McCain has been Ahmed Chalabi's best pal. Chalabi's been playing the U.S.A. for a fool, dallying with the Iranians, and getting rich of the whole venture (Back at the Liberal Milblog Springboard, see here, here, here, here and here for background.) McCain is Chalabi's buddy, and it's time for Obama to start brining that relationship up..

Why?  Because the long-established McCain/Chalabi love-fest calls McCain's "National Security" credentials into question.  It'd be interesting to know how much good McCain (and his lobbyist buddies) have done for this nasty, Iranian-Agent-of-Influence and likely terrorist-enabler named Ahmed Chalabi...

Read on:

...And gets a big multi-million dollar government contract hours later!! Seriously. The ship owners got a $8 million dollar contract (worth up to $16 million with options) the very next day! Here's the scoop:

Remember last week, when, according to the Navy, a Persian Gulf-plying U.S. government-chartered cargo ship, the S.S. Westward Venture, fired some warning shots at "two unidentified small boats" at about 0800 hours local time on Thursday, April 24? (0800 hours "local time," adjusted to Washington DC time, means the "incident" took place at about midnight between Wednesday April 23 and Thursday, April 24.) (Messed up the time change!  see comments)

What happened? Well, let me tell ya. The ship got a pay-off. For pushing the U.S. and Iran a step closer to war, the cargo ship involved in the incident--an ancient, expendable cargo vessel--got a big, fat government contract. Within 48 hours.

Admiral "Fox" Fallon would be an interesting pick for Senator Obama's VP.  Choosing Admiral Fallon voids the Clinton Camp's "3 AM phone call" business and catapults Senator Obama into a position of overmatching national security parity with McCain (who, we might remind everybody, will be spending the next couple of weeks burnishing his naval legacy and beating the "Bomb Iran" drums in the Middle East).  

Having weathered Right-Winger excitement surrounding General Petraeus' testimony, and watched them call for the General to run for president, inviting this newly-retired Admiral into the race for the Whitehouse would be a darned fascinating thing.

And with Admiral Fallon bowing out March 31, it gives Obama about a month to chip into Clinton's Pennsylvania lead.  It'd make the April 22 Pennsylvania primary a veritable, um, "cakewalk."

If we're fighting over in Iraq to keep terrorists from coming here...then why are so many people making bombs in our backyard? From the San Francisco Chronicle:

San Jose and Santa Clara police have arrested more than 140 people in a massive copper theft sting after a year-long undercover investigation that also unveiled a bomb-making operation for cell phone-triggered explosives, police said today.

Scary, huh?  First "Cell Phone" bombmaker ever busted in the USA (And they call it an "operation," which, to us, says "bomb-making factory")  And there's more!  We've caught a whole bunch of home-grown bomb-makers this month.

And none of them are Al-qaeda, either.  So that "We're fighting in Iraq to keep the terrorists from hitting us here" meme is hereby declared completely useless!  More after the flip:

Let's take a moment--as we stare into the opening hours of what could  be a second "Black Tuesday" on Wall Street, to remember just what the last Great Depression did to American naval shipbuilding--and our security.  From a March 2002 issue of Sea Power Magazine:

"President Herbert Hoover announced a drastic cut in the Navy's shipbuilding program from 1931 to 1932, and its complete elimination from 1932 to 1933-all in the name of "economy and world peace." In 1931, the Office of Naval Intelligence warned Adm. William V. Pratt, commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet, that the Navy was so weakened by budgetary restrictions that it would not be able to wage an effective war against Japan. Meanwhile, Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931, and in 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. German rearmament soon followed."

If it gets really, really bad, well, see what could happen after the jump. Or visit Springbored's Springboard--at www.springboarder.blogspot.com --one of the few liberal milbloggers around:

You know how San Francisco (along with the rest of the Bay Area) has the reputation of being "Anti-Military? Any gaffe, any local kurfufle, anything that can be remotely construed as an anti-military action gets quickly amplified by a crew of right-wing military bloggers, and, from there, the blogroots, the stories get sent off for the mainstream media.  And thus, the "Frisco-hates-the-military" myth is born and sustained!

Well, guess what?  The most influential bloggers of the "Anti-Frisco" noise machine get a paycheck from....(wait for it).....SAN FRANCISCO!  That's right!  Military.com, "he largest military and veteran membership organization — 8 million members strong," is based in "anti-military" San Francisco.  Purported to be an apolitical veteran's group, military.com is steadily becoming the home of extreme rightists, and a training ground for the right-wing noise machine.  

Frisco funds its own haters!

Aside from the Iraq War, what are the “conventional” national security priorities of the Democratic Presidential Candidates?  I don’t see much discussion on the Candidates’ other non-Iraq national security interests—not on Dailykos or anywhere else, really.  Let’s remedy that!  Where and what are the “conventional” national security issues of the 2008 Campaign?

I ask because voters love national security DETAILS.  They do.  When the message is clear, and when national security isn’t tied into something “scary”, like "war protesting" or “quagmire” or “climate change,” a number of American voters are, at heart, simply gearheads who want to keep watching updated versions of, say, “American Supertanks” on the History Channel.  Republicans have been very good at exploiting this demographic.  How can Democrats win over this group?

And can us Kossaks help out?  May I ask supporters of each major candidate to loft, say, oh, three or four “conventional” national security issues—aside from Iraq—that might resonate during the campaign?  

In an interview, widely broadcast today, reporters wrote that "Once cordial Navy ship-to-ship relations with Iran in the Gulf have disintegrated over the past 18 months."  That perception, promoted by the good little Texas lapdog Vice Admiral Walsh, Commander of the US 5th Fleet, is baloney.  

Admrial Walsh is a liar, violating the 8th key commandment of his faith.  According to British Commodore Keith Winstanley, in a report from mid January 2007, "Iranian naval operations have not changed in any significant way since Bush announced the extra carrier deployment, and Winstanley said at-sea contacts with the Iranian navy have been "extremely cordial.""

In September 2006, US Rear Admiral Spicer, Commander of the USS Enterprise Strike Group reported, "the navy group has been exercising near the Iranian border. He said U.S. relations with the Iranian Navy remain cordial and professional.  They're usually limited to when we transit, say, the Strait of Hormuz or other waters that are relatively close to Iran," Spicer said. "And we're fairly closely located to their naval forces, then we exchange information over the bridge-to-bridge radios, and it's usually who are you, where are you going. And, you know, we can only say so much, but then they say, 'Okay, thanks.'"

Come March 2007, America will have a 2-3 month window of opportunity to, if the President chooses, put 4 carriers and 3 Amphibious Strike Groups into/around the Gulf.  Additional carriers/Amphibious groups could be deployed immediately (yikes) or retained for follow-up contingencies requiring war tempo operations.

We haven't seen such an extensive deployment since, gosh…uh…2001?  Now this could all be just a bunch of elegant bluff (See my previous diary), but the US practiced joint multi-carrier, long-distance strike exercises in mid 2006 (The 3-4 carrier Exercise Valiant Shield—which, if I remember correctly, required just about the same number of soldiers as was requested for the “surge.”—22,000ish).

Saber rattling can be expected to crescendo sometime in a, say, 5-day window bracketing either March 19 or April 17, 2007 (no moon = darkness = good for stealth = nice bombing/special operations conditions).  Details below the fold  

When hospital corpsmen aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise spend two days gearing up for an "upcoming round of smallpox vaccinations for the crew and its embarked air wing," something--something big--is afoot.

What is interesting is that "sailors will begin recieving recieving the vaccine before entering the 5th Fleet area of responsibility."  For those of you who don't know, the 5th Fleet operates in the Persian Gulf.

Though the article--a Navy Newstand piece posted at http://www.news.navy.mil/... says the vaccination is "routine," it feels somewhat unusual to give smallpox vaccine while on deployment--to a goodly portion of the 5000ish members of the Enterprise crew.  And that's what they seem to be reving up for..you only get a wholesale revaccination campaign going if you expect something...

Have all the U.S. government mavericks, grunts and tough operators been subsumed in a "careerist" trap--where interest in insulating a comfy, post-service sinecure outweighs the importance of making--and/or defending--decisions that are good for America?  

Who in the U.S. military--or U.S. government--is ready, today, to sacrifice themselves for the good of the country?  Charging a machine-gun nest for America is one thing...but the more insidious--and tougher--sacrifice of your economic position, your family and your status/influence is something else.

Or are America's government employees--including the U.S. military--getting dangerously susceptible to claims of authority?  Totalitarianism?  Has American society produced a generation of U.S. military and government leaders too weak-willed for the job of securing American democracy?  

Below the fold, you'll see that Napoleon got it right in his "Military Maxims and Thoughts":

Bush is out this week, beating the bushes to become an environmental president.  He's got all the neat pieces tied together here to revamp his bogged-down mess of an administration--national security, innovation, a sense of mission and...oooh...possibly a big technical surprise "coming" to free us from our big hydrocarbon addiction. It smacks of Reagan's touchy-feely "bright futures and better days" poll-boosting tactics.

In addition, the hydrocarbon addition issue is the only place our Former-Addict-In-Chief risks being "authentic."

What worries me is...where are the Democratic Leaders?  Where is Nancy?  Where is Reid?  Our failure to tend the "environment" issue (a trademark "Democratic" issue)has now put "environmentalism" into play, and, even though this manuever has been telegraphed for months, we Democrats have poo-poo'ed it. (Bush? Green? Not possible!)

Well, Republicans are going green. Time to counterattack, yes?  But how?  (How about now...)

Does anybody remember Mogadishu?

On October 3-4, 1993, we lost 18 guys in Somalia.  Remember the Right wing's hue and cry over that errant assault on Mogadishu's Olympic Hotel?

So, it's now confirmed that we've lost 19 Special Forces guys in the hills of Afghanistan.  The worst single combat loss since...gosh...Beruit?  We've demonstrated the falability of our best forces, emboldening all kinds of new Taliban/Quaeda resistance. The defeat has done more for the insurgents than all the whining of all the rational pundits and bloggers combined..

After the Mogadishu debacle, prominent Righties claimed that America has a "responsibility to impeach, convict and remove a president who commits perjury and lies to the American Public"--to prevent presidential misdeeds like the Somalia adventure....We should hold that line over the coming Fitzgerald/Plame indictments...

President Bush likes to go on vacation.  Even the war hasn't kept Bush from taking every single August off.  He heads to the ranch, clears brush, and stages a picnic lunch for his "National Security" team.  We need to start linking his vacation with lame duckdom. It's an August Abdiction! (oops! Abdication!)

Bush is too stubborn to pass up his vacations.  In his mind, they are his "right." But we need to thow down the line.  Democrats need to start saying that if Bush goes to Texas this August, his Administration is over.  Done.  Finished.  The line should be that if he can't stick around during wartime, when his popularity is at an all time low, and when his party is beset by scandal, he's acknowleging his lame duck status.

Either he stays in Washington, and gets crabby, or he goes to Texas, and walks away from power.  It's time to start preparing for President Bush's August Abdication...

The Bush/Cheney Whitehouse is killing the Air Force.

In February 2004, Indian pilots squared off against American pilots in an warfighting exercsie called Cope India 04.  We got our fannies dusted.  According to the now-disgraced Duke Cunningham (R-CA), he claimed that U.S. pilots, flying F-15Cs, were defeated more than 90 percent of the time in direct combat exercises.

The general perception (by the rank-and-file and not by Air Force Generals who want to purchase new aircraft) was that the American pilots were undertrained.  The exercise sparked a whole rethink of American "Top Gun" training.

The Bush/Cheney response?  Forcing, in June 05, the Air Force's combat squadrons to cut back their training hours by nearly 60 percent -- "leaving frontline units unprepared to go to war," according to Defense News.

Are the Marines and Navy suffering from a helicopter shortage?  With the UN requesting more helicopters for logistical support/tsunami recovery, I looked to the approaching US battle groups for a big--and diplomatically important--injection of big heavy-lift copters.  

But...The carrier Abraham LIncoln carries only a handful of choppers.  And the helicopter carrier Bonhomme Richard, which should carry about 43 big, heavy-engined copters, is only carrying 23--and four of those are gunships, and useless in Tsunami support.

Are the equipment shortages getting so bad we need to pare other units--lke the Bonhomme Richard--down to the bare-bones?   'Could have really benefitted from an extra 20 copters...

Not only is the DOD placing US forces under control of Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, they're renaming the Fallujah operation!  

What started out as "Operation Phantom Fury" is now "Operation Al Fajr."  In fact, if you go to defenselink.mil and click on any link titled "Phantom Fury," you get sent to a re-edited post.  Like this:

"WASHINGTON, Nov. 8, 2004 -- Iraqi and U.S. forces began their long-awaited assault today against insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq, in an operation dubbed "Al Fajr," the Iraqi word for dawn." (not only that, but they scrubbed out any reporting on American units involved in the fight. Really American, that..)

How lame.  How Orwellian. If it wasn't so tragic, UN-AMERICAN, and a "shit-on our troops" manuever, I'd be laughing harder.

It doesn't take long for the Republicans to get back to business.  "We won!  Now raise the debt ceiling, cause we Theocrats can't run the Government past Nov. 14..."

AP WASHINGTON - The Bush administration announced Wednesday that it will run out of maneuvering room to manage the government's massive borrowing needs in two weeks, putting more pressure on Congress to raise the debt ceiling when it convenes for a special post-election session.

I'm buyin' Euros.  Or freakin Rubles, for chrissake..