October 9, 2006
"The emergence of this new world poses a vital issue: will outer space be preserved for peaceful use and developed for the benefit of all mankind? Or will it become another focus for the arms race—and thus an area of dangerous and sterile competition? The choice is urgent. And it is ours to make." --EisenhowerIt’s too bad that Kim Jong-il just couldn't wait for us to sort out our nation's midterm elections, and, instead, decided this was his moment to impress the world with his nuclear toys. The N. Korean leader announced he was going to test the nukes he says he's sitting on; then announced that he had done just that. You could almost hear Cheney let out a rebel yell of satisfaction from deep within his underground hideaway.
Bush
got on television to condemn the nuclear test which he couldn't yet confirm actually happened. Nonetheless, Bush warned that N. Korea's claim itself constituted a "threat" and was unacceptable. An "immediate response" by the United Nations Security Council was "deserved," Bush said in his prepared remarks. He doesn't want to stop North Korea from playing with their nukes just yet. Bush only has a few years left to launch his original scheme to yoke our military defense resources to a new generation of aerospace industry boondoggles. N. Korea’s aggression could be just the ticket Bush is looking for.
It's no surprise that Bush would feel entitled to "respond" to N. Korea. His entire defense strategy was designed around a hypothetical nuclear missile threat from N. Korea and China. Back in the 2000 campaign - when Iran was at the bottom of their fearmongering flow chart - Bush's foreign policy team, the Vulcans, were huddled around their PNAC documents like pledges parsing over their fraternity charter. Of course, there exists the possibility that President Bush actually assembled the Pentagon's recent pack of aerospace executives to run his foreign policy in his own anticipation of a credible 'space threat', to deter a future assault on our nation's security. What foresight he must have had from his Texas ranch.
What of it, if executives and shareholders in the space industry happen to rape of our treasury to fulfill their own hunger to dominate military and commercial space? There seems to be no limit to aerospace ambitions. The administration is pushing ahead with the expansion of the military space program, despite the limitations of the nation's weak economy and the adoption of many other costly ‘priorities' for the armed forces.
In an amazing coincidence to the N. Korean nuke test, the Bush administration has sneaked and released a
major new space policy which just happens to mesh with the missile threat the rouge nation is so intent on showing off. The new Bush space policy report outlines the regime’s "commitment to the exploration of space for useful and peaceful purposes", while, at the same time, declaring their intention to "allow U.S. defense and intelligence-related activities in pursuit of national interests" Bush and his chickenhawk cabal, in their best Orwellian dictum, are laying the groundwork to have the world recognize their ambition to litter the upper atmosphere with space weaponry to defend their satellites and shoot down others, as "peaceful" and "for the benefit of all humanity."
"Space has become a place that is increasingly used by a host of nations, consortia, businesses, and entrepreneurs," the document reads. It qualifies that declaration in the U.S. favor by asserting that, "those who effectively utilize space will enjoy added prosperity and security and will hold a substantial advantage over those who do not." Superiority in space is Bush's goal. His industry mentors intend to use our nation's defenses to protect their commercial interests in space alongside of those satellites and payloads which are deployed to protect our national security.
In September 2000, the PNAC drafted a report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century." The conservative foundation- funded report was authored by Bill Kristol, Gary Schmitt, John Bolton and others. The PNAC report asserted that "while long-range precision strikes will certainly play an increasingly large role in U.S. military operations, American forces must remain deployed abroad, in large numbers for decades and that U.S. forces will continue to operate many, if not most, of today's weapons systems for a decade or more."
The PNAC document encouraged the military to "develop and deploy global missile defenses to defend the American homeland and American allies, and to provide a secure basis for U.S. power projection around the world." You can hear their pitch, hawking in favor of their industry benefactor's space weaponry, in its list of objectives:
-Control the new ‘International commons' of space and cyberspace, and pave the way for the creation of a new military service with the mission of space control. (U.S. Space Forces; eventually realized in the form of the Air Force-financed Lockheed Space Battle Lab)
-Exploit the "revolution" in military space affairs to insure the long-term superiority of U.S. conventional forces.
-Establish a two-stage transformation process which maximizes the value of current weapons systems through the application of advanced technologies.
The paper claimed that, "Potential rivals such as China were anxious to exploit these technologies broadly, while adversaries like Iran, Iraq and North Korea were rushing to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons as a deterrent to American intervention in regions they sought to dominate. Also that, information and other new technologies – as well as widespread technological and weapons proliferation – were creating a ‘dynamic' that might threaten America's ability to exercise its ‘dominant' military power."
The authors further warned that, "U.S. nuclear force planning and related arms control policies must take account of a larger set of variables than in the past, including the growing number of small nuclear arsenals –from North Korea to Pakistan to, perhaps soon, Iran and Iraq – and a modernized and expanded Chinese nuclear force."
The 2000 PNAC document is a mirrored synopsis of the Bush administration's foreign policy today. Bush is projecting a domineering image of the United States around the world which has provoked lesser equipped countries to desperate, unconventional defenses; or resigned them to a humiliating surrender to our rape of their lands, their resources and their communities. Bush intends for there to be more conquest - like in Iraq - as the United States exercises its military force around the world; our mandate, our justification, presumably inherent in the mere possession of our instruments of destruction.
Donald Rumsfeld was chosen as defense chief to usher in the next cash cow for the military industry: Space-Based Weaponry. He chaired the Rumsfeld Commission a.k.a.: "Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States" Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was on the board, and Iraq reconstruction's Gen. Jay Garner was there too. The propped up space commission; the invention of Rep. Curt Weldon of Pa. (a frequent traveler to Russia and a friend of the Russian elite), was formed to refute the CIA's assessment that Star Wars was costly, unnecessary, and unworkable. Not surprisingly the commission came down in favor of restarting the Space nuclear race.
Bush talked up the renewal of the Star Wars program during the campaign, money was put into research, and the program is waiting for the war to die down so they can pump more money in.
Peter Teets, former undersecretary of defense, and former Lockheed president, was a major promoter of the Rumsfeld Commission's report on the Military in Space, which warned of a "space Pearl Harbor" if the U.S. does not thoroughly "dominate all aspects of space." "Clearly, space is the high ground, and we need to capture that high ground and then exploit it," said the former chief executive of the aerospace contractor.
According to a 1997 U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense Command news release, the then- commanding general of the Training and Doctrine Command, Gen. Hartzog, and the then- commander of the SSDC, Lieut. General Anderson signed a memorandum of agreement to recognize SSDC as the Army's specified proponent for space and missile defense.
The MOA also permitted SSDC to establish the Space and Missile Defense Battle Lab. The Space and Strategic Defense Command was set up as the Army's specified proponent for space and national missile defense and an "integrator" for theater missile defense issues - recognized by the military establishment as a "one stop shop". The Space Battle Lab is intended to develop "warfighting concepts, focus military science and technology research, conduct warfighting experiments, and support exercises and training activities, all focused on space and missile defense."
Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Northrop Grumman Space Technology ended up with the contract for the Space Battle Lab.
In an article for the Washington Monthly in the summer of 2000, Stephen Hadley cited a 1999 National Intelligence Estimate, which claimed that "Iraq could test a North Korean-type ICBM that could deliver a several hundred-kilogram payload to the United States in the last half of the next decade depending on the level of foreign assistance." The threat from North Korea is their main justification for a missile defense system. NK's Taepo-dong 1 missile can only carry a 1,000-kilogram nuclear bomb for about 2,500 kilometers, short of U.S. territory. It could also carry lighter biological or chemical weapons for 4,100 kilometers, but it would still fall about 400 kilometers short of Alaska and the Hawaii islands. Similarity, the Taepo-dong 2 missile, when fully operational, is only expected to barely reach Alaska.
Hadley concluded that, " Only against ballistic missiles does the United States remain vulnerable through continued adherence to the ABM Treaty. Also that , interim "quick fixes" offering even the most limited capability against the ballistic missile threat would provide a deterrent to countries now seeking these weapons; the so-called "scarecrow defense." In this way, Hadley argued, the United States would have an "emergency deployment option" in case of crisis. The way around amending the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty would be to declare the system "temporary".
Anything to get the industry in the Pentagon chow line. Its clear that no matter what the obstacles or objections, Hadley would insist that the constructs of a new missile defense regime were essential to the nation's defense.
In October of 2003, senior U.S. military officer warned that, "Space may become a war zone in the not-too-distant future," in an apparent reaction to China becoming the third country besides the U.S. and Russia to put a man in space. "In my view it will not be long before space becomes a battleground," Lieutenant General Edward Anderson, Deputy Commander, United States Northern Command, and Vice Commander, U.S. Element, North American Aerospace Defense Command, said at a geospatial intelligence conference in New Orleans the same year. "Our military forces depend very, very heavily on space capabilities, and so that is a statement of the obvious to our potential threat, whoever that may be," he said.
"They can see that one of the ways that they can certainly diminish our capabilities will be to attack the space systems," said Anderson, who formerly served as a space acquisitions and appropriations warrior in the Space Battle Lab. "Now how they do that and who that's going to be I can't tell you in this audience," he warned ominously.
In a Reuters article published in the same month as Anderson's remarks, Rich Haver, former special assistant for intelligence to Donald Rumsfeld, said he expected battles in space within the next two decades. "I believe space is the place we will fight in the next 20 years," said Haver, then vice president for intelligence strategy at Northrop Grumman Mission Systems. (sincere, concerned look on his face as he speaks) "There are executive orders that say we don't want to do that," Haver explained. "There's been a long-standing U.S. policy to try to keep space a peaceful place, but ... we have in space assets absolutely essential to the conduct of our military operations (and our portfolios), absolutely essential to our national security. They have been there for many years," he said.
"When the true history of the Cold War is written and all the classified items are finally unclassified, I believe that historians will note that it was in space that a significant degree of this country's ability to win the Cold War was embedded," Haver warned. Responding to a question about the implications of China sending a man into space, Haver said: "I think the Chinese are telling us they're there, and I think if we ever wind up in a confrontation again with any one of the major powers who has a space capability we will find space is a battleground."
North Korea’s nuclear testing may have given George Bush the pretext he needs to continue his military industry cabal’s drive to militarize space. It doesn’t take much imagination to suppose that space could end up looking very much like Iraq, if Bush and his cronies have their way with our space budget, and throw what’s left of our defense dollars into the air to fulfill the PNAC wish list. The White House National Space Policy is just a cynical bid to Congress, looking for permission and walking-around money for Bush and Rumsfeld to play Star Wars. If we give Bush his way, we will soon forget about all about of the damage he’s done here on earth. Just wait until someone gives him room to spread his military toys and their destructive muckraking all around the rest of the universe.
by
Ron Fullwoodhttp://journals.democraticunderground.com/bigtree
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