The JvL Bi

The JvL Bi-Weekly

James van Luik

Publisher & Editor

Thursday, July 31, 2003

Volume 2, No. 14

(When we dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mr. Yamasaki and his wife, Sayiko, came to us. She was one of the sweetest, gentlest people I've ever known in my life. They came into the living room and sat down. They said, "We hate to tell you this. You've given us a home and have been very nice to us, but we cannot stay here." I asked why. She said, "Twelve members of my family were evaporated in Nagasaki." He said, fifteen of his family. Made into atomic ash. They said, "We know that you are good people and you wouldn't have dropped the bomb, but we just can't stay with white Americans any more. We have to be with Japanese people." They left. I never felt so terrible in my life.)

5 Articles

1. The School of the Americas (The SOA)

2. What Neocons Believe

3. Theodore Postol was Right About Patriot's Failures in 1991

4. Missile Defense Strategy Not Feasible

5. The Missile-Defense System & Weapons of Mass Destruction

1. THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS (THE SOA)

THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS WATCH

The School of the Americas was first established as the US Army Caribbean Training Center in Panama in 1946 to help professionalize Latin American and Caribbean militaries. In 1963, under President John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, the training center was renamed he School of the Americas. Along with the name change, the School changed to a Cold War focus. In 1984, the school was forced to move from Panama to Fort Benning, near Columbus Georgia, under the terms of the Panama Treaties.

SOA graduates have included many of the most notorious human rights abusers from Latin America. SOA graduates have led coups and are responsible for massacres of hundreds of people. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galteieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. SOA graduates were responsible for the Uraba massacre in Colombia, the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians in El Salvador, the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, and the Jesuit massacre in El Salvador, the La Cantuta massacre in Peru the torture and murder of a UN worker in Chile, and hundreds of human rights abuses. In September 1996, under intense pressure from religious and grassroots groups, the Pentagon released seven Spanish-language training manuals used at the SOA until 1991. The New York times reported, "Americans can now read for themselves some of the noxious lessons the United States Army taught thousands of Latin Americans… [The SOA manuals] recommended interrogation techniques like torture, execution, blackmail and arresting the relatives of those being questioned.

You can find criminals of every ilk who graduated from Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, but no one advocates closing these institutions because of the crimes of some of their graduates. If Harvard, Yale, or Princeton taught their students combat skills that were to be used against non-combatant civilians, we would justifiably call for their closure. The few "bad apples" argument is not very convincing given the weight of the evidence about the involvement of SOA graduates in human rights abuses – two of three officers cited in the assassination of Archbishop Romero; three of five officers cited in the rape and murder of four US churchwomen ten of twelve cited for the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians; over 100 of 246 cited for atrocities in Colombia. Furthermore, the full scope of acts committed by SOA graduates will likely never be known because members of Latin American militaries are generally above the law. It is rare that crimes by members of these militaries are investigated and rarer still when the names of those suspected are released.

The OA has always claimed that it didn't teach its students how to torture or how to commit other human rights abuses. Now after the truth has been revealed by the release of the training manuals, the SOA claims that it has changed. Despite proponents' assertions that the School of the Americas has reformed, SOA continues as a combat training school that focuses on courses with titles such as "Combat Arms Officer," Psychological Operations," "Battle Staff Operations," and "Commando Course." Only one of forty-two courses in the 1996 catalogue – "Democratic Sustainment" [sic] – centers on issues of democracy and human rights. It is interesting to note that in 1997, only 13 students took this course, compared with 118 who took "Military Intelligence". The "mandatory human rights component" of other courses comprises only a very small portion of the total course hours. Former SOA human rights instructor Charles Call has reported that human rights training is not taken seriously at the school and human rights training is an insignificant amount of students' overall training.

But hasn't the SOA made an important contribution to democratization of the region? No. The SOA was founded as a combat school focused on counterinsurgency techniques. Rather than contributing to the development of democracy in the region, the SOA actually taught methods that undermined and destroyed democratic values.

What can one do to help close the SOA? Call/ write/ fax/ email your elected representative and ask him/her to support HR 1810, Rep McGovern's bill to close the SOA/WHISC. Tell your friends, family, and everybody you know and meet to do the same. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper and urge others to support closing the SOA.

2. HERE IS BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE GENERAL UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT NEOCONS BELIEVE

Rep. RON PAUL

1. They agree with Trotsky on permanent revolution, violent as well as intellectual.

2. They are for redrawing the map of the Middle East and are willing to use force to do so.

3. They believe in preemptive war to achieve desired ends.

4. They accept the notion that the ends justify the means – that hard-ball politics is a moral necessity.

5. They express no opposition to the welfare state.

6. They are not bashful about an American empire; instead they strongly endorse it.

7. They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive.

8. They believe a powerful federal government is a benefit.

9. They believe pertinent facts about how a society should be run should be held by the elite and withheld from those who do not have the courage to deal with it.

10. They believe neutrality in foreign affairs is ill advised.

11. They hold Leo Strauss in high esteem.

12. They believe imperialism, if progressive in nature, is appropriate.

13. Using American might to force American ideals on others is acceptable. Force should not be limited to the defense of our country.

14. 9-11 resulted from the lack of foreign entanglements, not from too many.

15. They dislike and despise libertarians (therefore, the same applies to all strict constitutionalists.)

16. They endorse attacks on civil liberties, such as those found in the Patriot Act, as being necessary.

17. They unconditionally support Israel and have a close alliance with the Likud Party.

3. THEODORE POSTOL WAS RIGHT ABOUT PATRIOTS' FAILURES IN 1991. NOW, HE SAYS US MISSILE-DEFENSE SYSTEM IS A FRAUD

LYNDA HURST

Most whistle blowers are nervous wrecks. Exposing fraud or wrongdoing creates enemies, and most seek anonymity once the deed is done. Upsetting the status quo is a pursuit you don't do twice.

Unless you are American physicist Theodore Postol.

In which case, you will publicly attack your government twice in one decade. And, this time round, you'll also throw in your employer – one of the world's most renowned universities – accusing it of covering up a scientific fraud.

The fraud in question is the viability of the Pentagon's much-vaunted missile-defense system, aimed at defending the continent against long-range ballistic missile attack by rogue nations or terrorist groups.

(Canada has yet to formally decide if it will participate in the system. Washington will proceed regardless.)

Ten of billions of dollars have been spent developing ground-based, sensor-equipped rockets – "kill vehicles" that would intercept and destroy incoming warheads – the first of which is to be installed in the fall of 2004.

There's just one problem, according to Postol, a 57-year-old missile systems specialist at Boston's Massachusetts Institute of Technology: They do not, cannot and will not work.

The system is fatally flawed, he says, because the sensors are incapable of distinguishing between a missile and a decoy – and decoys would be a part of any enemy attack.

Postol charges that the finding were manipulated by the contractor, TRW Inc.

Moreover, when MIT's prestigious Lincoln Laboratory was asked to review TRW's research, rather than risk millions a year in government funding, it rubber-stamped the work.

Or, as the blunt-speaking physicist prefers to put it: "They lied and concealed evidence. They covered up a scientific fraud. They may be in criminal violation."

Postol will tell this to anyone who asks. He's determined to first embarrass MIT into retracting its approval and then return to his campaign to halt – not fix because it's "unfixable" – a defense system he's convinced will end in as a monumentally costly failure.

"What else can I do?" he says from Boston. "I'm a witness to a crime. Do I just walk away?"

He didn't the last time.

Shortly after the 1991 Gulf War, Postol notoriously attacked the Pentagon's claims of dazzling success with its new Patriot missiles.

Sifting through hours of videotape, he produced evidence showing that the Patriots had failed to intercept almost all the Scud missiles fired by Iraq.

The Pentagon was furious, launching an investigation into whether Postol had committed security violations and slapping a classified rating on the article in "International Security", the journal in which he made his case.

It took the better part of a decade and considerable denigration before Postol was vindicated and the defense department officially conceded he'd been right. The Patriot had been a disappointing failure (which would be corrected in time for Gulf War II).

Postol was incensed then, and is now, that his patriotism is so often questioned. He is not opposed in principle to missile defense, he says. "I just think if you're going to have these things, they should work."

For the last four years, he's been hot on the trial of the defense shield, and even his critics don't deny he brings as much credibility as bravado to the task.

In the early 1980s, Postol worked at the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment, analyzing, among other things, the MX nuclear missile.

He was then senior scientific adviser to the chief of naval operations at the Pentagon before retuning to academia, first at Stanford University, then at his alma mater, MIT.

He knows the military establishment, he says, and it isn't the generals who are pushing for the current defense system.

"The military thinks it's a bad idea because it takes money away from what they need to do right now," he explains. " The US has a lot of defense commitments around the world."

Postol says it's the civilian leadership at the Pentagon and the inner circles of George W. Bush's White House who are to blame, a deadly mix of true believers and opportunists.

"Half of them are motivated by ideology and have no understanding of the technology. Those who do understand it know it's nonsense, but they want to advance themselves. Their attitude is, 'I'm not going to be on watch when it fails."'

In a typically brash reference to Adolf Hitler's architect, he calls them "the Albert Speers of the administration." As for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "his belief system is disconnected from the World as I know it."

It was Rumsfeld who repeatedly claimed that North Korea has the wherewithal to launch a nuclear attack on the United States, a statement that did much to assuage missile-system skeptics, though it was later knocked to the ground.

Having nuclear material on hand and having the capacity to weaponize it, especially over intercontinental distances, are two very different things. Postol says the United States faces no imminent threat necessitating the rush to build a defense shield.

But 10 silos, six of them in Alaska and four in California, are slated to be in the ground by next fall – just before the November election, he pointedly adds.

"Even if the technology did work, there isn't even time for it to be tested. They say, 'We've got to get something in the ground, then we can see if it works.' That's just wasting vast resources."

Postol was alerted to defects in the missile technology by Nira Schwartz, a computer scientist at TRW who was fired after trying to get the company to admit the problem to the defense department.

She attempted to sue TRW under the False Claims Act, which allows private citizens to blow the whistle on companies that are defrauding the government. She failed, but the US Justice Department twice set up two outside investigations into her charges (both biased, in Postol's view).

When Postol saw Schwartz's evidence, he concluded the flaw was even worse than she'd thought A kill vehicle's sensor could hit isolated objects, but it could make no distinction if more than one kind of object was coming in.

Warheads produce no "signature" of heat, radiation or movement that would ever uniquely identify them – a decoy balloon would look exactly the same to the sensor.

In 2000, Postol wrote a letter to then-president Bill Clinton's chief of staff outlining the defects and cover-up and recommending an independent team of scientists review the data and be allowed to monitor future testing. He forwarded a copy to the New York Times.

The Pentagon responded as it had done before – promptly classifying the letter.

Whistleblower Part II was in play.

In the months following, MIT agreed to re-examine the original TRW report, but an FBI investigation concluded Postol's charges were merely a "scientific dispute" and his "attempts to raise it to the level of criminal conduct had no basis in fact."

Congress set up a series of hearings in which the Pentagon and TRW stood by the technology, saying it had been improved and Postol a out of date.

It's an insane claim, Postol says.

"It doesn't matte if they improve the technology, it is not a 'solvable' problem. It's like realizing 30 stories up that the high rise you're building doesn't have solid foundations in the ground. But you keep building up, thinking it will correct itself. It won't."

Postol is the only one still talking publicly about the issue.

The Pentagon says: "We are done with this."

MIT refers inquirers to a statement released in January saying: "The bedrock principle for all research done at MIT is scientific integrity. Any allegation that there has been any deviation from that principle must be taken seriously, and that is what MIT has done in this case."

Postol doesn't see how that could be done without him knowing about it – and he doesn't.

He has dispatched accusatory letter to MIT's president, Charles Vest, and its governing board of directors but has received no reply. Board member Michael Koerner, president of Canada Overseas Investments Ltd. in Toronto, won't comment on the situation because "there is potential litigation."

Though he has tenure, Postol is convinced MIT wants him out and will accuse him of breaking confidentiality rules to do so.

Harassment has already begun, he claims, with the administration transferring research funds out of accounts earmarked for his use.

Robert Birgeneau, president of the University of Toronto and former dean of science at MIT, doubts that. He knows Postol's department head and says "he would defend Postol to the hilt."

In fact, Birgeneau know all the players on the MIT side of the contretemps, describing Postol as "a sophisticated scientist, worth taking seriously. This isn't a question of, 'There's that crackpot Postol.'"

On the other hand, "Charles Vest is a straight-shooter. He wouldn't take part in a cover-up."

Postol, meanwhile, doesn't think MIT has a leg to stand on and now has lawyers advising him. His confidence in what he is doing remains unshaken.

"What can any of them do?" he asks. "I was right the last time, and I am right today."

4. MISSILE DEFENSE STRATEGY NO FEASIBLE

WARNS

THE AMERICAN PHYSICALSOCIETY

Intercepting missiles while their rockets are still burning would not be an effective approach for defending the US against attacks by an important type of enemy missile. This conclusion comes from an independent study by The American Physical Society into the scientific and technical feasibility of boost-phase defense, focusing on potential missile threats from North Korea and Iran.

Boost-phase defense (disabling ballistic missiles while they are still under power) has recently received much attention as one possible element of a National Missile Defense system.

However, the report shows that issues of timing severely limit the feasibility of this approach. The short time window available for disabling an enemy missile means that interceptor rockets would have to be based close to enemy territory to have a chance of intercepting the missile in time, if it is possible at all.

The study found that defending the United States against solid-propellant ICBMs would be impractical in many cases, because of their short burn times. According to the US intelligence community, countries of concern could deploy such ICBMs within 10 to 15 years, about the same time the study judged would be required for the United /States to field a boost-phase defense against ICBMs.

Even against the longer burning liquid-propellant ICBMs that North Korea or Iran might initially deploy, a boost-phase defense would have limited use due to the requirement that interceptors be based close to potential missile flight paths.

"Only two to three minutes would be available to achieve a boost-phase intercept, even assuming substantial improvements in systems for detecting and tracking missiles," said Study Group co-chair Frederick Lamb.

Consequently even fast interceptors could have difficulty catching liquid-propellant ICBMs in time. In the most optimistic scenarios, the defense would have only seconds to decide whether to fire interceptors and could be required to make this decision before knowing whether a rocket launch were a space mission or a missile attack."

"This study was conducted for the American Physical Society by group that included recognized experts on missile defense. The group assessed the feasibility of boost-phase intercept in terms of fundamental science and engineering requirements," said APS President Myriam Sarachik.

"It is crucial that decisions about large-scale investments in weapons systems take into account their technical feasibility. The APS hopes this report will help in evaluating whether to build boost-phase defense systems."

The APS Study group looked at boost-phase defense systems utilizing land-, sea, or air-based interceptors, space-based interceptors, or the Airborne Laser.

The effectiveness of interceptor rockets would be limited by the short time window for intercept, which requires interceptors to be based within 400 to 1,000 kilometers of the possible boost-phase flight paths of attacking missiles.

In some cases this is closer than political geography allows. Even interceptors that were very large and fast and that pushed the state of the art would in most cases be unable to intercept solid-propellant ICBMs before they released their warheads.

A system of space-based interceptors, also constrained by the short time window for intercept would require a fleet of a thousand or more orbiting satellites just to intercept a single missile. Deploying such a fleet would require a five- to tenfold increase in the Untied States' annual space-launch capabilities.

The Airborne Laser currently in development has the potential to intercept liquid-propellant ICBMs, but its range would be limited and it would therefore be vulnerable to counterattack. The Airborne Laser would not be able to disable solid-propellant ICBMs at ranges useful for defending the Untied States.

"Few of the components exist for deploying an effective boost-phase defense against liquid-propellant ICBMs and some essential components would take at least 10 years to develop," said Study Group co-chair Daniel Kleppner.

"According to US intelligence estimates, North Korea and Iran could develop or acquire solid-propellant ICBMs within the next 10 to 15 years. Consequently, a boost-phase defense effective only against liquid-propellant ICBMs would risk being obsolete when deployed.

Although a successful intercept would prevent munitions from reaching their target live nuclear, biological, or chemical warheads could strike populated areas short of the target in the Untied States or in other countries, shows the study. This "shortfall problem" is inherent in any boost-phase defense and difficult to avoid.

5. THE MISSILE-DEFENSE SYSTEM & WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

(A Political Interpretation)

JAMES VAN LUIK

I have included two articles on The Missile-Defense System (MDS) in this issue of the Bi-Weekly. One is about Massachusetts Institution of Technology (MIT) Professor of Physics Theodore Postol's claim that the MDS is a fraud. The second is an article by the America Physical Society (APS) warning that the MDS strategy is not feasible.

What I believe to be of the utmost importance is another aspect, the political aspect, of the MSD which is perhaps implied by both articles but not laid out explicitly. But I shall begin with some prefatory remarks. And to these remarks I have added the same sort of reasoning with regard to Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) as it applied to Iraq II.

Firstly, I would like to say that Dr. Postol's analysis in my opinion is strongly supported not only by the American Physical Society but by many in the scientific community. I must point out that what Dr. Postol has to say is not highly sophisticated engineering technology, and the same can be said for the American Physical Society's findings. It does not, therefore, require much scientific sophistication to recognize what both the APS and Dr. Postol are driving at when they conclude that there are flaws so profound in the ideas of such a system as to make engineers, computer scientists and physicists die laughing. That more individuals do not speak out can possibly be related unfortunately to fear of doing so for personal and financial reasons. In the case of Dr. Postol one feels that if it weren't for tenure, regrettably, he would have been fired.

Secondly, I can not understand except in financial terms why the Lincoln Laboratory being asked to review, the company, TRW's technology on MDS did so, and also approved of the work of TRW. It should be remembered that Lincoln Laboratory is a large recipient of Pentagon funds which also supports the work of TRW. I'm not precisely sure what the Lincoln Laboratory staff approved. Did the scientists approve of the analyses of the failed shoot-downs, or did they approve of the developmental research that led to the testing?

Thirdly, MIT is certainly one of the most prestigious, one of the peer universities not only in the United States but in the world. The citations of superb research in all fields of science can hardly be equaled anywhere else. I have regularly attended the Boston Area Physics Colloquia (BAPC) which holds the highest quality meetings, of ongoing research, at various of the Boston area universities which includes MIT. At the gatherings at MIT that I've attended there are invariably between 20 to 50 plus in attendance: presenters from universities and research centers country wide, and indeed world wide, professors, post doctoral students, doctoral candidates and visitors. The question and answer period is investigative and exacting. It is hard to imagine that a mediocre conclusion could escape the combined critiques of these gatherings. I can't imagine that the same kind of exacting examination would not emanate from Lincoln Laboratory. Therefore, I would want to know exactly what did Lincoln Laboratory sign off on as applied to TRW's MDS program? I believe that MIT's president Charles Vest would also be interested in this question and its related highly important question of scientific integrity.

On the other hand I have not heard that Dr. Vest has an ongoing outside inquiry to clarify all issues relating to Lincoln Laboratory and what exactly they signed off on with regard to TRW's research and development for the MDS?

And the suggestion that the technology has been improved and Dr. Postol is out of date is both ludicrous and not the issue. The question Dr. Postol is posing relates not only to the technology but pointedly to the question: can the MDS proposed by TRW work? Dr. Postol, and the APS although not specifying TRW, consider the possibility not to be feasible.

In a moment I shall make a suggestion which I believe to be the basis of this "controversy" with Dr. Postol. However, I want to add another perspective, another dimension in order to indicate that what is going on is nothing new politically at all. I want to remind people of similar scenarios which come down to the politicizing of information so that what is said is not what is behind the words.

Take the Iraq War II. Two things happened there. It was well known, before Iraq II, by permanent members of the UN Security Council that Iraq had no Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). There was enough evidence from all the security services world wide to confirm this information. And their feeling as to Iraq being a threatening power was also considered a nonsense. It should be remembered also that Iraq had been bombed continuously by the American and British air forces since the end of Iraq I up to Iraq II. Iraq was a defenseless country militarily when the Iraq II engagement began.

What was not generally appreciated was that the plan to invade Iraq was not a new decision but an old one running through several US administrations and consistent with American foreign policy. However, there was one problem. Dead American bodies returning home in body bags. Politically, most unsatisfactory. So destroy Iraq first, then get the United Nations, a most adroit plan, to send in UN inspectors to make sure the country was disarmed. Then invade Iraq with all the military destructiveness of the most militarily powerful country the world has ever known along with its ally Great Britain. It was a smashing success.

So what I'm raising here is the fact that the WMDs was a side issue. The WMDs was the created propaganda issue the General Public could understand easily. But the truth was far less easily understandable. And what might that be? Hegemony. That is, if the United States controls most of the world's oil it also control's most of the world's political power. Iraq's and Saudi Arabia's oil and that from the Stans means the new world order is oil hegemony, and therefore political hegemony. That was the primary reason that France, Germany, and Russia did not support any UN resolution to invade Iraq. They rejected this US attempt at world hegemony and therefore hegemony over themselves.

So, returning to Dr. Postol. What do we have here? I believe once again one is being propagandized to focus on the wrong issue. Once again the US propaganda machine is manufacturing the idea that we are under near or imminent attack from hostile countries and/or terrorists. Therefore we must have the Homeland Defense Department, curtailment of civil liberties, and forms of military defenses such as the MDS. But terrorism is certainly not the reason for this highly successful program of propaganda from the top echelon in the government. They are purposefully creating fear, terrorism propaganda. The MDS is part of the response to such fear. Once again we are being diverted from the proper issue. Whether or not the MDS works is not the issue. Everyone connected with the idea knows the MDS doesn't work and can't work.

But this project does pour billions and billions of tax dollars via the pentagon into the pockets of the very rich, the 5% of the population, and the corporations. And since the corporations have to account for this money, they are receiving, somehow, they build MDS type systems, and propaganda to go with it via the very effective public relations industry. This becomes an obfuscating answer to the government created fears of the General Population. These corporations measure their patriotism with the amount of money they get from the Pentagon not with the tax they contribute to the general welfare of the country. As should be well known the very rich and the corporations pay proportionately very little of this tax. So, plainly, it is the rest, the General Population, that pays for these corporate profits. Intriguingly, the trickle down from these profits is through the stock market.