According to news reports, George W. Bush will soon announce a new lunar exploration initiative. I've been a fan of America's space program since its inception, going back to the time we sent chimpanzees into suborbital space (maybe this wasn't such a bad idea), so, all joking aside, it is important to me to learn what is behind all this new space posturing.
The one single constant in the Bush Administration has been strict adherence to the doctrine outlined by our friends from the Project for a New American Century. Given this, examination of any Bush proposal must be viewed through the lenses of the PNACers who drive this administration's heart, soul, and policy.
Since they have been transparent and blatant enough to post their doctrine and related musings on line for all to see, let's steel ourselves and look straight into the eye of this beast.
Let's review this memorandum, from August of 2001 by Tom Donnelly, Deputy Executive Director of PNAC:
<snip>
August 2, 2001
MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS
FROM: TOM DONNELLY, Deputy Executive Director
SUBJECT: Defense
Talking to a group of defense writers yesterday, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Ryan uttered an uncomfortable truth when he admitted that the United States -- indeed, the world -- is engaged in a military competition in space that soon may feature offensive weapons capable of attacking adversaries’ satellites and eventually even targets on earth. While Ryan’s remarks sparked some predictable talk of “an arms race in space,” the fact is that space has been militarized for decades and control of space is fundamental to maintaining American military preeminence.
Even today U.S. forces depend on control of space for communications, intelligence, precision guidance of munitions and other important missions. As the 1997 report of the National Defense Panel concluded, “Unrestricted use of space has become a major strategic interest of the United States.” But with the mushrooming of commercial space activities (more than 1,100 companies in more than 50 countries are developing, building and operating space systems), the line between military and civilian space use is blurring. America’s advantages in space are keys to our exercise of global power, but also create vulnerabilities our adversaries are anxious to exploit. Space is fast becoming the “high seas” of the future, and “space power” the equivalent of the“sea power” that propelled first Great Britain and then the United States on the path to global leadership. Control of the emerging “international commons” of space will do much to determine the future shape of international politics here on earth.
These challenges are well understood by the Defense Department and the Bush Administration more broadly. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld chaired a recent congressionally-mandated commission on the future of space, which recognized that “we know from history that every medium -- air, land and sea -- has seen conflict. Reality indicates that space will be no different.” The panel also concluded that “given this virtual certainty, the must develop the means both to deter and to defend against hostile acts in and from space.” And Ryan’s comments are surely a preview of a central tenet of the forthcoming Quadrennial Defense Review. “Space war” may sound like science fiction, but it is a competition the United States must prepare to win, perhaps even to the point of creating a new branch of the armed services. In space as on earth, we preserve the peace by maintaining our strength.
</snip>
http://www.newamericancentury.org/defense-20010802.htm ____________________________________________________________________
So there it is. Preserve the peace by maintaining our strength. We "must" prepare to win a space war, even to the extent that we would add a new branch of the Armed Services. Are you with us so far?
When the PNACers talk, we should listen.
That's not good. But you already knew that.
bigtree
more
In September 2000, the PNAC drafted a report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century." 56
The conservative foundation- funded report was authored by Bill Kristol, Bruce Jackson, Gary Schmitt, John Bolton and others. Bolton, now Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, was Senior Vice President of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
The report called for: ". . . significant, separate allocation of forces and budgetary resources over the next two decades for missile defense," and claimed that despite the "residue of investments first made in the mid- and late 1980s, over the past decade, the pace of innovation within the Pentagon had slowed measurably." Also that, "without the driving challenge of the Soviet military threat, efforts at innovation had lacked urgency."
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 the pitch of former Lockheed executive Bruce Jackson, hawking in favor of his company's space weaponry:
-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 Chinese would dispute the PNAC assertion that they pose a threat to the U.S.; as far as I know, there is still a normalization of relations between our two countries. Perhaps they are alluding to the transfer of weapon's technology between nations; or the threat to Taiwan. In any case, the conservative document's allusion to U.S. "dominant military power" sounds a lot like destabilization to me.
Between peaceful nations, parity and balance of our respective forces and weaponry is the maxim in our expressions of our defense and security goals. Any open declaration of the need for military dominance is an invitation to a dangerously competitive, world-wide arms race.
In reference to the nation's nuclear forces, the PNAC document asserted that, " reconfiguring its nuclear force, the United States also must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action by threatening U.S. allies and the American homeland itself."
"The (Clinton) administration's stewardship of the nation's deterrent capability has been described by Congress as "erosion by design," the group chided.
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."
In addition, they counseled, "there may be a need to develop a new family of nuclear weapons designed to address new sets of military requirements, such as would be required in targeting the very deep underground, hardened bunkers that are being built by many of our potential adversaries."
The 2002 PNAC document is a mirrored synopsis of the Bush administration's foreign policy today. President 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.
President 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.
Our folly is evident in the rejection of our ambitions by even the closest of our allies, as we reject all entreaties to moderate our manufactured mandate to conquer. Isolation is enveloping our nation like the warming of the atmosphere and the creeping melt of our planet's ancient glaciers.
We are unleashing a new, unnecessary fear between the nations of the world as we dissolve decades of firm understandings about an America power which was to be guileless in its unassailable defenses. The falseness of our diplomacy is revealed in our scramble for ‘useable', tactical nuclear missiles, new weapons systems, and our new justifications for their use.
The PNAC ‘Rebuilding America' report was used after the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks to draft the 2002 document entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States," which for the first time in the nation's history advocated "preemptive" attacks to prevent the emergence of opponents the administration considered a threat to its political and economic interests.
It states that ". . . we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country." And that, "To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."
This military industry band of executives promoted the view, in and outside of the White House that, " must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends. . . We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed."
‘Peace through strength’; big kid on the block,' is a posture which is more appropriately used to counter threats by nations; not to threats by rouge individuals with no known base of operations.
Their strategy asserts that "The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack."
So their plan is to attack whomever, whenever they feel our security is threatened, no matter if the nature and prevalence of the attack is uncertain. The U.N. should have studied this document before it wasted its time trying to reign President Bush in.
I plucked this from my book 'Power Of Mischief'
ithacan
Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
Here's a great site with tons of info on US plans to "dominate" space:
Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
http://www.space4peace.org /
Here's an article by the director of the network:
Space Warriors
Iraq War Emboldens Bush Space Plans
By BRUCE GAGNON
Military victory in the Iraq war has emboldened the Pentagon in their claims that space technology gives the U.S. total advantage in time of war. According to Peter Teets, undersecretary of the Air Force and director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), American capability in space, "must remain ahead of our adversaries' capabilities, and our doctrine and capabilities must keep pace to meet that challenge."
"I think the recent military conflict has shown us, without a doubt, how important the use of space is to national security and military operations," Teets, a former Lockheed Martin executive recently said.
In order to accomplish the goal of technologically leapfrogging the space program to the point of global "control and domination" a new agreement has been signed by NASA, U.S. Strategic Command, the NRO and the Air Force Space Command to fully mesh all their research and development efforts together. Thus, we witness the takeover of the U.S. space program by the military and the weapons corporations.
<more>
http://www.counterpunch.org/gagnon08082003.html bigtree
back to space
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.
In the 2004 defense budget, Congress appropriated $100 million to reinstate one of the canceled missile defense tests. The total amount the administration requested for Ballistic Missile Defense: $9.1 billion; Senate's bill: $9.1 billion.
Lockheed and possibly Raytheon stands to receive the lion's share of future space contracts because of Boeing's suspension for spying on Lockheed.
-Peter B. Teets, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, is the former president and chief operating officer of Lockheed Martin who retired from the company in late 1999.
Teets now serves as the director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Undersecretary of the Air Force, and chief procurement officer for all of military space, controlling a budget in excess of $65 billion, a figure that includes $8 billion a year for missile defense and $7 billion annually for NRO spying.
To date it is believed that the NRO has provided more than $500 million each to Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. "A key player in supplying revolutionary breakthrough technology has been, and will continue to be, the National Reconnaissance Office," Teets said February in a Pentagon briefing.
Teets boasted that the military makeover now underway is geared to "make the world's best space forces even better."
Former Lockheed president, Bruce Jackson and former Lockheed counsel, Hadley have worked closely together on the Committee to Expand NATO. Jackson was president of this entity, based in the Washington offices of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute; Hadley was its secretary.
As reported by Karl Grossman of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Stephen Hadley told an Air Force Association Convention in a speech September 11, 2000, "Space is going to be important. It has a great feature in the military,"
-James G. Roche, Secretary of the Air Force is a former president of Northrop-Grumman, a subsidiary of Lockheed. "We have encouraged and exploited the rapid advancement and employment of innovative technologies and have taken significant action to implement the findings of the Space Commission in our new role as the executive agent for space," he said to a Senate committee in 2002.
-Sean O'Keefe, NASA Administrator was on a paid advisory board of Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon.
With a share of 24% of U.S. arms exports, Lockheed-Martin is the world's largest arms exporting company. Lockheed leads the pack of defense contractors who do business with the U.S. with valuable Pentagon contracts worth a total of nearly $30 billion and an advertised $70 billion backlog
Lockheed leads the defense industry in lobbying expenditures. Lockheed Martin made over $10.6 million in campaign contributions to candidates and party committees from 1990 to 2000, including $3.4 million in donations in the run-up to the year 2000 elections.
JOVIAN SPACE NEWS SERVICE- Interplanetary Edition
Serving the Jovian moons of Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.
Space Travelers Come in Peace; Turned Back, Nonetheless.
(Europa) Today marked two historic firsts for Europa. Space travelers from a distant planet, believed by many to be uninhabitable because of its toxic atmosphere, locked into our planet's orbit and were quickly intercepted by our interplanetary space patrol.
The travelers are apparently the first-ever recorded visitors to Europa from a planet far beyond our tri-moon system.
The travelers reportedly communicate by projecting the air into the other's orifices in modulated waves. All attempts by the patrol to connect with their inner voice have encountered only static and clutter, making communication difficult if not impossible.
The interplanetary patrol also experienced another first in their encounter with the travelers which was met with much alarm as the patrol reported their discovery to the interplanetary council.
Apparently, the traveler's spacecraft is powered, in part, by a nuclear reactor system. According to Europan law, concentrated radioactive devices have been extremely prohibited since the planet lost its natural atmosphere from the misuse of these materials.
The travelers were regrettably forced out of orbit and are assumed to be returning to their native planet, perhaps to perish in the toxic haze which covers their
dying home.
The military certainly can't wait
This is back from 1997:
http://www.fas.org/spp/military/docops/usspac/visbook.p... (1 MB .pdf)
"US Space Command--dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict."
(even in snazy 'Star Wars'-style words disappearing into the distance"!)
An interesting glimpse of how the US military views globalization:
"The globalization of the world economy will also continue, with a widening between “haves” and “have-nots.”"
No 'rising tide raises all boats' there, eh?
"USSPACECOM must assume a dynamic role in planning and executing joint military operations. Included in that planning should be the prospects for space defense and even space warfare.
Development of ballistic missile defenses using space systems and planning for precision strike from space offers a counter to the worldwide proliferation of WMD."
"The space AOR is global and requires a combatant commander with a global perspective to conduct military operations and support regional warfighting CINCs. USSPACECOM is the only military organization with operational forces in space. Establishing space as an AOR merely states an operational reality."
"Control of Space is the ability to assure access to space, freedom of operations within the space medium, and an ability to deny others
the use of space, if required."
"Global Engagement combines global surveillance with the potential for a space-based global precision strike capability."
Bush: Iraqis are sick of foreign people coming in their country and trying to destabilize their country. And we will help them rid Iraq of these killers
Vote Bush: Not Quite As Evil As Saddam
Habitual Liars led by the worst president ever
The president’s job - and if someone sufficiently vain and stupid is picked he won’t realise this - is not to wield power, but to draw attention away from it.
seemslikeadream
This is exactly what the genocide in Congo is all about
The industrial enterprises that set up AMFI, according to Baracyetse, "are interested in the contract for the construction of the orgital platform around the world that is destined to replace the Russian station MIR."
This project is part of the $60 billion so-called National Missiel Defense system that George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice President Richard Cheney are pushing so vigorously. Building the space station will require many of the rare metals found in eastern Congo.
Another big player in the eastern Congo is Barrick Gold Corp., headquartered in Canada. It is the world's second-largest gold producer after Anglo-American of South Africa.
This company was able in 1996 to get the Mobutu regime's Gold Office of Kilomoto, a government monopoly, to transfer mining rights over almost all its 82,000 square kilometers of land to Barrick. The land is estimated to have 100 tons of gold in reserve.
George Bush Sr. sat on the board of directors of Barrick, according to Baracyetse.
http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Company/kabila1.htm Just in case you hadn't heard
George Bush Sr., in his last days in office gave Barrick $10 billion gold mining rights on US public land, citing an 1870's law.
Three million lives have been lost in Congo since 1998
and people compare bush to Hilter, where do they get ideas like that
The Lost World War
The war on Iraq is not the only war in the world and it is not the only war being fought for our material benefit.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is possibly the most rich place on earth - though this has proved a curse to the people of the Congo. The Congo holds millions of tons of diamonds, copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese, uranium and coltan. Coltan, a substance made up of columbium and tantalum, is a particularly valuable resource - used to make mobile phones, night vision goggles, fiber optics, and mirco-capacitors.
Coltan looks like black mud, but is three times heavier than iron and only slightly lighter than gold. It is found in abundance in eastern Congo and can be mined with minimal equipment. Coltan is vital to the high tech economy. Wireless electronic communication would not exist without it. The "mud" is refined into tantalum - a metallic element that is both a superb conductor of electricity and extremely heat-resistant. Tantalum powder is a vital component in capacitors, for the control of the flow of current in miniature circuit boards. Capacitors made of tantalum are found inside every laptop pager, personal digital assistant, and ,mobile phone. Tantalum is also used in the aviation and atomic energy industries. ....It is generally believed, however, that 80% of the world's reserves are in Africa, with DRC accounting for 80% of the African reserves.
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue13/iss... Bush and Mars
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov /
http://spacescience.nasa.gov/missions/prometheus.htm http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jimo http://www.angelfire.com/stars2/projectorion NASA's new mission claims to place a high priority on the search for life beyond Earth. NASA touts recent discoveries on Mars and the moons around Jupiter, which they say indicates that there may be or have been habitable environments on these worlds that supported the development of life.
That's the official story.
What's actually behind the White House's hawking of this space mission is their desire to promote and legitimize the industry's new nuclear propulsion technology needed to support such a mission. That would be another in a long list of moneymaking boondoggles for the aerospace industry.
To develop and demonstrate these new nuclear power and propulsion technologies, President Bush's budget proposes $279 million; ($3 billion over five years) for Project Prometheus, which builds on the Nuclear Systems Initiative started last year.
Project Prometheus includes the development of the first nuclear-electric space mission, called the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter. This mission will conduct extensive, in-depth studies of the moons of Jupiter that may harbor subsurface oceans. Only advanced nuclear reactors could provide the hundreds of kilowatts of power the craft would need.
Included in NASA plans for the nuclear rocket to Mars; a new generation of Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) for interplanetary missions; nuclear-powered robotic Mars rovers to be launched in 2003 and 2009. NASA touts future mining colonies on the Moon, Mars, and asteroids that would be powered by nuclear reactors.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science. Additional science partners are located at the Russian Aviation and Space Agency and at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project to develop and build the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and JPL.
The Prometheus Project is based on an archaic notion that began in the '50's with a space project named Orion.
Project Orion was a propulsion system that depended on exploding atomic bombs roughly two hundred feet behind the space vehicle.
Orion was developed at the old General Dynamics Corporation, under the guidance of several former Manhattan Project scientists.
In the late 1950's, Freeman Dyson, physicist, educator, and author, joined the Orion Project research team. The project's participants proposed exploding atomic bombs at regular intervals at very short distances behind a specially designed space ship in order to propel it to the Moon and other planets in the Solar System far more quickly and cheaply than with chemical-fuel rockets.
The motto for Orion was, 'Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970'; hauntingly reminiscent of the administration's line about Project Prometheus exploring Mars and Europa's moons.
Orion ran out of money and needed the government's help. The military agreed to take up the project, but only on the condition that it adapt itself to a military purpose. The project was later abandoned because of uncertainty about the safety and efficacy of nuclear energy, and the high cost of the speculative program. Also, because the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 outlawed it.
"Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich," Dyson, 76, said, as he received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion 2000.
Dyson once commented that, "Project Orion is a monument to those who once believed, or still believe, in turning the power of these weapons into something else."
Since the 1960s there have been eight space nuclear power accidents by the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, several of which released deadly plutonium into the Earth's atmosphere. In April, 1964 a U.S. military satellite with 2.1 pounds of plutonium-238 on-board fell back to Earth and burned up as it hit the atmosphere spreading the toxic plutonium dust, God knows where.
In 1997 NASA launched the Cassini space probe carrying 72 pounds of plutonium. If it had crashed or exploded in our atmosphere thousands could have been contaminated. During the Cassini RTG fabrication process at Los Alamos 244 cases of worker contamination were reported to the DoE.
Mum to all of that, the White House wants you to know that the nuclear space project will prove new technologies for future NASA missions. Like space-based weaponry.
The decision by U.S. President George W. Bush to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty allows research beneficial to orbiting space-based lasers as part of a global missile defense shield to resume; orbiting space lasers on permanent space platforms.
Despite the administration and industry talk of Europa's moons, the Prometheus Project will pave the way for the original Pentagon plan to mount nuclear reactors on space-based platforms to power their nuclear lasers. And of course, as the Space Command also asserts, ". . . the United States must also have the capability to deny America's adversaries the use of commercial space platforms, for military purposes" Enough!
This Promethus project is a cynical attempt to commit the nation to Rumsfeld's Star War's nonsense. Bush and Europa's moons: I don't believe them!
A space-based laser system would only encourage other nations to build space-nukes to counter ours. The move to expand this type of weaponry will almost certainly provoke a space-based weapon war.
Maybe we can shoot this crazy laser down before then.
give the soldiers what they were promised
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