The United States, in concert with European allies, has begun attacking the Libyan government of Qaddafi.

Donald Sensing does a better job than I can expressing reservations about the justification, limits, and goals of this action.

I will only add that if the President doesn’t call a joint session of Congress in the next 48 hours and get a congressional resolution authorizing the use of force without a clear and present danger to the country, then he may be in trouble with the War Powers Act. It’s possible that he wants a showdown over the Act, which limits his power, but it’s also possible that he believes that it’s irrelevant.  If he takes the latter position, then the legal and constitutional wrangling could get interesting.

While I question this action by our government, I will be keeping the airmen and sailors of our country and our allies in my thoughts and prayers.  You’re not going to see me or people like me standing outside of an air force base or military hospital protesting the bombardment of Libya, even though I disagree with the President.

Last night, the U.N. Security Council declared war on the government of Mohmar Qaddafi.  Oh, they call it a “no-fly zone”, and they try to spread the responsibility around by asking member nations to voluntarily participate.  But if an organized group of sovereign nations decides to bomb the anti-aircraft defenses of another sovereign country and then shoot down any of that countries planes that take off, that’s an act of war in my book.

So how’s it going to happen?  I suppose whoever decides to enforce this could stage aircraft out of western Egypt, or maybe park a series of aircraft carriers off the coast and patrol the entire country.  Or a couple of airfields in Libya proper could be seized and air operations run out of there. 

There are those who think that using long range missiles and drones to crater airstrips to keep the Libyan Air Force on the ground without having to actually shoot down their planes.  One thing that this strategy misses is that Libya has helicopters which are almost as effective and survivable in ground attack roles as fixed wing aircraft, and can be flown out of just about every square inch of the country.  Libya also has quite a few fixed wing aircraft that are designed specifically to take off and land off on short, unimproved runways, which makes any well-packed road a temporary airstrip.

No, disabling the established airfields in Libya will not keep Qaddafi from using his airpower to continue to pound his opposition.  It doesn’t take much to hide an MI-24 in a warehouse or a wadi, then trot it out again once the U.N. air patrol has moved on.  A small fixed wing aircraft can land on a patch of desert, be covered up with netting all day long, then be used during the night to bomb fixed rebel positions.  In order to keep the Libyan Air Force out of the fight, the aircraft and/or crews will need to be eliminated.

So the U.N. has committed to bombing, shooting down, and destroying the armed forces of a sovereign nation so that they cannot be used in an entirely internal civil war. 

Will President Obama park a couple of our already overtasked aircraft carriers off the Libyan coast and start flying interdiction missions?  Or maybe he’ll park a couple of fighter wings in the Egyptian desert to patrol Libya and be the target of every Jihadi in the neighborhood who hasn’t met his quota for the month.  Then there’s the option of occupying air bases in Libya and flying out of there, but I can’t see becoming an occupier and target for not just the Jihadi’s but also both sides of the civil war. 

Maybe he’ll choose to just provide logistical support to those who actually do the shootdowns.  Imagine the pride he’ll feel when he’s pointing at that during the 2012 elections.  “I cared enough about meddling in the affairs of another country that I sent our fighting men and women to tanker fuel, food, and spare parts to the French and Italians!”

It appears that France and Great Britain may already be gearing up to do the initial strikes in the next few days.  Diplomatic horse trading and cajoling is already underway to get members of the Arab League,who have been screaming for someone to do something about Qaddafi since the first shots were fired, to actually put some skin in the game.  Imagine that, Muslim countries putting the lives of their own young men at risk to maintain security in the Mid-East. What a novel idea.

This is an internal Libyan conflict. There is precisely zero chance, if it’s left alone, of it spilling over into neighboring countries.  Qaddafi, while a ruthless dictator, has broken no international norms of warfare by using the armed forces at his disposal, either native or freelance, to defeat an armed uprising in his country.  What are we going to do when Saudi Arabia has to use their F-16’s and M-1 tanks to put down an insurrection?  Or the government we continue to prop up in Iraq?  Will we let an unelected international body declare war on them?

We are best served by letting the Libyan rebellion either win by its own merits or lose.  If enough of the Libyan people feel their cause is just, then a large part of the armed forces will either turn on Qaddafi or will refuse to attack their own people.  By poking our noses into a conflict that is none of our business, we risk being wrapped up in it for years to come.

Warning:  This is a long one.  I may ramble on a bit.  You have been warned.

The other night a fellow GBC‘er, Attila, asked some very pointed questions about Wikileaks that helped me verbalize my gut feelings on the subject.

For those who’ve been under a rock for the past year or so, Wikileaks is a website and organization that takes documents that are normally kept under a cover of secrecy and places them out for all the world to see.  They have been criticized for releasing information that puts American soldiers and human intelligence sources (read people who give us information) into danger.

Some have asserted that a lot of data is classified to cover up crimes.  While this does happen, it’s illegal and unethical to do so.  Basically, information is classified for two basic reasons:

1. Operational plans and information – Data that shows what U.S. and Allied forces are going to do, have done, or are doing.  This can also mean data that can be used to find the strong and weak points in our technology, our people, or our procedures.  For example, the plan for a unit in Afghanistan’s activities is classified, as are a lot of the capabilities of our radios, weapons, and vehicles.
2. Intelligence data, sources and methods – Information that we know about our worldwide adversaries, or data that can be used to figure out how our intelligence staffs find out what they know, or the methods they use to find and interpret information. 

Wikileaks has let a few cats out of the bag on operational data, but their information was mostly older military information, which is less damaging and dangerous than publishing the plans for on-going or future operations.  Apparently they have published the worldwide location of high-value targets such as communications and logistics hubs that the U.S. government compiled a few years ago, which to me needs to be kept under covers.  That kind of information is a shopping list for those who want to do us harm.

The more damaging information that I’ve seen in the news is that which deals with intelligence sources.  This information is kept secret so that these sources continue to produce.  The method an adversary would close to eliminate a source varies with the source.  If it’s a signals or imagery intelligence source, then the enemy can just change the way that information is kept hidden from us, such as putting up better aerial camouflage or using encryption.  If it’s a human intelligence source, the most likely method is the application of a few grams of lead and brass to the brain stem of the source and his immediate family.  That’s right, children.  When Wikileaks gives away the identify of a human source, even if they redact the actual name, they are probably sentencing several people to death.

Some of you may remember the name Aldrich Ames.  Ames was a counter-intelligence agent in the CIA.  He became an agent of the Soviet Union, and betrayed several people who were providing our side with information.  At least 10 of these people were executed. Wikileaks does the same thing when it describes an intelligence source closely enough that that source can be identified and eliminated.

Some have asserted that Wikileaks is nothing more than a journalistic organization that is passing along inside information to shed light on underhanded government dealings.  I can sort of see where that point comes from.  The press is a part of a functioning democracy that points out when the government is doing wrong and is using classification of data to cover it up.  But very little of what Wikileaks has released shows malfeasance, and in my honest opinion, none of  what I see should have been released to the public.

But for the sake of the argument, let’s say that the individual who passed along the latest dump of information  to Wikileaks thought that at least some of the information was classified only to cover up crimes and bad behavior.  Such use of classification is prohibited and is an abuse of information control procedures, so our intrepid leaker takes copies of the information to the press, hoping that something will happen to fix the situation.  My response to this is to ask why he did not go through the appropriate channels to report illegal or unethical activity?  Was the Inspector General or the Criminal Investigations Division not interested?  What about his Congressman?  I’m sure that if an intelligence analyst calls his Congressman’s office and reports that he has evidence of a crime that has been illegally classified to cover up the crime and does not feel comfortable going through his chain of command that the congress critter would make time to look into what was being asserted.

In this instance, I believe that Manning took as big a bite as he could out of the classified information he could get to on the classified network, regardless of what it contained, and deposited it in Wikileak’s lap with no thought that he was doing something noble.  This is the action of a poseur who wants cred, not a conscientious whistle blower who goes to the press in order to stop a cover-up.  The Pentagon Papers may have been damaging to the U.S. war in Vietnam, but they did not lead directly to the death of U.S. troops and Vietnamese allies, and did show unethical activities by the Johnson administration.  Deep Throat gave light to a situation that had no hope of coming out of the dark without his efforts. Manning was looking for a way to count coup on Internet chat boards.

Yes, the government really dropped the ball in allowing a low-level intelligence analyst to get access to as much information as Manning did. Some have questioned the usefulness of classifying information that three million people have access to.  I’m hoping now that the cow is out of the barn that the government is doing what it can to make it harder for the rest of the herd to bolt.  But that’s beside the point.  When Manning signed for his clearance, he agreed to only access data that he had a need to know, and he promised to protect classified information of all stripes from exposure to non-cleared personnel.  The data could all have been in one big, wide open directory and he should have still left the data he didn’t need to do his job alone and kept the data he used safe.

And if Wikileaks is a news outlet, then maybe they should be vetting their information before putting it out for the world to see.  Is it newsworthy to out the ‘secret’ that diplomats make reports on what they observe when they meet with representatives of other countries.  The location and identification of critical infrastructure facilities, along with the impact of their loss or degradation, is not something that should be shouted from the Internet roof tops.  I’m not a journalist, but I would think that some journalistic ethics should kick in when you’re giving definitively identifying information about human intelligence sources to the New York Times.

So to summarize, Wikileaks and organizations like it do have a place in our society.  If we look at them as part of the press, then their job is to give whistle blowers a place of last resort to report bad governmental behavior.  But if all they do is produce volumes of documents meant solely to embarrass governments, then they lose that role and become a conduit for damaging information to be given to enemies.

As to what should happen to Julian Assange and the rest of Wikileaks, I leave that to the courts.  They may be able to argue that they were acting as journalists and beat the rap, assuming that they will be indicted.  But for those who feed them from inside the government without trying to follow other paths to justice first, I feel no remorse in saying that I hope they are punished severely and publicly.  If the information that they leak is used to track down and murder people who are helping our war effort, then the leakers should be executed.  At the least, they should be made to spend a large percentage of their lives looking at the sky through bars.

This morning, the U.S. Senate voted down a measure which would have dropped the use of earmarks to add local projects to larger spending bills.  An earmark is an amendment to a bill that provides federal money or tax breaks to a cause, group, or project. A member of Congress attaches these to spending bills that he knows will be passed in order to bring home a little more of that Federal smack.  Over the years, earmarks have been the death by 1000 cuts that have packed our laws with pork spending.

There has always been an oily feeling about the whole process.  It’s not hard to imagine someone making a campaign donation in exchange for an earmark.  Even if all of the earmarks ever passed were wholly virtuous, there is the perception that they are part of a quid pro quo. Caesar’s wife must be beyond reproach, and so should our Congress.  The Tea Party made earmarks an issue in the 2010 Congressional elections, and Republicans in both houses have foresworn their use.  The Senate bill would have made it a matter of procedure to not attach earmarks to bills.

I don’t believe that earmarks are a sure sign of corruption.  I don’t even believe that most members of Congress are corrupt.  But there is a virulent minority in both houses of Congress that use their power to bring home the pork spending as a club to wring every available penny for their re-election or retirement out of their constituency.  I support efforts to remove earmarks from legislation, if for no other reason that it forces dishonest people to find a new way to steal from us.

But if Congressional Democrats, who I must give some credit to for making modest reforms to the process of earmarks, want to continue the practice, then how about we have a Federal Earmark Consolidation And Legitimization (FECAL) bill during every session of Congress?  Each addition to the bill should list which member(s) of Congress requested it, who it will benefit, and what it will be used for.  The bill will need to be passed by both chambers and signed by the President, so everyone can know exactly who is creating FECAL material in our legislative process.  You want a few million federal dollars for a highway or bridge project?  Just put it in the FECAL bill.  Want to give a tax break to the largest employer in your congressional district?  Put it in the FECAL Bill.  It’s so easy even a corrupt Congressman can do it.

If we must have an unsavory, possibly corrupt process for taking my hard earned money and passing it out to our congress critters’ pet projects, Congress should at least have the decency to put all of their special appropriations into one place where we can have a good look at them.

According to this (H/T to Uncle), I guess I can be described as a domestic extremist.

So I’m just going to confirm it.   My views on personal privacy, government inefficiency, and how transportation security are being done run right into that classification, according to DHS Secretary Napolitano.

As for whether or not I’m inciting others to make life difficult for TSA agents who want to check out what you look like under your clothes either by eye or by feel, let me be perfectly clear:  I believe that it is every American’s patriotic duty to resist this stupidity to the utmost they can do without breaking the law.  That means forcing TSA agents to glove up.  That means slowing down the line.  That means reminding the sheep that the sheepdogs don’t have the power to ‘help them over the fence’. 

And you know what?  My words here are protected speech.  I invite any government goon who disagrees with that statement to pucker up.  I am going to keep ranting, complaining, and trying to persuade my fellow citizens to politely obstruct these ridiculous ‘security’ measures until they go away or until my fingers can no longer type.

So DHS can put me on whatever list they want.  Here’s my contact information:

Mr. Daddy Bear
1234 KisMiAce Drive
Louisville Kentucky, United States of America.

OK, I promise to not go off on another rant on the TSA.  Pinky swear.

Andrew Dodge over at Pajamas Media details his recent encounter with the TSA and a pat down. During his initial pat down, the TSA agent happened upon Mr. Dodge’s abdominal scar.  Mr. Dodge was then poked and prodded by the agent for several minutes to make sure that the scar was really a scar, even when he offered to lift his shirt and show the scar for visual examination.  He was apparently probulated pretty hard, as he reports that his scar and the area around it were still quite sore the day after.

So now we have another category of passenger who will be singled out for an intrusive bodily search, those with a physical anomaly.  Breda has already discussed her travails of going through a TSA checkpoint with a prosthetic limb.  And now those of us who have OEM parts, but may have something that isn’t outwardly ‘normal’ have reason to dread travelling.

As most of you know, I have hit the genetic lottery (Thanks Mom!) and have a mild, well controlled case of psoriatic arthritis.  Beyond the skin issues, which are wholly cosmetic, the joints in my back and extremities can become very swollen and mushy.  Basically, my body inundates the soft tissue around my joints with fluid, which causes sausage fingers and swollen, red, hot, and sore elbows, shoulders, knees, and ankles.  If someone was to vigorously pat me down when I’m having a flair, such as when I’m tired, stressed, or upset from standing in line for a couple of hours waiting to be probulated in an airport, they will undoubtedly find that my joints don’t feel ‘right’.  To me, that means that I’m sore already, and will be paying for this come the dawn.  Apparently, to a TSA agent this means that I need a vigorous kneading of inflamed tissue to make sure I haven’t injected binary liquid explosives into my limbs or possibly sewn a weapon into my own flesh.  From past experience, I know that someone spending several minutes rubbing, squeezing, and kneading my joints is going to make activities like getting to my gate and sitting still for several hours on a plane extremely painful.

My mother died of Lupus.  During her life, she had multiple abdominal surgeries, and her belly was criss-crossed with decades old scar tissue, some of it quite thick and tough.  This was exacerbated by her eventual need to inject herself daily with insulin, which toughened the remaining patches of skin.  An intense patdown of her body would have found that her abdominal skin was as rigid as a flak vest.  Imagine the time a TSA agent would have taken to make sure that each of these scars was legitimate.  Imagine a middle aged grandmother, who already feels crummy, being not only felt up by a TSA agent, but having the scars on her body worked over to make sure she hasn’t macramed a knife into her gut.

The TSA needs to get a grip and borrow a clue.  Middle aged American citizens with scars and physical ailments are not going to try to take over an airplane.  Neither are people in wheelchairs, Catholic nuns, or toddlers in diapers.  There needs to be a comprehensive reform not only of the methods we used to secure the airlines, but of the mindset of the TSA, the Department of Transportation, and the American public in general when it comes to effective security.  Stop harassing the law abiding public and start concentrating on those segments of our society that are a true risk.

H/T to Uncle and D.W. Drang over at The Clue Meter on this one.

The Washington Post is suggesting to President Obama that the only way his presidency can have any possibility of success is for him to immediately announce that he will not be seeking re-election in 2012.  Their theory is that this will allow him to rise above Washington politics and concentrate on dealing with our countries problems. 

I have a couple of problems with their theory, both in its supposition that Obama could do such a thing, and his chances of getting anything accomplished if he did.

First of all, Obama has never had to deal with problems, such as statesmanship or good governance, for any real amount of time.  During his entire political life, he’s always used his current position as a stepping stone to his next position.  He has never stayed in one place long enough to form the skill sets necessary to work with people who oppose him and convince them to cooperate, either through persuasion or compromise.  He has always groomed himself for the next promotion, and right now his instincts are telling him the next promotion is re-election in 2012.  He will never preemptively bow out of the 2012 elections.  It’s not in his character.  He’s a born campaigner, but a poor governor.

But assuming for the sake of the argument, would Barack Obama, who has never had to compromise and work with an opponent on a regular basis on anything of importance, have the personal discipline and long vision to let go of all of the politics and work towards politically unpopular, yet absolutely necessary solutions?  Would he get into a dogfight with the left wing of the Democrat party to reform entitlements while at the same time fighting with Republicans over reforming our foreign policy?  Would he have the intestinal fortitude to either bring the financial sector of our economy under control or let it go completely if it is failing?  My gut tells me no.  He is a political animal.  He was taught political theory while still being bounced on a Marxist’s knee.  He got his practical political education in the Illinois Democrat machine where party loyalty and orthodoxy is everything.  I don’t think that even if he announced that he wasn’t interested in the job after January 2013 that he would have the willpower to buck the old guard of the Democrats.  He would instinctively pick political fights with anyone who opposes his wishes, no matter how good or bad those wishes would be for the country.  This alone would cause him to be a failure as a president until replaced in 2013.

What would happen if President Obama announced that he would not run for relection would be gridlock even worse than what we are looking at now.  If he bows out of 2012, every hungry shark among the Democrats will be loathe to do anything to support a president who is bucking Democrat tradition.  They would start making distinctions between themselves and the president in order to stand out in what would be a brutal primary.  The Republicans have already signaled their unwillingness to work with the president on much of anything if they’re not handsomely bought off.  If both parties refuse to work with him, well, he can always take up stamp collecting. 

What’s more likely to happen is Obama will move towards the center for the next 12 to 18 months, try to co-opt the Republican majority in the House of Representatives in getting something through that he can point at as a good thing in the election, and then swing hard to the left if Clinton comes out of the administration and runs against him in the primaries.  His success in the 2012 general election will probably be based on what the economy does over the next year or so, whether or not we have another major terrorist attack in the homeland, and how the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Arabian Peninsula/Horn of Africa go. 

If the economy improves at anything other than a snail’s pace, I give Obama an even chance of re-election.  If it doesn’t, the I expect the Republicans to resurrect the “Are you better off than you were 4 years ago” and “It’s the economy stupid!” slogans of old and hand him his head.  But if the Republicans are seen as standing in the way of the President trying to do good works and the economy improves, they will lose. 

Dear TSA,

Congratulations! You have finally found my threshhold of pain!

It’s been a few years since you were created as part of our response to September 11. For a 9 year old, you’ve got quite a track record. After 9/11, you made me stop buying a $5 cup of airport coffee in the ticketing area because you wouldn’t let ne through security with it. When some jerkoff lit his Nikes and got the bejeezus beat out of him, you forced me to start taking my shoes off so you could X-ray them. Then when another group of blunt skulls talked about how they maybe sorta could kinda make binary liquid explosives in the shoebox that Boeing thinks I can use as a restroom, you made me leave all of my normal shampoo and mouthwash at home. Since I take several medications a day, you’ve made me take each and every bottle of pills out so you can make sure they contain what I say they do. When other people tried to travel domestically with a large amount of cash, you’ve interrogated them for hours because honest people couldn’t possibly travel with more than a couple of hundred dollars in cash.

When some dickhead tried to blow up a plane using Semtex brand tighty whities, you decided to start using xray machines on the passengers instead of just the luggage.

And now you’ve decided that we the cattle are opting out of the backscatter scans too often and have upped the intensity of your alternative pat downs to something approaching sexual assault.

Maybe I have body issues. Maybe I was just raised that nudity in front of strangers is to be kept to a minimum. Or maybe I don’t want the unclothed persons of my wife and children to be gazed upon by a stranger.

And now you warn us sheep that if we don’t let you bombard our bodies with radiation so you can have a good hard look at our possibly dangerous pudenda, you will glove up and thoroughly search our erogenous zones by hand, regardless of sex or age.

So guess what? My family and I are going to avoid any method of travel that involves the TSA. For us, this will mean that a trip that would require a day to fly will take three or more days to drive. It means we will probably spend slightly more in hotel expenses, but at least the peanuts will be nearly cost free.

It also means I no longer have a need for passenger airlines, passenger terminals, or your organization. When the airlines get in trouble financially, I will aggressively campaign to keep them from getting government support. When the airport wants government funding to add runways or to renovate the terminal, I will fight it tooth and nail. When legislation comes up asking for increased funding for the TSA, I will press my legislators to cut off your funding. Since no-one should be using the airlines, airports, and TSA due to your reactive stance on security, then there’s no need to continue funding these activities.

So, please enjoy the reduced work load as I and as many people as I can influence walk away from air travel. I hope you all can find comparable employment in the mall security or similar industries.

Oh, and Happy Holidays! Kisses!

Update – Full Disclosure

I work for a cargo airline.  Doing my job entails working within TSA security regulations.  I do not hope for the failure of the passenger airlines.  I do hope that the TSA and its methods are reformed to provide for actual security, and not intimidation of the very people who are being protected.