billion to fund 10 more C-17s over objections from top administration officials led by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The issue came to a head Tuesday when the full Senate began deliberations on the nation’s $626 billion defense budget for Fiscal Year 2010, which included the $2.5 billion for C-17 production.

McCain, the Arizona Republican and longtime critic of “pork barrel” spending, launched a spirited but likely futile assault on continued C-17 funding Tuesday inside Senate chambers, accusing Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, of failing to heed White House orders to scrap C-17 production as requested.

“What we would do in this bill is effectively fund the purchase of new aircraft that we neither need nor can afford with critical sustainment money,” McCain said.

The senator’s remarks drew a strong rebuke from C-17 supporters, including Inouye and Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who argued that the C-17 was a strong, reliable aircraft better suited to transport cargo and troops than the military’s aging fleet of C-5A cargo airplanes – many of which are 40 years and older and in need of expensive upgrades.

“I urge all my colleagues to reject the amendment of the Senator from Arizona and to vote to support the continuation of the C-17 program,” Inouye said. “We believe this is a critical investment which will support our national security strategy, and add much needed airlift capability.”

Dodd, who represents thousands of workers building C-17 components, called McCain’s amendment “short-sighted” and a move that would “wipe out a highly skilled American work force and irreparably damage our military’s combat readiness.”

“The C-17 is the most reliable aircraft in our arsenal – and it’s also the most versatile,” Dodd said. “This amendment would hurt our workers, our troops, and our national security. It is a massive expenditure disguised as a small short-term savings. It is the very definition of cutting off our nose to spite our face. I urge my colleagues to join me in defeating it.”

C-17 supporter Sen. Kit Bond, R-Missouri, also defended the plane, saying continued production is vital for military and humanitarian needs.

The C-17 is often called into service to deliver medical goods, food and water in the wake of natural disasters, and its ability to land on short, unpaved runways sets it apart from the C-5A and has made it a favorite for pilots reaching remote regions devastated by earthquakes and other calamities.

“The C-17 is a proven, combat-tested airlift capability that is essential to the fight we are in right now and has been a workhorse in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Bond, whose state assembles many of the parts used for the jet’s final assembly in Long Beach. “With the war in Afghanistan heating up and the war in Iraq continuing, our airlift needs are only growing.”

McCain, however, may be vindicated if the White House ultimately decides to veto C-17 production when the defense budget reaches President Obama’s desk, which may come as soon as next week.

Earlier, the White House reiterated its opposition to continued C-17 production, though it stopped short of threatening a veto.

Instead, White House officials have focused their efforts on killing a $50-billion F-22 fighter jet program and ending development of a new “Joint Strike Fighter” engine and new presidential helicopter fleet.

“The Administration strongly objects to the addition of $2.5 billion in funding for 10 unrequested C-17 airlift aircraft,” the White House statement reads. “Analyses by the (Department of Defense) have shown that the 205 C-17s in the force and on order, together with the existing fleet of C-5 aircraft, are sufficient to meet the Department’s future airlift needs, even under the most stressing situations.”

kristopher.hanson@presstelegram.com, 562-499-1466

Source: http://www.presstelegram.com/ci_13449459

http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=4551&StartRow=1&ListRows=10&appendURL=&Orderby=D.DateLastUpdated&ProgramID=37&from_page=index.cfm

September 25, 2009

Inouye Not Giving Up

Superficial analysis of the DOD Appropriations bill, now being debated by the Senate, has led some to assert that the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Defense Subcommittee, Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, has lessened pork spending in the bill. Some even assert that Inouye is giving President Obama and Defense Secretary Gates a break on some of the programs that have earned the entire bill a presidential veto threat. Having observed, even participated in, the kind of games I believe Senator Inouye is playing, I conclude that he is trying to breath life back into the F-22 and the alternate GE engine for the F-35 (and more), and he very probably is also making his bill veto-proof.

Gates and Obama are sure to put up a fight against some of this, even if they have not yet visibly started.

On the other hand, Gates and Obama have done nothing about, and are clearly succumbing to, other direct challenges to their declared defense priorities. The bill contains typically huge piles of pork – much of it not listed in the committee’s list of earmarks – paid for by raiding the spending needed to support the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the usual atrocious funding mechanism the Appropriations and Armed Services Committees have employed for years – they use the Operation and Maintenance account of the bill as an “offset” to pay for the billions in pork added throughout the bill. Put simply, the parts of the bill that support training, spare parts, maintenance, food, fuel and much else the troops at war need the most are reduced to enable the money added for earmarks.

It is strange indeed that the form of spending that most fundamentally underscores the top priority that Secretary Gates has given to the defense budget (fighting the wars we are currently in) is so ruthlessly attacked by the bill, and yet, Gates and Obama remain utterly silent on the issue.

Equally offensive are some of the completely disingenuous games the bill plays to attempt to justify its attacks on DOD readiness spending.
An article published today in Military.com explains all this in some detail.

“Putting Pork Past the Pentagon” by Winslow Wheeler was first published by Military.com on Sept. 25, 2009 and is reproduced below.

+++

“Putting Pork Past the Pentagon”

by Winslow T. Wheeler

2009 is an important year for the evolution of pork in defense bills. Having expanded immensely since September 11, 2001, pork has met its first notable challenge. It came from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who in April took a stand against some of the lowest of the hanging fruit in the Pentagon’s acquisition budget. Since then, those in Congress who seek to perpetuate the spending – for their home states and districts – on those very systems have been fighting back, some a lot more successfully than others.

The fight is now coming to a head. The last of the four congressional defense committees to act, the Defense Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC-D) has reported its version of the 2010 Department of Defense Appropriations bill to the Senate. The bill is now awaiting consideration by the full Senate, later this week.

The bill poses Gates and Obama with a sly and indirect response on some specific pork issues; the president and the secretary may choose not to fight them out with the committee. In other – much more fundamental – ways, the bill confronts them directly, but Gates and Obama appear not to have even noticed, and as a result, they have lost the most important part of the fight.

Earlier in the year, porkers on the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) attempted to take Gates on frontally. Led by Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), they sought to stuff additional F-22 fighter aircraft down Gates’ throat by mandating seven new ones in the 2010 National Defense Authorization bill. Having provoked Gates and the White House into an open fight, Chambliss was a big loser on July 21 by a vote of 58 to 40.

The members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have been far more clever – by not provoking open fights with Gates, and still getting their way.

C-17s Slip Through

The first such example occurred in May on the question of adding more C-17s, which Gates said in April he wanted no more of. The official DOD requirement for 190 aircraft had already been exceeded, there being 205 on order. Nonetheless, the House Appropriations Committee’s Defense Subcommittee (HAC-D) added eight more C-17s (for $2.25 billion) to a supplemental spending bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the rest of fiscal year 2009. Someone – it is not clear who – convinced Gates that the additional C-17s were needed in Iraq and Afghanistan.[1] He basically waved the aircraft through, permitting his spokesman to endorse them in a public statement saying they were “in the fight” in Southwest Asia.

Whether intended or not, it sent a clear signal: not only was the sluice gate open for more C-17s but also Gates was “negotiable” on the rest of his 50 decisions on problematic weapon programs.

The final version of the 2009 supplemental included all eight of the HAC-D’s additional C-17s, and when the subcommittee met to consider the new 2010 DOD appropriations bill, it added three more. Encountering no reason not to, the SAC-D has upped the ante in its version of the bill to 10 aircraft, costing $2.5 billion.

More F-22s?

The Senate appropriators even took Gates on in the matter of his big triumph, the F-22. Unlike Chambliss and his clumsy confrontational approach, they were indirect. They earmarked existing F-22 spending not to crash Gates’ declared US production limit of 187 aircraft, but for America’s allies. Specifically, the SAC-D added a section in the bill’s General Provisions title to say that DOD “may” spend money to “develop a future export version of the F-22A that protects classified and sensitive information, technologies and U.S. warfighting capabilities.”[2]

The provision contained all the qualities that just might enable it to slip by Secretary Gates and yet also keep the F-22 production line open -ultimately not just for US allies but for the US Air Force:

• The “may” language did not confront Gates by imposing the idea on him;
• Making the aircraft available for US allies addressed a general theme President Obama has favored;
• By using existing funding already in the bill ($177 million for modifications and $569 million for research for the F-22 fleet), it didn’t even add spending (right now, at least), and
• Some of the aircraft’s critics, such as Lawrence Korb at the stalwartly pro-Obama Center for American Progress, have even said sales of the F-22 to Japan would make great sense.[3]

If an important ally (like Japan) can be enticed to show palpable interest, Gates could find himself in no position to say, “No.” The program using US dollars to develop declassified techniques and materials – sure to become a considerable added expense – would have to go ahead. (Should Israel express interest, the US-financed nature of the program would be even more assured.) If a buyer were actually secured, the F-22 production line, now scheduled to close in 2011, would necessarily stay open.

Even better, if the new “declassified” techniques found a way to address the serious problems the existing US Air Force version of the aircraft is having with its “stealth” coating, wouldn’t it make the sense to permit the US Air Force to have the new and improved version? Also, if the F-35, which is Gates’ alternative to the F-22, were to encounter even more serious problems in its cost, schedule, and performance (which would surprise nobody), wouldn’t it be great to have an open combat aircraft production line to fill the gap?

All hypothetic, but quite plausible – and very slick.

The Veto-Bait Pork

In addition to more US F-22s, developing a second (alternate) engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and continuing the preposterously expensive VH-71 presidential helicopter have attracted veto threats from the White House.[4] The gauntlet is thrown down; the SAC-D clearly had to recognize that any frontal move in favor of those programs would provoke an open fight with Obama and Gates, very possibly with the same result as with Chambliss.

As with the F-22, the Chairman of the SAC-D, Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), is known to support the alternative engine for the F-35. He was expected to include a provision in the bill supporting it, just as the HAC-D had with the addition of $560 million for both development and production. Instead, Inouye’s bill provided no money for the engine.

Similarly, the SAC-D bill did not imitate its House counterpart on the VH-71. Instead of providing $400 million to continue fabrication of five partially built helicopters, Inouye and his subcommittee provided no money.

Is Inouye surrendering to Obama’s and Gates’ wishes on the F-35 engine and the VH-71, as most prognosticators seem to believe, or is he playing a more subtle game?

Veto-Proof Pork

When he goes to resolve the differences in his bill with the House version in a House-Senate conference committee, Inouye will face the choice of either insisting on the Senate position which ends both programs, or going along with that of the House, which funds both programs.

Which way will he go? Are there any signs? There are indeed. It looks like Senator Inouye is trying to make his bill veto-proof, which also implies he envisions it containing at least one of the veto-bait programs.

Traditionally, the Senate Appropriations Committee has scheduled its activities so that the full Senate debates its DOD Appropriations bill immediately after the committee reports it to the Senate. That way, senators not on the committee do not have a lot of time to draft multiple amendments to encumber the bill with earmarks and policy provisions the committee does not welcome.

But that’s not what is happening this time around. The Committee reported its bill on September 10. Almost two weeks later, it remains undebated, languishing on the Senate Calendar. Word has it among some Senate staff that the reason for the delay is to hold the final version of the bill until later in the month. Then will be the end of the fiscal year, and because the Senate has not passed more than half of the twelve appropriations bills that fund the federal government, there will be a need for an “omnibus” bill to package them altogether and get them passed before the new fiscal year starts on October 1. The DOD Appropriations bill is typically seen as a good vehicle for this mammoth legislation: very few in Congress are willing to tolerate being accused of opposing defense spending bills; incorporating the DOD bill into the Omnibus, let alone using it as the prime mover, helps to ensure passage.

There are also rumors that the DOD Appropriations bill will become a legislative vehicle for other legislation, such as the imminently required bill to extend the debt limit of the entire federal government. In other words, the DOD bill will be transformed into, or made part of, a measure for funding most of the federal government. It will be “must pass” legislation. It will also be veto proof. Senator Inouye will have a clear path to including pretty much anything he wants in the DOD parts of this broader legislation.

The Mother Lode of the Pork System

Inouye’s winning, or even losing, on the F-22, F-35, and VH-71 issues will not determine who wins or loses on the broader war over pork in defense spending. There are other far more important issues about pork than the veto-bait programs that have attracted attention in the media. It is those much more fundamental issues that will determine who is winning or losing the match on pork. On those issues, Gates and the White House are not even putting up a fight.

Beyond the C-17s, the F-22s, the F-35 engine, and the helicopter, the Senate bill is filled with hundreds of small earmarks, the garden variety pork. It is all paid for with a mechanism that runs counter to everything Gates has asserted to be his defense spending priority – it’s at the expense of military readiness to prepare for and fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As counted by Taxpayers for Commonsense, the SAC-D listed 777 earmarks for $2.6 billion in its committee report. That tally does not include some additional pork: $1.7 billion for a DDG-51 destroyer to be built in Pascagoula, MS, home to the SAC-D’s top Republican, Thad Cochran, and $2.5 billion for the ten C-17s mentioned above. It also does not include some other expensive additions, and even some more lesser ones, peppered throughout the bill.

Far more troublesome is how all these earmarks are paid for.

The total spending in the bill is $3.9 billion less than the $629.7 Obama and Gates requested. The committee did not add money to the bill to pay for its billions of dollars for pork, it found offsets in other parts of the bill. One of the accounts the committee raided most frequently to pay for the add-ons was the bill’s “Operation and Maintenance” (O&M) account.[5] That account pays for – among many things – training, weapons maintenance, fuel, spare parts, food, etc.: all the things a military needs most in the midst of a war. There is hardly any more meaningful budgetary expression for support for the wars than this account.

Nevertheless, and without a peep of objection from Gates and Obama, the Senator Inouye and the SAC-D cut the $156.4 billion O&M request by a net $2.4 billion – according to the tables in the committee’s report. In truth, the cuts to the readiness account are larger. Inouye and the Defense Subcommittee peppered several O&M sub-accounts with at least 47 earmarks costing $163 million.[6] This, in effect, reduces the money available in the bill for real readiness by simply spending it elsewhere.

Inflation and Other Scams

Inouye and the SAC-D also cut O&M with provisions not appearing in the O&M title of the bill but in the General Provisions title. For example –

• Sec. 8091 in General Provisions reduced O&M across-the-boards by $294 million, based on completely unspecified and unexplained “revised economic assumptions.” (Other titles were cut by an additional $577 million.)

An inquiry to the committee revealed that the justification for this cut was a new estimate that future inflation would be lower than projected earlier, and, thus, the money could be cut with no reduction in purchasing power. The rationale was completely specious: the estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, which are the data the committee is mandated to use, shows future inflation to be higher than previously expected. Specifically, CBO’s economic forecast last March anticipated a .8 percent increase in the future GDP price index; this past August, CBO predicted a 1.1 percent increase. If one seeks to trust economists’ prediction for such future trends, as clearly the SAC-D purports to, instead of money being cut from the O&M budget, it should be added!

• Section 8100 reduces Air Force O&M by $500 million, justified as “excess cash” in Working Capital Funds.

Working Capital Funds are simply amounts of money sloshing around inside the Pentagon’s as one entity pays another for goods and services, such as maintenance and supplies. Without the committee’s releasing a competent study of whether such a huge amount of money is truly excess to needs, this reduction must be considered unsubstantiated.

There are also other sections in General Provisions that transfer or use money in the O&M budget from non-O&M purposes. In each case, the committee failed to provide any meaningful explanation.

The committee’s whacking at the O&M budget is nauseating. In-air Air Force and Navy pilot training hours for combat aircraft are at historic lows; training time in the Army, for example for tank crews, is lower today than during the low readiness Clinton years. Units reporting for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan have been publicly reported to be leaving the US with low readiness ratings. In each service, the backlog for maintenance and repairs remains huge. It is not as if the money could not be put to high priority use if it were left in the O&M budget. Instead, however, something in excess of $3 billion was extracted out of the O&M budget – for the purpose of offsetting (that is, paying for) pork.

Raiding Also War Spending

And, there’s more. The SAC-D cut O&M also in the “Overseas Contingency Operations” (OCO) title of the bill that more directly funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The $81 billion request from Obama and Gates for O&M for US military operations in the wars was cut by $655 million, and another $1.715 billion was cut from the proposed military aid to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

The committee also added some goodies (major hardware spending) to the procurement account in the OCO title: $512 million for 9 F/A-18E/F aircraft, which are unlikely to be built in time to have an impact in the wars, and $1.2 billion for unrequested M-ATV armored vehicles. As with the base bill, the committee did not add money to the requested level of spending for these (and other) add-ons; they used offsets, including the cuts in US O&M and for allies to keep the total spending below the requested amount.

Conclusions

These raids on what Gates and others should regard as priority spending in the defense budget are nothing new; they have been going on for years. They almost make Gates’ and Obama’s objections to the veto-bait programs (the F-35 engine and the VH-71) look superfluous.

Gates and Obama may or may not win on the systems that have attracted a veto threat. But even if they do win each of those battles, they still lose on the broader pork war. Billions of dollars for earmarks for large and small programs will remain in the defense budget, and they will be paid for by reducing spending in other parts of the bill, most notably the account that supports key elements of military readiness.

By not objecting, Gates and Obama will have succumbed to, even enabled, it all.

These behaviors have been occurring for years, and still no one does a thing about them. Until someone does, the pork system on Capitol Hill, and in the executive branch, will remain alive and well. The trophy for 2009 will go to Senator Inouye and the other congressional porkers. They may have lost a few games, but they won the match.

Winslow T. Wheeler is the Director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information. He is also the editor of the anthology “America’s Defense Meltdown: Military Reform for President Obama and the New Congress.”
Endnotes:

[1] The Air Force’s C-17 transport, made by Boeing, is no bargain for those who seek to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with long range, air transport. At $327 million per copy (counting all procurement and development costs), it delivers too little cargo at too much cost. A more fuel-efficient Boeing 747-8 freighter costs 10% less and hauls 85% more cargo for 85% longer range. The Air Force claims that the C-17 was designed to be able to land on “unprepared” landing strips. That claimed ability is rarely, if ever used, but it imposed major payload and cost penalties on the design. When it does deliver to “unprepared” landing strips, it takes weeks to prepare the landing strip! It virtually never directly supports troops in contact with the enemy, such as those in isolated bases in Afghanistan, and even Iraq. In short, the C-17 is no bargain either as a strategic or a tactical air-lifter. Gates was entirely right to seek the end of its production.

[2] See Section 8056 of the bill; find the bill at the GPO website at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h3326rs.txt.pdf.

[3] See “Multiple Benefits if Japan Buys the F-22,” Lawrence Korb and Peter Juul, Atlanta Journal Constitution, September 3, 2009, at http://www.ajc.com/opinion/multiple-benefits-if-japan-130789.html.

[4] On August 17 at the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix, President Obama promised an end to “the special interests and their exotic projects that are years behind schedule and billions over budget,” and he reaffirmed that he is killing off the F-22 fighter, the second F-35 engine, and the presidential helicopter. He finished saying “And if Congress sends me a defense bill loaded with this kind of waste, I will veto it.”

[5] The SAC-D was hardly alone in raiding O&M to pay for pork. The SASC, HASC, and HAC-D did also; the only variations are in the details. Find a discussion of the SASC/HASC/HAC-C raids in an information paper at http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=4535.

[6] 47 is an incomplete listing of the earmarks in the O&M account. It is simply the total number of earmarks listed at the end of the committee report, as required by Senate rules; see pp. 274-295 of the committee report at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_reports&docid=f:sr074.111.pdf. Other, unlisted earmarks occur in other parts of the committee report. For example, there is $16 million added for an “Asia Pacific Regional Initiative,” very probably with Senator Inouye’s full support.

This analysis was posted on the Center for Defense Information website. It exposes and is critical of Senator Inouye’s tricky maneuvering to reinsert the F-22 program into the Defense Appropriations Bill.

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September 16, 2009

More on the Need for Veto of Pentagon Pork

The porkers in the Senate appear to be heeding Obama’s threat to veto their Defense Department appropriations bill if it remains laced with pork and waste. The porkers’ tactic may turn out to be to be to wait until near the end of the fiscal year later in September and wrap their porky, anti-readiness, anti-reform DOD bill along with multiple other appropriations bills into a larger “omnibus” measure that funds much of the federal government. Their logic is to dare Obama to veto such a huge spending bill and make himself and the congressional Democrats vulnerable to various slanders from the Republicans centered around the resulting chaos (they will allege) in the appropriations process – a process the Republicans also utterly and totally failed to run efficiently and ethically when they held sway in Washington.

I grew suspicious that this may turn out to be the porkers’ strategy when I learned this morning that Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, may not want to take up the just-reported DOD appropriations bill in the Senate “for a couple of weeks.” Usually, the appropriators like to have the floor debate on their DOD bill immediately after the committee reports the measure; that obviates too many pesky floor amendments that they consider a pain to handle. That they are delaying means that something is up.

Moreover, the details of the bill bear close watching. Some of the instant analysis of the bill is that Inouye and Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., have succumbed to Obama on issues like the alternative F-35 engine, the VH-71 helicopter, and the Kinetic Energy Interceptor. An alternative interpretation is that they left those items out of their bill to appear to have succumbed, while in truth they seek to cut a deal with Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., – no enemy to pork – on a variety of goodies, including the F-35 and VH-71 veto bait. The seeming capitulation will send a mis-signal to Gates to not get obstreperous with the bill, as he did with the DOD Authorization bill in July when Sen. Saxby Chabliss, R-Ga., challenged Gates on the F-22, and lost. Time will tell.

Note also that Senator Inouye and the F-22 gang have added the F-22 back into 2010 spending legislation – under the pretext of a high-cost program to modify the F-22 to make it available for export.

If Gates is alert, he has a lot to get obstreperous about. Will he? (More on all this in a few days.)

“Pentagon Un-Reform Sweeps through Washington” was first published by The Henry L. Stimson Center on Sept. 15, 2009 and is reproduced below.

“Pentagon Un-Reform Sweeps through Washington”

by Winslow T. Wheeler

People who observe the Pentagon say at this blog and elsewhere that they see reform in the actions of Secretary of Defense Gates and in bills coming out of Congress. It reminds me of the House Judiciary Committee’s proceedings when they prepared to impeach Richard Nixon in 1974. Then Representative William Hungate (D-OH) famously said that “if someone brought an elephant through that door and I said ‘That’s an elephant,’ [the Republicans] would say, ‘That’s an inference. It could be a mouse with a glandular condition.’ ” In today’s delusion-riddled atmosphere in Washington, they are parading vermin rodents through the door, and the pundits are declaring them all to be priceless mink and sable.

Consider the evidence. I’ll do the easy part first. That would be Congress. The big pretend reform push came in the form of the Weapon System Acquisition Reform Act of 2009, proudly signed into law by President Obama in May. The bill was written by the bipartisan leadership of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, and not a single Member of Congress voted against it-in itself a suspicious sign.

As originally written by Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ), the bill was hopelessly cosmetic. For instance, the legislation, as drafted, created a new, independent Director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation to replace the Pentagon’s existing in-house cost shop. This new cost czar’s estimates were declared to be the end of DOD’s use of phony, understated price tags to gain approval for weapon programs in their early stages. In reality, the bill did not force the Pentagon to actually use the cost czar’s estimates. The result: DOD’s decision makers remain completely free to ignore the new czar, just as they have been ignoring previous independent cost estimates for decades.

Other parts of the bill actually got worse as it proceeded through Congress. The bill sought to require the Pentagon to buy competing prototypes of each new weapon. That is, it promised reform through “competitive fly before buy,” a practice that has consistently resulted in better weapons at a lower price on the few occasions that it has been honestly tried. However, Levin and McCain’s tepid wording provided the Pentagon’s managers with a gapping loophole, permitting them to waive the burdensome competition requirement simply by invoking “critical”-but undefined-“national security objectives.” Dissatisfied with this free pass, others in Congress added a new loophole that left managers free to compete a subsystem instead of having to compete the entire weapon. And in case that was too onerous, they added yet another: if managers declare that contracting for competitive subsystems would increase costs, they can ignore the competition requirement altogether.

As originally written in the Senate, the bill actually ended the practice, now rife, of permitting contractors to conduct the Pentagon’s official reviews of their own programs. Too much for the Senate and House Armed Services Committee, the text was changed to instruct the Pentagon to write any contractor self-review regulation it pleases, subject only to the vaguest legislative guidance.

It goes on and on throughout the bill; no where is there an important, needed requirement unaccompanied by a Mack Truck loophole and/or permission to waive the entire thing if any bureaucrat feels the discomfort of a single pea beneath him.

Congress’ behavior in its annual funding bills, the DOD authorization and appropriations legislation, is every bit as atrocious as it has been in the past. Reform there is as dead as a doornail. Consider not just the pork that the House and Senate Armed Services and Appropriations Committees add to bills but how they pay for it.

The Senate Armed Services Committee added a few hundred earmarks costing $9 billion in its bill, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense. The House Armed Services Committee added $2.26 billion for 502 earmarks. The House Appropriations Committee added 1,116 earmarks costing $2.75 billion. As always, each of these committees did not increase spending in their bills to pay for this pork; instead, they raided other parts of the legislation. The most popular “bill payer” is the Operations and Maintenance account – the part of the Pentagon budget that pays for training, weapons maintenance, fuel, food, – all the things you need in war. The SASC cut O&M by $2 billion; the HASC also cut it by $2 billion; the HAC cut it by $2.3 billion.

The Senate Appropriations Committee is just now finished with its version of the bill. The goriest of the details will not be known until the committee’s report is available, but it is already abundantly clear it is not departing from the pattern of the other committees; billions of dollars in pork paid for by raids on other parts of the bill, especially the readiness accounts.

And what of those “sweeping reforms” breathlessly announced by the New York Times after SecDef Gates’ dramatic decisions on 50 DOD programs last April? On a few, such as the T-SAT space program and the CSAR helicopter, no one put up much of a fight. Gates won. On those programs where the manufacturers and their pawns in Congress decided to resist, Gates’ record is not so good.

Once he finally realized he had a giant fight on his hands on the F-22, with White House help Gates beat back Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) after a huge – but very laudable – struggle. But on many other prominent programs, he is losing. On the C-17, Gates capitulated early – in May – when his spokesman gave a pass to eight more C-17s in the Iraq/Afghanistan supplemental. Now he will get another ten from the Senate, thanks to porkers like Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer (both D-CA). The Chairmen of the House and Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittees, Congressman John Murtha (D-PA) and Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), are also giving Gates a lesson on the staying power of pork. Murtha slathered in the VH-71 presidential helicopter, the alternative F-35 engine, and the Kinetic Energy Interceptor, and Inouye took the brazen step of fostering more F-22s as candidates for foreign sales – but only after a new and expensive modification program. Gates and Obama have another fight on their hands (even bigger than the F-22 tumble last July) if the House-Senate conference to resolve these pork differences is to become anything other than a veritable festival of adding the pork lists together, rather than dropping them.

Congress continues to be a part of the problem, not of the solution.

OK, so there’s hope for some internal reform inside the Pentagon, right?

First, consider the Pentagon’s interaction with the Weapon System Acquisition Reform Act of 2009, discussed above. Virtually every weakening of the already hopelessly cosmetic bill was sought, even demanded by the Pentagon, specifically by its Deputy Secretary of Defense, former Raytheon lobbyist William J. Lynn III – the same individual who is heading up the Department’s implementation of the loophole ridden bill.

Second, consider Gates’ preferred alternative to the hopelessly overpriced and underperforming F-22, the F-35. That aircraft is now very much overweight, underperforming even more than the F-22, behind schedule and getting worse, and growing fast in cost. Gates’ plan for it basically ignores all this and seeks to rush ahead and buy 500 of them before the definitive flight test report lands on his desk. By endorsing a program so obviously laden with the same old problems, Gates is ensuring a rerun of the F-22 fiasco, and he is keeping business as usual well ensconced.

Beyond this “joint service” F-35 mess, the military services are nurturing other debacles. The Navy has its obscenely expensive, mindlessly gold-plated Zumwalt destroyer, in addition to a more than doubled in cost Littoral Combat Ship that continues in production – testing uncompleted. The Army is busy re-birthing the Future Combat Systems program, a baroque “system of systems” edifice intended to link together many expensive and unworkable technologies that pretend to remove the “fog of war” from the battlefield. Not to be left behind, the Marine Corps is fighting back against critics of its high cost, underperforming V-22 “tiltrotor” that has killed more US Marines than it has enemies in Iraq or Afghanistan. The Air Force lusts after a real doozey: an unmanned nuclear bomber.

Is there any ray of hope? Perhaps. Talking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix in August, President Obama said “. if Congress sends me a defense bill loaded with this kind of waste, I will veto it.”

If?

A veto of the pork-grizzled, readiness-retarding, acquisition-deformed defense spending legislation he is about to receive from Congress would be the most pro-defense action by an American president since Abraham Lincoln fired General George McClellan for his bad case of the “slows” in the Civil War. Such a veto would clearly signal that we have finally sunk to the ultimate depths, and it is time to start to fix it – for real.

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Source: http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=4547&StartRow=1&ListRows=10&appendURL=&Orderby=D.DateLastUpdated&ProgramID=37&from_page=index.cfm