WhirledView

State Watch

By PHK

Maybe it’s a blessing that Condi is off to Turkey to attempt to explain to the Turks why our top general in Kurdistan says he won’t do anything to help rein in the PKK. If that’s the message, Rice’s one day fly-by en route to Iraq will be about as effective as Nero’s fiddling while Rome burns – but it does get her out of a smoldering Foggy Bottom for a few days while leaving her deputies to deal with the flames from an incensed Foreign Service.

Not only did our less than illustrious public diplomacy Czarina Karen Hughes submit her resignation papers this morning to begin mid-December but according to the news reports, Condi agreed to turn over Iraq employee convoy guard duty to Gates’ Pentagon as a result of the Blackwater shoot-em up on Nisour Square fiasco. I don’t object to the military providing State with protective services and placing contract security guards under some kind of law. After all, the Marine Guard has been a staple at US Embassies around the world for decades. But it looks to me as if the administration is - among other things - substituting one understaffed contracting oversight office for another – while continuing to expand the scope and weight of the US military establishment and the military-industrial complex over US foreign policy. After all, the military has to contract out guard duty and other functions too and it doesn’t necessarily control private contractors overseas – and certainly not in terms of fiscal or other kinds of accountability - that much better than State.

Easy come, easy go . . .

Meanwhile, Hughes, who - one might say - aptly chose Halloween to announce her departure from the Department, is the third State political appointee to desert State's sinking ship in less than a week.

An aside: Condi apparently managed to make that formal announcement before escaping to Andrews to catch her plane to Turkey. Clearly, however, she couldn’t be bothered to wait around for the much more difficult meeting with 300 career diplomats angered over the Department's newly announced forced assignments Iraq policy. Looks to me like her absence represents just one more example of why 88 percent of the American Foreign Service Association's active duty members do not think Rice "is fighting for them." Let alone has their interests at heart.

Earlier, the far more junior David Denehy who was most recently “senior advisor” (often a shunt-aside job) to the apparently unpopular democratizing Iran account in State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs announced quietly last week that he was leaving to set up his own small company – whatever that means. This once-upon-a-time fledgling IRI staffer engaged in the democracy building business either saw the handwriting on State’s wall and jumped before being pushed, or someone elsewhere made him a better offer.

Then, on the red-faced security front, Richard J. Griffin, resigned abruptly as Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security, probably well aware that the improper and illegal offering of immunity to Blackwater security guards by a State security investigatory team was about to leak to the media. Griffin’s bio has already been expunged from State’s website. Reminds me of the airbrushed photos in the Russian archives from Stalin’s days. Now you see them, now you don’t.

But the real reason the steam is rising from the Department – as opposed to the grates in the sidewalk near the building where DC’s homeless take up permanent residence in winter – has much to do with the announcement of forced assignments of Foreign Service Officers to Iraq. Not only did the current Director General of the Foreign Service Ambassador Henry K. Thomas, Jr. announce the forced assignments decision to the media before letting those potentially affected know (so they had to read it first in the national press), but the fact is the Department just doesn’t have the staff to fill the once again expanded number of positions. As the October 15, 2007 Center for Strategic & International Studies “blue ribbon report” tells us, State’s staffing deficit really totals 2,094 positions including a shortage of over 1,000 Foreign Service Officers. Yet, during the past two years Congress has even refused to fund State’s modest request for 331 additional officers.

Corporations in Costume

by CKR

Halliburton: oilfield trucks with lubricants, drilling mud, logging equipment.

Fluor: chemical plants under construction.

Bechtel: nuclear plants under construction.

Kellogg Brown and Root: catalytic cracking towers at refineries.

Those images still float in my mind when those names appear in the news, even though we now know these companies largely for their government contracts. A sign that I’m getting old, that I can recall when large American companies actually produced something.

But Halliburton opens its webpage with “Oilfield Technologies and Services.” In fact, click where you will on that page and others, you won’t find anything about the Iraq war. Not even a Government Services Division.

Kellogg Brown and Root's webpage has a photo not unlike my mental picture. They call themselves KBR now, in the mode of KFC and KSM. They’re more forthcoming about their Government Services Division, with a header photo that has to be somewhere in the Middle East. According to Wikipedia, KBR is no longer a part of Halliburton.

Bechtel, according to its website, still builds nuclear plants. It also touts project management, which can include everything from generating detailed PERT charts and budgets to sitting back and watching the government contracts flow through. It’s shyer than KBR about its government activities, dividing its “Services” link into “Competencies” and “Markets,” the latter of which contains “U.S. Government Services.”

Fluor’s photo also connects with the picture in my head. It’s up front about its government business, which it divides and subdivides under “Industries and Services.” It’s got contracts with the DoD, DOE, DHS, DOL, DOS (building those fortress embassies!), and foreign governments too. Most of the categories aren’t clickable; can’t tell if that’s because the business isn’t there of if they’d have to kill us if they told us.

So which is the mask? Is the government business hollowing out the real stuff? Or does the real business give the corporations a basis for making government work better?

Boo!

NAS Slams GNEP

by CKR

In the midst of negotiating the nuclear deal with India, President Bush announced the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. I wondered about that timing. Ivan Oelrich is wondering about the continuing rush toward “implementing” this program.

The National Academy of Sciences just released a report that is highly critical of GNEP on technical grounds. They go into more detail than Oelrich and I did, but they repeat some of our points. The bottom line is that the United States has been out of the reactor business for a long time, particularly reprocessing, and it’s foolish to come back with a single bright idea and think that you’re going to tell the world how to develop nuclear power. Particularly on a rush schedule.

I’ve been trying to develop several posts lately, all of them on the theme of the utter lack of planning, strategy, on the part of the Bush administration. It’s becoming clear: there is at least an incapability in this area, and perhaps an antipathy to the very concept of strategy (strategery?). You want democracy in the Middle East? Presto: we invade Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. End of planning. You want North Korea or Iran to end their nuclear programs? Presto: don’t speak to them. End of planning.

Privatization Means Better Business Practices?

by CKR

One of the recurrent justifications for changing the Los Alamos National Laboratory contract was that private industry knows how to do cost-effective business. Maybe not.

The Department of Energy's Inspector General looked at the contract between the Laboratory and KSL Services, a joint venture of KBR (formerly known as Kellogg, Brown and Root), Shaw Infrastructure and Los Alamos Technical Associates. KSL does infrastructure support work for the Laboratory: janitorial and skilled crafts services.

The IG's office reviewed KSL's charges for its services from January 2005 through April 2007. Los Alamos National Security LLC, a company formed by the University of California, Bechtel, BWX Technologies, and Washington Group International, took over management of the Laboratory on June 1, 2006. For seventy-five percent of the jobs during the review period, the actual costs exceeded estimated costs by more than twenty percent.

Sloppy accounting and lack of controls, rather than fraud, seem to be the reason for the overcharges. Oversight by Laboratory management, those guys who were brought in from private industry to straighten things out, seems light to none. For example,

Effective December 1, 2006, LANL issued a new administrative procedure for KSL work performance that identifies new controls to address estimates and cost overruns...We were told, however, that as of May 1, 2007, the new procedure had not been widely implemented.

That's under the new privatized management.

Tuesday Feeder Blogging and Amaryllis Watch

by CKR

The doves have been enjoying the seed and cranberry block. Yesterday morning I looked out and there were at least three. And then I looked again: a big light collared dove. Mourning doves and white-winged doves don’t have a collar, and this one was bigger than the two white-wings. It was very shy, but I managed to get some photos.

It looks like a Eurasian collared dove. According to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology Feeder Watch Project, these doves are spreading across the United States. This is the first one I’ve seen, but it looks like they are not particularly uncommon in New Mexico. The collar is diagnostic, along with the dark wingtips. The only other dove with a collar is the ringed turtledove, smaller and less common.

Since I’ve lived in northern New Mexico, I’ve seen white-winged doves become more abundant. This may be part of the general movement north of the Chihuahuan desert. The movement of Eurasian collared doves may or may not be related; they are a non-native species that has arrived via cages.

Trouble at Foggy Bottom

By PHK

“Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and caldron bubble” - Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 1

The State Department’s cable to the field regarding forced assignments of Foreign Service Officers to Iraq for 2008-9 was transmitted on Saturday. The number of potential forced assignments on the list is 48, not 50 as The Washington Post reported over the weekend but the effect on the service will be the same. On the one hand, officers on the hit list will have two weeks to respond – either to “volunteer” or to try to find some reason that will wash so they can opt out for another year. On the other hand, they apparently still don’t know who is to be tapped – the “knock on the door in the middle of the night,” or the e-mail from personnel, has yet to arrive. And the cable does not say how many people are likely to receive the notice overall.

At this point, criteria don’t appear to be well spelled out, rumors are swirling at typhoon four strength and the 48 forced assignments apply only to one of three Foreign Service categories – the generalist officers who are in classes 1 and below (equivalent of GS-15 or Colonel and lower). The highest ranks – Ambassadors and Deputy Chief of Mission – and the 5, 000 Foreign Service Specialists (security, telecommunications, medical, secretaries, and administrative assistants) – are not included. This does not mean that similar directives will not be sent to them – it just means that hasn’t happened yet.

But if service in Iraq, or at other hardship posts, is truly valued, maybe by-the-by, State could rethink how it hands out awards. Why, for instance, was the Deputy Chief of Mission (second in command of the embassy) in the US Embassy in Rome anointed DCM of the year? Great hardship post that it is.

Despite the Department’s claim that the forced assignments selection process occurred in full consultation with the union, the American Foreign Service Association, it’s clear that the decision does not reflect AFSA’s position. As the accompanying AFSA cable states: “We have reaffirmed to the Department our conviction that Iraq assignments of FS civilians into a war zone would be detrimental to the individual, to the post, and to the Foreign Service as a whole.” And as AFSA has pointed out yet again: well over 2,000 members have volunteered to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan over the past four years. For a total service of 11,500 members this is a large number.

Of the 11,500 total, 6,500 are Foreign Service Officers the other 5,000 are Foreign Service Specialists and the Service is so short-staffed – thanks to the Bush administration and a recalcitrant Congress that have been unwilling to increase the size of the service - the 270 officers and specialists or so assigned to Iraq mean positions elsewhere go begging. Oh, my gosh, it might cost $50 million a year more to begin to right-size. How does that equate to the amount thrown away in Bush’s Iraq folly every minute of every day?

DipNote on the story? Not

Meanwhile, you’d think everything is hunky-dory at State, if the contents of the Public Affairs Bureau’s Dipnote “blog” are to be believed. When I scanned its current posts earlier today (which are now in correct, chronological blog order), you will read Tara Foley lecturing us about understanding cultural differences after spending time in Saudi Arabia, Frederick Jones asking the question of the week as to whether the UN fulfills its mission, and Karen Hughes (who else but) gushing over “Welcome: Portraits of America” the latest Disney movie she saw. Too bad the shots of Niagara Falls were, as a Canadian commenter pointed out, of the Canadian side.

The Presidential Candidates on Nuclear Policy - Republicans

by CKR

With six Foreign Affairs articles and other available material, I’m ready to start analyzing the presidential candidates’ positions. Nuclear policy, of course, it is my particular interest. It also seemed to me to be seemed a fairly limited topic. As I pulled the material together, I found I had nineteen pages of material in Word! So I will discuss the Republicans in this post, the Democrats later.

The Republican candidates present a particularly weak set of positions on nuclear policy. Mitt Romney says nothing at all about it in his Foreign Affairs article. The Republican candidates chose not to participate in a survey by the Council for a Liveable World on nuclear issues and international security.

John McCain claims that

The nuclear nonproliferation regime is broken for one clear reason: the mistaken assumption behind the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) that nuclear technology can spread without nuclear weapons eventually following.

This is historically boneheaded. There are about 44 nations that have a level of nuclear technology that could support a nuclear weapons program. Beyond the five nuclear weapon nations in the NPT, only five more have actually developed testable nuclear devices. Three of those additional five have chosen to stay out of the NPT. One of the remaining two (South Africa) gave up its nuclear weapons and opened itself up to International Atomic Energy Agency inspection. That leaves North Korea as a nation in which nuclear technology has escalated to nuclear weapons. Iran is a question mark. Perhaps McCain regards one outlaw and another possibility as having “broken” the nuclear nonproliferation regime.

And Yet Some More Repetition on Iran - Updated 10/29/07

by CKR

Repetition works. So I’ll provide some of my own. Feel free to repeat it yourself, as much as possible, because what’s taken hold through repetition has very, very little relationship to reality.

From this morning’s “Face the Nation” (emphasis mine):

BOB SCHIEFFER: Obviously no news to you that last week the Bush administration levied sweeping new sanctions against the Revolutionary Guard in Iran and Iranian banks in an effort to pressure Iran to change its policy about trying to develop a nuclear weapon.

I guess the question that a lot of people are asking, and I'll start with you, Senator Levin, does this mean we're headed toward war with Iran, if this--these sanctions don't work?

Senator CARL LEVIN (Democrat, Michigan): I hope not. I think the sanctions are the right way to go. A lot of diplomatic pressure, a lot of economic pressure. Most importantly, keep the world together against Iran. Right now we've got most of the world, I think just about every country, that does not want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. It's in no one's interest that they have it, and I think most countries, including Russia, as well as Israel, obviously, but other countries in the region are not going to stand by and just simply watch if Iran gets to a--the point where they actually are getting to a nuclear weapon. And so my belief is that we ought to dial down the rhetoric, we ought to make it clear that there's always a nuclear--excuse me, there's always a military option of Iran goes nuclear, but that we ought to just speak more softly because these hot words that's coming out of the administration, this hot rhetoric plays right into the hands of the fanatics in Iran. They like to be called an evil empire. These fanatics love to have that weapon in their hands, that the West is beating up on them and threatening them. So we should speak more softly, carry a big stick, as Teddy Roosevelt said.

A short exchange about “Russia’s willingness to live with a nuclear-armed Iran” follows. Then Schieffer turns to the other guest, Senator Lindsey Graham. The exchange on Russia continues, and then

Sen. GRAHAM: Well, I think the president is dead right, that the Iranian president has told the world that he desires to destroy the state of Israel. I don't think they're making any bones about they're trying to develop a nuclear weapons program, not peaceful nuclear power. So I'm taking the Iranian president at his word. Their actions speak louder than anything else. They're clearly going down the Iranian--uranium enrichment road that would lead to weapons material and not peaceful nuclear power. So I think the president is justified in trying to wake up the world, wake up Russia, wake up the United Nations, the European Union to do something about this. If everybody likes Israel and loves Israel as we all say we do, we need to be more aggressive. We don't need to talk softly. We need to act boldly because time is not on our side.

And let’s listen to Chris Dodd on “Meet the Press.”