The SEAL's Dog Was Named Cairo

...one of the tidbits of info in the AP's account of the Bin Laden raid.

The Black Hawks were specially engineered to muffle the tail rotor and engine sound, two officials said. The added weight of the stealth technology meant cargo was calculated to the ounce, with weather factored in. The night of the mission, it was hotter than expected.
The Black Hawks were to drop the SEALs and depart in less than two minutes, in hopes locals would assume they were Pakistani aircraft visiting the nearby military academy.

One Black Hawk was to hover above the compound, with SEALs sliding down ropes into the open courtyard.

The second was to hover above the roof to drop SEALs there, then land more SEALs outside — plus an interpreter and the dog, who would track anyone who tried to escape and to alert SEALs to any approaching Pakistani security forces.

If troops appeared, the plan was to hunker down in the compound, avoiding armed confrontation with the Pakistanis while officials in Washington negotiated their passage out.

Low Bidders

Q: Aren't you a little young to be international arms dealers?
A: Yes. Yes we are.

Just read this:

...[Efraim] Diveroli and [David] Packouz soon got the break they were looking for. On July 28th, 2006, the Army Sustainment Command in Rock Island, Illinois, posted a 44-page document titled "A Solicitation for Nonstandard Ammunition." It looked like any other government form on fbo.gov, with blank spaces for names and telephone numbers and hundreds of squares to be filled in. But the document actually represented a semi-covert operation by the Bush administration to prop up the Afghan National Army. Rather than face a public debate over the war in Afghanistan, which was going very badly indeed, the Pentagon issued what is known as a "pseudo case" — a solicitation that permitted it to allocate defense funds without the approval of Congress. The pseudo case wasn't secret, precisely, but the only place it was publicized was on fbo.gov. No press release was issued, and there was no public debate. The money was only available for two years, so it had to be spent quickly. And unlike most federal contracts, there was no dollar limit posted; companies vying for the deal could bid whatever they wanted.

Based on the numbers, it looked like it was going to be a lot of money. The Army wanted to buy a dizzying array of weapons — ammunition for AK-47 assault rifles and SVD Dragunov sniper rifles, GP 30 grenades, 82 mm Russian mortars, S-KO aviation rockets. The quantities were enormous — enough ammo to literally create an army — and the entire contract would go to a single bidder. "One firm fixed-price award, on an all-or-none basis, will be made as a result of this solicitation," the tender offer said.

The solicitation was only up for a matter of minutes before Diveroli spotted it, reading the terms with increasing excitement. He immediately called Packouz, who was driving along the interstate.

"I've found the perfect contract for us," Diveroli said. "It's enormous — far, far bigger than anything we've done before. But it's right up our alley."

The pair met at Diveroli's apartment to smoke a joint and discuss strategy. Supplying the contract would mean buying up hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ammunition for the kind of Eastern Bloc weapons that the Afghans used. Because such weapons were traded in the gray market — a world populated by illegal arms dealers, gun runners and warlords — the Pentagon couldn't go out and buy the ammo itself without causing a public relations disaster. Whoever won the contract to arm the Afghans would essentially be serving as an official front operation, laundering shady arms for the Pentagon.

...

The Pentagon can be a slow-moving bureaucracy, a place where paperwork goes to die. But because the Afghanistan solicitation was a "pseudo case," it had been designed to move swiftly. On the evening of January 26th, 2007, Packouz was parking his beat-up old Mazda Protege when Diveroli called.

"I have good news and bad news," Diveroli said.

"What's the bad news?" Packouz asked.

"Our first order is only for $600,000."

"So we won the contract?" Packouz asked in disbelief.

"Fuck yeah!" said Diveroli.

...and this is where I point out that Packouz is 25 years old and Diveroli is 21.

Seriously.
H/t Felix Salmon

If I Showed You My Unit Badge, I'd Have to Kill You

Danger Room keeps posting awesomely-bad military patches, and I have to say I'd admire this effort from an Air Force unit working for Space Command:

Confirmed: The Air Force Totally Hides Aliens From Us...A former officer at Air Force Space Command tells Paglen that he and his friends had the patches made at their own expense after getting endlessly ribbed for working in a secure vault "where they kept the alien bodies." They wore them on their flight suits for months before a one-star general asked where he could get one of his own.

Oh, and the barely-decipherable legend on the bottom? It's Klingon for "Don't Ask." Paglen got it in the mail from its creator after mentioning that he knew about its existence on the Colbert Report.

How unbelievably awesome is that?


A valiant runner-up patch was this one:Omnis Vestri Substructio Es Servus ad Nobis

See Spot Jump

(Via Danger Room)

Incredibly, the accompanying text is stranger than the picture:

[British Special Air Service] pooches are trained for High Altitude High Opening (HAHO) jumps, in which parachutes are deployed at a high altitude and long horizontal distance away from a target location in order to allow jumpers to glide in without detection. The SAS dogs are trained to jump tethered to their handlers from heights as high as 25,000 feet and up to 20 miles away — or a 30 minute glide — from a target location.  At that height, the lack of oxygen puts them at risk for hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation,  so the dogs are fitted with special masks to give them breathable air. The Brits reportedly borrowed the tactic from America’s super-secret Delta Force, which first trained dogs to make HAHO jumps.

Ethan McCord: Candor on the Ground

Danger Room interviews Ethan McCord. McCord was the solider who - in the wake of an Apache helocopter attack - carried the wounded body of an Iraqi girl to safety.

Crazyhorse One-Eight

(Via CJR)

On the morning of July12th, 2007, two Apache helicopters using 30mm cannon fire killed about a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad.

Two children were also wounded.

Among the dead were two employees of Reuters, a cameraman and his driver.

We have it on film.

This is the gun camera film seconds before the Apache fires on a van that is collecting the wounded body of the Reuters driver. The gunner is afraid this van will get away and is urgently demanding permission to fire.

Come on, let us shoot!

Permission is granted, and the van is destroyed.

Once the wounded children are discovered and evacuated, the gunner's reply is Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.

Well, obviously.

--------------------------------------

Afghanistan is bringing us similar good news (H/t Glenn).

You just have to throw up your hands.

What. The. F@ck?

A New Twist on the Srebrenica Massacre

Why did 8,000 Bosnian muslim men die at the hands of the Serbs?

It was because the Dutch army contains homosexuals.

At least, that's the reason if you're as stupid as Retired Gen. John Sheehan.

Winning Line

(via Danger Room)

Aviation Week's Bill Sweetman scores palpable hit - discussing the delays in the much delayed, fantastically expensive F-35 wunderplane program:

“For every month’s litany of problems in the program, you’ll find a Lockheed Martin or government program boss assuring the customers, Congress and the taxpayers that everything is going fine,” he wrote. “‘On track,’ as they like to put it.

“Remember this distinction:  The Donner Party was on track. They were not on schedule.”

Owch.

Safe, Expensive & Stupid

FRI's babatim has a new post about Jalalabad's current status as a "white," or dangerous, city.

babatim doesn't have a lot of faith in the idea of locking down a city - and even less in the reasons for why the city was locked down. Here's his awesome run down of why this was a bad idea:

So today Jalalabad was on lock down to the international community. Declared a “white city” by [the United Nations Department of Safety & Security] due to two factors; a report of “five female BBIED (Body Borne Improvised Explosive Device) bombers who are looking to strike important targets” and reporting by various international security agencies of “spectacular attacks,” while President Karzai is in London attending an international conference. There has never been a female suicide bomber in Afghanistan to the best of my knowledge and there is no historical correlation to President Karzai attending international meetings and “spectacular” attacks. The (smart) military intelligence analysts dismissed the female suicide bomber story out of hand – they had seen similar reporting weeks ago and found nothing to substantiate them.

The smaller reconstruction projects which The Bot and I consult for ignored the White City and carried on with our daily routine. International reconstruction specialists cost the taxpayers of America over $1000 per day, so locking them down for no reason is a very expensive mistake. The military knew the principal threat spooking the UN security people was bogus, but they don’t talk to each other much. Both the UN and the military are operating inside huge bureaucratic closed loops – neither organization has the capacity to get into the local environment to conduct real time assessments. Only the small fries in the reconstruction business: JICA, CADG, CHF, etc… pay attention to White Information because they have to in order to operate. The large bureaucracies react to bogus intel which flows around the closed, insulated loops – their analysts deal with emails not people. They have the money which allows them to spend day after day on “lockdown” due to “threat warnings” generated by people who lack local access and situational awareness.

The military is even worse – everyday several times a day they fly people between the Jalalabad PRT and the army base at the Jalalabad airport. That is a trip of no more than 400 meters. You could walk it in 15 minutes – you could run shuttle buses between the camps all day every day for maybe 50 dollars a day. Do you know how much it costs for one flight hour in a military helicopter? Does the military honestly believe that the 200 meters of route one separating their bases is so dangerous that it warrants flying helicopters between them? Of course not – but flying in helicopters is easier than running four vehicle MRAP convoys and every time a soldier drives outside the front gate of a base he has to be in a four vehicle convoy with at least 16 riflemen. Who the hell can afford to spend money this way? Helicopter crashes in Afghanistan routinely kill two to three times more military members than the Taliban has ever been able to kill even when they mass their best fighters against isolated positions held by only a handful of Americans. Why is flying in a helicopter safer than a 15 minute walk or 5 minute bus ride? In large bureaucracies cost efficiency and common sense are not part of the operational paradigm.

Love, Kurt - Jr.

Letters of Note posted a copy of the first letter then-Private Kurt Vonnegut Jr. sent to his family after being freed from German custody in WWII.

It's a good read:

I've been a prisoner of war since December 19th, 1944, when our division was cut to ribbons by Hitler's last desperate thrust through Luxemburg and Belgium. Seven Fanatical Panzer Divisions hit us and cut us off from the rest of Hodges' First Army. The other American Divisions on our flanks managed to pull out: We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren't much good against tanks: Our ammunition, food and medical supplies gave out and our casualties out-numbered those who could still fight - so we gave up. The 106th got a Presidential Citation and some British Decoration from Montgomery for it, I'm told, but I'll be damned if it was worth it. I was one of the few who weren't wounded. For that much thank God.

The Stolen Valor of Vietnam

Several years ago, I remember watching a news story about a medal of honor winner. This man was in his sixties and had chosen to devote his golden years to exposing impostors who claimed to have won the Medal of Honor.

He was driven. His eyes flashed when he talked about those who he'd exposed as frauds. How dare they?

At the time, I'd discussed this story with a family member who scoffed at this man. "Sounds pretty sad to me," they'd said, "embarrassing these old frauds - and for what?"

I think they'd have had a point if the veteran was doing it for the sake of their own award. It would seem petty and prideful. But this man's drive was on behalf of others - dead men who'd won an honor. And their honor was being diminished by the undeserving.

To me, the distinction was ennobling.

Today, I read about a man with a similar quest - and I have to say my impression was the same. In the latest issue of  Columbia Journalism Review, Russell Working revisits the 1998 book Stolen Valor and I have to say I'm sad to have missed it the first time around.

It's by a man named B.G. Burkett, who is determined to point out that popular view of Vietnam veterans is absolutely backward. Burkett's aim was to expose the complete lack of journalism standards in news accounts of Vietnam veterans. Using basic tools like FOIA requests, Burkett let the air out of stories where criminals blamed non-existent Vietnam experiences. Journalists wrote the stories that fit the public mood, and basic fact checking wasn't done. Brazen frauds became heroes, and the collective reputation of veterans became an unjust stereotype.

It's not often you read something that reverses a long held view, but these three paragraphs did for me:

     For reporters trying to make sense of the phenomenon of [Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome], Stolen Valor offers particular cause for concern. Since the war's end, veterans' activists have claimed that anywhere from 200,000 to 2 million of the 3.3 million men who served in the Vietnam theater suffer from PTSD - never mind that fewer than 15 percent of those who set foot in the country were in front-line combat units, Stolen Valor notes. A four-year, $9 million study commissioned by Congress and undertaken by North Carolina researchers concluded that 830,000 Vietnam veterans were suffering from full or partial PTSD.

     Impressive numbers indeed. Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that only 2.2 percent of Vietnam veterans had the disorder. And the North Carolina study clearly had some methodological flaws. For example, it cited six women who claimed their disorder had been caused by being prisoners of war. "Apparently," write [authors] Burkett and Whitley, "no one involved in analyzing the survey realized that not a single American military woman was ever a prisoner in this war."

     This is not only a matter of principle, but of public finance. The VA offers life-long disability payments to those suffering from PTSD, we read, yet is willing to accept documentation from veterans without checking military records to see if the form has been altered. The result, according to Stolen Valor, is an inflated roster of PTSD victims earning $32,076 per year tax-free for 100 percent disability at taxpayer expense - and more, if there are dependents.

Which is not to suggest that there's no such thing as a PTSD afflicted Vietnam veteran. But the idea that large percentages of them are drug users, psyche cases and criminals deserves a brutal dose of skepticism.

Maj. Hassan, Political Correctness, and Utter Insanity

“If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamist extremist, the U.S. Army has to have zero tolerance,” [Senator] Lieberman said. “He should have been gone.”

First off, somebody get that man a puppy already. I'm tired of listening to his desperate pleas for attention.

Second - let's just look at the idiocy of his remark. I've yet to see an account of Maj. Hassan saying to people he had become an Islamist extremist. I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate - but I'd guess when a person consciously decides to become an extremist, I think it's atypical for them to refer to themselves as an extremist. After all, they're not crazy - everybody who disagrees with them is.

Now, Maj. Hassan did give a truly odd presentation in June 2007 entitled The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military. Stranger yet, he did this when he was expected to speak on a medical topic. His presentation was 50 slides long. It begins with general facts and figures about Islam and ended with the recommendation that Muslims soldiers be allowed to become conscientious objectors to increase troop morale and "decrease adverse result." In between are the controversial slides depicting Koranic verse that suggests that unbelievers will taste punishment of blazing fire, "like boiling oil, it will boil in their bellies" and that "as often as their skins are roasted through, We shall change them for other skins that they may taste the punishment."

That ought to have earned him some unfriendly attention. I've yet to see anything that definitively establishes that his supervisors did anything or not. But the expectation that this speech alone could be turned into grounds for dismissal from the service....?

Think about what that would mean. About what kind of a message that sends to loyal Muslim soldiers - or to Muslim Americans in general. "Sure, we'll let you in the military, but as soon as you say your religion is better than ours we're kicking you out."

I've been in the company of plenty of servicemembers who thought their religion meant that all non-Christians were going to roast in hellfire. A standard that would retain their services yet discharge Muslims for similar views is about as transparently bigoted as you can get.

But the far right is ready for that argument - it responds that "Political Correctness" has made us less safe. That somehow equality and diversity in the ranks has eroded the military's ability to protect itself.

First off, the militant who is dismissed from the service is merely a pissed off militant in the civilian sector. If Maj. Hassan had become citizen Hassan and had walked into a shopping mall with his two pistols - what would have been achieved? And we'd have the cost to decent, law-abiding Muslims who would suddenly be second class citizens at the insistence of a frenzied majority.

Memo to the nut-bags on the right: the idea that Muslims be treated differently under the law than members of other faiths is un-American. More importantly, it is unconstitutional, and an assault on a founding principle of democracy: equality under the law.

If you're against that, you are against the constitution - and I cannot imagine how you can defend America by undermining the very document to which this nation owes its creation and identity.

Of Jedis, airmen, and incredibly stupid regulations

What the hell are these people doing?

It has to do with how much they hate wearing their reflective belts.

Ya gotta love how the internet has enabled the shaming of stupid things.

Best. Defense Spending. Headline. Evah.

Gates to Murtha: Kill the Obamacopter, or the Defense Bill Gets It

Pedros

Once again, something I learned from FRI: I learned what a Pedro is.

They're pretty fricking amazing.

The smackdown of Connie Rhodes

It's been awhile since I've added to the collection of judicial snark. Thankfully, Rhodes v MacDonald has arrived to fill the void.

This case owes its fifteen minutes to being connected to the insanity that is the birther movement (the bwanky of choice among nostalgic southern conservatives).

The plaintiff is a commissioned officer in the US Army - a Captain for God's sake - who is suing to prevent her deployment to Iraq on the grounds that:

...her deployment orders are unconstitutional and unenforceable because President Barack Obama is not constitutionally eligible to act as Commander in Chief of the United States armed forces.

I want to believe that Cpt. Rhodes is merely in the thrall of her counsel - the incomparably insane Orly Taitz (poster child for both the birther movement and humanity's need for critical thinking skills). Because if Cpt. Rhodes actually believes what she is shoveling and managed to rise to the rank of Captain...

Well... heaven help the military is all I can say.

Anyways, the court takes full opportunity to pulverize the plaintiff's case - singling out Taitz's extravagant use of the legal system to sell her brand of crazy.

The quotes that are making the rounds in all the usual places focus on Ms. Taitz, so I won't bother with them. Besides, picking on her is like kicking a deranged panhandler.

No, the snark I'm currently savoring was aimed at Cpt. Rhodes - who really ought to have known better. Here's US District Judge Land's dénouement (emphasis mine):

Any interference with a deployment order injects the Court directly into the internal affairs of the military. This type of interference has serious implications.

For example, it would encourage other soldiers who are not satisfied with their deployment destination to seek review in the courts. It also will have an adverse effect on other soldiers who honorably perform their duties. Presumably, some other military doctor, who does not resort to frivolous litigation to question the President’s legitimacy as Commander in Chief, would be required to go to Iraq in Plaintiff’s place.

Similarly, the doctor who Plaintiff is being sent to relieve and who has likely been there for months would be delayed in receiving his well deserved leave because his replacement seeks special treatment due to her political views or reservations about being placed in harm’s way.

Yes, captain. The court is suggesting you are dishonorable, a coward, and a waste of their time.

That's gotta sting.

Not to mention she still has to go to Iraq as a known weasle/dispsh!t. You know that's going to impress her new CO.

I'm thinking whoever currently holds the army's crappiest job in Iraq is about to get a reliever.

Late edit: Cpt. Rhodes has utterly renounced her case and her attorney.
Odder still, her statement contains this odd line "I simply wanted to verify the lawfulness of my orders."

Makes you wonder what chain of events led to this case going forward in the first place.

Word from the front

One of the nice side effects of the internet is rapid access to the commentary of troops in the field. The military is grappling with issues of operational security - but there are plenty of contractors and hangers on who are free to blog.

I've been following Free Range International for awhile now, and it's a trip. You learn things.

Like - how not to meet with Afghan leaders and deliver food and medicine:

The [US] force rolls into the town on MRAP’s with full battle kit, a bunch of “H[umanitarian] A[id]” aid bags full of tea packets, soccer balls and school supplies, two terps [interpreters], some medical staff, and no plan.  For those of you who have never been to Afghanistan let me clue you into a fact – the last thing in the world these people need is tea.  They have plenty and they hate Lipton tea bags because they suck – that is like rolling into a Mexican border town and giving the locals packets of cocaine and boxes of 5.56 ammo – they have enough of that shit … although the thought counts for something I guess.

The [meeting with the town leader] doesn’t go well.  The locals bum rush the supplies, the medics have no female terp and are also getting overwhelmed to the point of panic by people who no doubt have a ton of problems such as infected sores, intestinal parasites, malaria etc.. which the Americans could easily treat if they had the time, patience and a clue.  They see a young man snapping pictures with a cell phone – something Afghans do all the time – and interpret this as possibly hostile activity so they scan him with the BATS (Biometric Automated Tool Set)  and erase his cell phone.  Of what possible relevance these cell phone pics could be remains a mystery to me.    Young Afghans taking cell phone pictures is what one expects to see and is therefore not a “rule of opposites” scenario.

...

Let me provide the yellow.  In order to do [Key Leader Engagements] you need to engage the “key leaders” in a manner consistent with your objectives.  If your objective is to provide aid and make new friends how should the company commander present himself?  I vote for he drives in with his terp in an unarmored SUV; sits down with the local elders and asks permission to come in with his company and also for their help distributing some supplies. You ask him to provide male and female interpreters as well as supervisors to assist with the distribution of aid and you agree to the rate for these folks.  You both agree exactly how the MEDCAP will go and pay for supervisors – both male and female to do that too.  Leave the security outside the village and walk in without all the body armor – side arms or slung rifles are  no big deal they are a fact of life in this country.  The visit is supposed to be about trust and you can only show trust with actions …. not words.  If the elders do not hold up their end of the bargain you leave.  It is that simple – Pashtunwali cuts both ways and if they won’t play ball they should get the stick … or just be ignored.

You also learn about defending fixed locations:

[We] are looking at a ridge line some 600 meters away which is the attack point for...gunmen who fire on this post regularly.  There are four [Afghan National Army] soldiers and four [Afghan National Police] policemen manning this position and they have a Hummer mounted M60 machinegun, and RPK machinegun and their rifles for defense.  Apparently the bad guys tend to attack  in the evening when the ANP re-supply truck arrives with chow and they have wounded at least two ANP policemen this month.

What is frustrating to guys like [us] is the fact that we could easily sort out this threat with a good machinegun squad and a mortar – manned by proper infantry.  An American squad with a sharp squad leader would be perfect for a job like this.  The reason why American infantry is so effective is that their machineguns come with tripods and T&E’s which are traversing and elevation mechanisms.  Machineguns are deadly in the defense because you can dial them in using a map, range finders, a little math and test firing.  There are five different firing spots on the ridge across from this position and each of them should be dialed in on range cards so that the leader calls out a target designator when he wants to shift fire.  The machinegunner than dials that target in on his T&E and he can rock and roll.  A mortar which has been placed in properly can do exactly the same thing – register the targets allowing for first round hits which saves ammo and pumps up the troops.

You also get cross links to blogs like Afghan Quest - which write about how the army hasn't changed much. The guys that do stuff get hassled by the guys who don't.

RAND on F-22 cuts: This ain't over

Oh, you knew it seemed too easy. Following the beat down of the F-22 in Congress - the RAND Corporation just happens to release a study suggesting that the Taiwanese air defenses could be overwhelmed by an all out Chinese attack.

Sure they said essentially the same thing nine years ago, but now they've updated their report to suggest that Guam based F-22s could make a real difference in the outcome.

Gosh - I wonder who will be the first right winger to use this study to argue for us buying more F-22s?

(H/t Danger Room)

Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters' version of supporting the troops

(Via TPM)

You gotta be sh!tting me.

Fox News analyst Lt. Col. Peters is asked to weigh in on how the US military should react to the capture of a US soldier by the Taleban. At first, he starts out okay:

I want to stress we need to wait until all the facts are in to make a final judgment.

And then he proceeds accuse the captured soldier of being a deserter. Then implies that this soldier deserves their current predicament.

Apparently his version of waiting until the facts are in is to crucify this soldier on national television:

We know this private is a liar, we're not sure if he's a deserter, but the media needs to hit the pause button and not portray this guy as a hero.

The Fox reader, Julie - appears startled by this response and tries to steer him back to what should the military will do to get him back.

But Col. Peters will not be deflected from his crazy.

Peters: I want to be clear - If when the facts are in we find out that there's some convoluted chain of events he really was captured by the Taleban, I'm with him.

But if he walked away from his post and his buddies in wartime - I don't care how hard it sounds. As far as I'm concerned the Taleban can save a lot of legal hassles and legal bills.

Fox Reader: Alright Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters, thank you very very much. regardless of what the situations is, we don't want to see any US soldier in harm's way. And we hope he gets out of there safely. He's an American, he's one of ours. Thank-

Peters: Julie, Think about his buddies, think about his buddies.

Fox Reader: -And of course everyone who's over there in his group. Thank you very much...for talking to us.

Yes, thank you for trashing a US service member who is currently being held by the enemy. Whose name is known, whose parents are desperate for his release.

Thank you for that. Now get back to whatever sadistic pastime you use to pass the time between your televised bouts of insanity.

What the freaking hell?

SecDef Gates: We are equipping ourselves for wars we aren't fighting

(Via Danger Room)

SecDef Gates has been trying to pare down the extravagant spending on weapons better suited for a clash of nations in favor of equipment better suited to the wars we happen to be fighting right now.

It's a thankless, uphill slog - but I'm cheering for the man.

When was the last time you heard a Defense Secretary talk like this?

...after September 11th, some things did change. The base defense budget – not counting spending for the wars – increased by some 70 percent over the next eight years.

...when all was said and done, the way the Pentagon selected, evaluated, developed, and paid for major new weapons systems and equipment did not fundamentally change – even after September 11th.

Indeed, the kinds of equipment, programs, and capabilities needed to protect our troops and defeat the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan were not the highest priority of much of the Defense Department, even after several years of war.

He points out that while other nations are buying new weapons and modernizing their forces:

...other nations have learned from the experience of Saddam Hussein’s military in the first and second Iraq wars – that it is ill-advised, if not suicidal, to fight a conventional war head-to-head against the United States: fighter-to-fighter, ship-to-ship, tank-to-tank. They also learned from a bankrupted Soviet Union not to try to outspend us or match our overall capabilities.

He then takes a good hard whack at the F-22 figher jet:

...the F-22 is clearly a capability we do need – a niche, silver-bullet solution for one or two potential scenarios – specifically the defeat of a highly advanced enemy fighter fleet. The F-22, to be blunt, does not make much sense anyplace else in the spectrum of conflict. Nonetheless, supporters of the F-22 lately have promoted its use for an ever expanding list of potential missions. These range from protecting the homeland from seaborne cruise missiles to, as one retired general recommended on TV, using F-22s to go after Somali pirates who in many cases are teenagers with AK-47s – a job we know is better done by three Navy SEALs. These are examples of how far-fetched some of the arguments have become for a program that has cost $65 billion – and counting – to produce 187 aircraft, not to mention the thousands of uniformed Air Force positions that were sacrificed to help pay for it.

In light of all these factors, and with the support of the Air Force leadership, I concluded that 187 – the program of record since 2005, plus four more added in the FY 09 supplemental – was a sufficient number of F-22s and recommended as such to the president.

-and then he beats on the F-22's proponents, hard:

The reaction from parts of the Washington establishment has been predictable for many of the reasons I described before. The most substantive criticism is that completing the F-22 program means we are risking the future of U.S. air supremacy. To assess this risk, it is worth looking at real-world potential threats and assessing the capabilities that other countries have now or in the pipeline.

Consider that by 2020, the United States is projected to have nearly 2,500 manned combat aircraft of all kinds. Of those, nearly 1,100 will be the most advanced fifth generation F-35s and F-22s. China, by contrast, is projected to have no fifth generation aircraft by 2020. And by 2025, the gap only widens. The U.S. will have approximately 1,700 of the most advanced fifth generation fighters versus a handful of comparable aircraft for the Chinese. Nonetheless, some have portrayed this scenario as a dire threat to America’s national security.

His central theme is one that I wish were central to discussions of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (emphasis mine):

The grim reality is that with regard to the budget we have entered a zero-sum game. Every defense dollar diverted to fund excess or unneeded capacity – whether for more F-22s or anything else – is a dollar that will be unavailable to take care of our people, to win the wars we are in, to deter potential adversaries, and to improve capabilities in areas where America is underinvested and potentially vulnerable. That is a risk that I will not take and one that I cannot accept.

Amen.

I have my doubts that a presidential veto threat is going to reverse the behavior of Congress - but at least somebody's trying.