Donations for sports up, donations for academia flat

That's what the Chronicle of Higher Education says about donations to colleges with the largest athletic departments. Twenty-seven of these programs raised over $20,000,000. Oklahoma State probably takes it to an extreme: it has bought life insurance policies on over twenty of its older friends, each policy will pay the university $10,000,000 when the friend dies.

Moyers on 7 Soldiers

9 hours, 12 hours, 86 hours?

There are at least three different answers to the question as to how long it took to comply with FISA when insurgents had captured three of our men. Michael McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, says 12 hours. The Washington Post says 9 1/2. But, the efforts to seek a warrant needed to comply with the law did not begin until 86 hours after the soldiers were reported captured. Further, much of the delay was caused by a dispute between the Justice Department and intelligence officers. Heck, it took two hours to locate Gonzales to get his okay.

Was McConnell distorting the facts to score points in his campaign to overturn FISA? He did this when he claimed in a Senate hearing that new intelligence legislation helped the recent capture of the suspected German terrorists; subsequently, he retracted his testimony. Will he retract his latest testimony?

Just words?

"If no preventive measures are taken, the project could lead to catastrophe", so says Xinhua, China's official news agency, with regard to the Three Gorges Dam, which was in the news earlier this month. There are also reports that Wen Jiabao, the premier, is concerned about the ecological problems created by the dam.

Is China about to move on their pollution problems? The cabinet has approved a five-year plan to tackle the problem. Will the plan be implemented?

A Civil War

That's the message I take from this article by Gian Gentile, who was a commander there in 2006. Even then there was a civil war raging.

Spiraling downward to a breakdown?

That's Peter Singer's opinion of our reliance on private security contractors in Iraq. Here are the basic points he makes about the use of private security contractors:

Allows policymakers to dodge key decisions
Enables a 'bigger is better' approach to operations that run contrary to our best military strategy
Inflames public opinion against the U.S.
Their actions have undermined our efforts at winning hearts and minds.

But it isn't only military contractors. We have outsourced our logistics and other vital functions in Iraq. This war will become an example of how not to fight a war.

1988 all over again?

Maybe the military of Burma learned something in 1988. This time they waited perhaps until they could identify the ringleaders of the protest against the government. They entered the monasteries at night and who knows what they did to the monks besides arresting a number of them. Reporting is very difficult. The media is controlled by the government, which seems to be unconcerned about any sanctions that might be imposed.

They are having an effect, as a lot fewer monks marched today.

Help Wanted

Shinseki said it a couple of years ago - in today's world we need more troops. Casey, the current Army chief of staff, says the same thing. The commander of Walter Reed says the hospital is still not performing the way it should because guess what - it needs more people. We pay about as many private contractors as we do soldiers in Iraq, but the contractors' interests are not our interests. Most people who signed up for the National Guard have found themselves really an intrinsic and necessary part of the regular Army.

Is a volunteer army the best choice for us today?

Mr. Galloway Speaks

It's not George Galloway, an English MP. It's Joseph Galloway, a columnist for the McClatchy newspapers. When I started reading this column, I thought it would be just another of many. But, as I read, I realized that Galloway was saying most of the same things I've said or believed. You've got to get half-way into the article before you realize that this, in today's world, is clearly a different article.

Raising the ante

The government of Burma stepped up their response to the marching monks. They fired tear gas, they clubbed people, they arrested hundreds of monks, they killed a few people. Today's crowd was smaller but still numbered in the thousands.

Oh, foreign reporters can no longer enter the country.

It's taken a year

but the Interior Department's Inspector General has finally issued his report on the failure of the Minerals Management Services to collect money due us. By and large the report supports the four auditors who revealed the chicanery at the agency. The auditors have brought lawsuit against the oil companies who cheated us. A jury has decided in favor of the auditors in the first case heard. For more on the report click here.

Had enough?

It looks like the Burmese government is reaching a boiling point. They've imposed a curfew for 60 days, prohibited gatherings of five or more, warned people not to get involved, deployed some troops. But still the monks march.

Watching our own store

There have been a number of articles about the risks involved with the Russian stockpile of nuclear weapons. But, last week revealed that we run our own risks. I'm referring, of course, to the flight of six nuclear warheads from North Dakota to Louisiana. Each of these warheads was ten times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Many nuclear specialists feel that our handling of nuclear weapons has deteriorated as the Cold War has wound down and as our Middle East wars have heated up. Is this also another problem stemming from our deployment of so much of our professional army to the Middle East wars?

Something is happening in Burma

I can't say that I know much about Burma, but every day that I look at BBC News there is another article about monks marching in protest of the government. Now, citizens are joining in. The marchers now number close to 20,000.

A love of iguanas

Jereme James so loved the Fiji Island Banded Iguana that he imported three of them. It so happens that he imported them inside his artificial leg. You see this iguana is on the endangered species list. I'm not sure of the depth of his love for the iguanas as he had four of them at home and claimed to have sold three for $32,000 a couple of years ago.

Our 21st century military

Mark Thoma at Economist's View has some trenchant comments on the current professional army and its accompanying hordes of contractors.

The idea is that privatization will lead to efficiency gains. However, without effective oversight and competition, factors generally in short supply in war zones, it's not clear that the private contractors are less wasteful than the military. I think we've all heard the stories about problems with the work some contractors have done, charges of cronyism, and the like. In addition, the difference in salary between, say, a soldier trained to recalibrate a complicated piece of machinery and a private contractor doing the same job can be large. The private contractor must be paid a substantial risk premium to work in a war zone - think of some of the salary offers for work in Iraq - while a soldier does not. This also undercuts any saving from privatization (though it may say something about how well soldiers are compensated for the jobs we ask them to do). In some cases, as described above, cheap foreign labor has avoided this problem, but that is not always possible.

I am not opposed to the government purchasing goods and services from the private sector when there are clear advantages to doing so and when the tasks are sufficiently distant from combat. It's kind of dumb, for example, for the government to make its own pens, pencils, and paper instead of buying them from private sector firms. But war zones are areas where, by their very nature, the standard rules break down. We can't expect the ordinary laws of economics to apply in a war zone and discipline firms as though they were small wheat farmers operating in purely competitive textbook markets. Who do you turn to for redress if the materials you used to build something turn out to be inferior? Who will enforce contract law if a private firm underpays local labor it hires as part of its support function for the military? Who will make sure these firms don't take advantage of the locals or, perhaps, vice-versa? Even when locals aren't involved in any way, conditions surrounding the war make it so that there's little chance of private sector discipline from free entry and vigorous competition.

As we've seen with the PSDs, discipline is needed and the military, with its laws and codes built up over time is much better suited to the task (though by no means perfect itself). Somebody has to provide discipline and accountability, to make sure that rules of conduct are followed and people behave as honorably as possible under the circumstances. There is a role for the private provision of support for the military, but within war zones the military should maintain control when there is any question a all about the ability of the private sector to achieve a superior outcome, a condition that may be hard to meet.

Finally, as the article notes when essential services are privatized and both US and foreign firms are employed to carry out the tasks, if care is not taken in the reporting, then descriptions of the number of people needed to support the war will be misleading. The same is true for death and injuries. If care is not taken in reporting, these numbers will give a misleading view of the human cost of the war. It would be best if we didn't have to count at all, now or ever, but when we do we should accurately reflect the full costs of our actions.

Mencken, the prophet

You really have to start looking at the McClatchy newspapers, at least the Washington edition. Joe Galloway uses this quote from H.L. Mencken to riff on Bush:

" . . . all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily (and) adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

Read the full article here.

Now it's 78

Three weeks ago I reported that the Army had 73 investigations into fraud and corruption with regard to our efforts in Iraq. Yesterday, that number was up to 78 and the amount of money involved had jumped to $6 billion, with another $88 billion in contracts and programs being audited for financial irregularities.

The Pentagon admitted that they had "insufficient oversight of contracting officers' activities". This admission comes two years after Congress - believe it or not - recognized problems with military contracting and - mirabile dictu - actually passed legislation giving the Pentagon tools to correct the problems.

The first day of Fall

The changing of the season brings thoughts of other changes and Fall is an appropriate time to think of the American dollar.

In the late '90s I was working in Canada but being paid in U.S. dollars. The lowest exchange rate I got was $1.25 for each American dollar, $1.54 was the highest. My son still talks about the wonderful five-course meals we would get at Paul & Olivier, a bistro in Hull, for $15 American dollars. Yesterday, the dollars were at parity.

Five years ago we rented a villa outside of Florence for $1500 per week; the euro was worth about eighty cents. Now that the euro has topped $1.40 I wonder how much that villa would cost.

Me complain? Heck, no as our president tells me things are great here.

Alan all the time

He's everywhere - CBS, PBS, NPR. Every time I turn on the radio in my car, he's on talking about his book, The Age of Turbulence. He, as you've guessed, is Alan Greenspan, this week's media god.

He has a hell of a marketing force working for him, but there is such a thing as overkill and I think he's approaching it.

Exempted from the Rules

All 'private security firms' in Iraq, aka mercenaries, are required to have a license from Iraq's Interior Ministry. All but one that is. Blackwater USA is that one. Apparently, the State Department has given the company unique authority among the mercenaries: no need for a license, no need to comply with military regulations on using offensive weapons, no need to report shooting incidents, no need to provide information to the military so that the company's movements can be tracked on the battlefield.

Blackwater and, I assume, other security companies are focused virtually exclusively on 'their mission' - the protection of their 'principals'. That's fine, but they do so without regard to one of this country's goals in Iraq - winning the hearts and minds of the natives.

We need a draft, as our military does not have enough soldiers to do the job they are being asked to do.

An aside.
Lobbying occurs all over this planet, I know. But I was amazed when I learned of the existence of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. Now, I learn that there are not one, but two, lobbying firms for mercenaries in Iraq: Private Security Company Association of Iraq and the International Contractors Association; there may even be more than two.

Asking Questions or Failing To

In the current NY Review of Books, Thomas Powers tries to answer a question posed by Bob Guldin: What were the real motives for the war in Iraq?

Powers discusses some of the possible motives. But he concludes with the following (of which I have taken excerpts) which reinforces my feelings that Bush is not solely responsible for our current nightmare.

Just as interesting as the Bush administration's motives for going to war is the evident wish of the Democratic majority not to know what they were.

American political leaders, Republicans as well as Democrats, did not ask hard questions before voting for war in 2002, they have not asked hard questions about the President's goals in the five years since, and they are not asking hard questions now about the true nature and prospects of the bold imperial adventure which the White House PR machine insists on calling a "war on terror."

Not knowing why we went in allowed us to go in; not knowing why we should get out will make it impossible to get out. None of the presidential candidates seems to know why we are failing, or to understand what is imperial about the way we deal with Iraq, or to sense that a bigger war is just another mistake away. I don't know what we can do about this.

How Not To Pay For An Audit

Medicare hired PRG-Schultz International to audit claims made by rehabilitation hospitals in Florida, California and New York. It was limited to three states as it was seen as an experiment. If it was cost-effective in the three states, the audit process would be used in all fifty states. Need I say that things don't seem to be working out well.

The basic problem seems to be the terms of the contract. PRG earned a commission of between 25-30% on every dollar identified as wrongly paid by Medicare. Initial results seemed to work out well as PRG found $105,000,000 that had been wrongly paid in their opinion.

One difficulty with PRG's work, in the words of an administrative law judge, was that "there was no evidence of good cause"; that is, there were "no documents in the record that show what PRG-Schultz did to review or discover a potential overpayment". What this means - and is, in fact, happening - is that most of the overpayments reported by PRG and for which they have received their commission will be rejected by Medicare and the courts.

Sickness from Outer Space

A fireball was seen in the sky over Peru on Saturday. It crashed near a small town in the Andes. Naturally, the locals went to check it out. So far, over 600 of the natives have gotten sick.

True, the illnesses are minor - vomiting and headaches - due likely to their inhaling the gases that emanated from the crash scene. Six hundred people from what is probably a small town is a lot of people. How vile were the gases?

They're only allegations

Some current and former employees within the State Department's Inspector General's office have complained to Waxman and company (House Committee on Oversight) that Henry Krongard, the IG, has interfered in investigations with the apparent goal of protecting the administration. Here are some of the examples cited in a letter from Waxman to Krongard:

• Although the State Department has expended over $3.6 billion on contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, you refused to send any investigators to those countries to pursue investigations into wasteful spending or procurement fraud and have concluded no fraud investigations relating to the contracts.
• You prevented your investigators from cooperating with a Justice Department investigation into waste, fraud, and abuse relating to the new U.S. Embassy in Iraq and followed highly irregular procedures in exonerating the prime contractor, First Kuwaiti Trading Company, of charges of labor trafficking.
• You prevented your investigators from seizing evidence that they believed would have implicated a large State Department contractor in procurement fraud in Afghanistan.
• You impeded efforts by your investigators to cooperate with a Justice Department probe into allegations that a large private security contractor was smuggling weapons into Iraq.
• You interfered with an on-going investigation into the conduct of Kenneth Tomlinson, the head of Voice of America and a close associate of Karl Rove, by passing information about the inquiry to Mr. Tomlinson.
• You censored portions of inspection reports on embassies so that critical information on security vulnerabilities was dropped from classified annexes and not disclosed to Congress.
• You rejected audits of the State Department’s financial statements that documented accounting concerns and refused to publish them until points critical of the Department had been removed.

Michael Halko is not that unique

Mr. Halko, who is 90 years old, was rescued by firefighters yesterday. He was almost buried in trash, only his head was visible. The trash was in his house and was so dense that the front door could not opened nor could people walk on the floors in the house.

Here on the Vineyard - and I would think elsewhere - there are a number of elderly who don't throw things out. The reason is unknown, but the trash is very visible. I don't know how many elderly have this problem but I wouldn't be surprised if 5% did.

Not Getting Answers

Nalini Ghuman was born in Britain, earned at doctorate at Berkeley and teaches at Mills College. So, she's been here a while. Yet after a trip to Britain in August 2006 she has not been allowed to re-enter the country. And no one can or will tell her why.

Meeting Holistic Needs

The Australian Navy has paid for breast augmentation surgery for female sailors in order to meet the 'holistic needs' of the navy and the sailors.

Global Power Barometer

The Washington Post has an interesting feature called the Global Power Barometer, which "provides a relative measure how well various nations, ideologies and political movements are exercising their power to move global opinion and events in the directions they desire." The barometer also attempts to forecast the up-coming hot issues. These are the issues they fell will be dominant in the next three to thirty-six months:

• End of US-centric world
• Coming energy wars
• Latin America and the rise of an anti-American left
• China's journey to the top
• New arms race
• Next war

Sound familiar?

Peer Review

I wrote a couple of pieces in 2005 and 2006 about the problems that scientific journals seemed to be having with regard to peer review of journal articles. Today I came across an article that goes beyond - really before - the question of peer review in attempting to judge the success or lack thereof of a scientific study. The article is well-known in scientific circles; it is the most downloaded paper ever published by PLos Medicine. The article, Why Most Published Research Findings Are False, is by John P.A. Ioannidis.

Ioannidis argues that the research findings are less likely to be true where

• there is a small sample size
• small effects - as opposed to large effects such as smoking on cancer - are studied
• there are a considerable number of relationships being examined
• there is a great degree of flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes and analytical modes
• there are financial and other interests present
• the field is very hot and much in the news.

Interesting!

Soul mates?

In his memoir Alan Greenspan almost calls Clinton his soul mate. However, Greenspan does not have kind words for Mr. Bush, fils, or his supporting cast

$80 Oil

Oil hit $80 earlier this week. That's lower than the record set in 1980 when, adjusting for inflation, oil hit $101, but, as anyone who drives knows, we've been on an upward tilt for quite a while now. And it doesn't look as though it will reverse itself anytime soon. Inventories of gas are at their lowest point since 2000. OPEC's increasing production by 500,000 barrels a day seems like a triviality in these days of galloping consumption.

What will the combination of worries in the credit markets, declining home sales and rising oil prices mean for the economy?

Do we know how much oil is available?

Earlier this year I raised the issue as to whether we are getting close to peak oil production. The current issue of The Atlantic raises the question as to whether Saudi Arabia's biggest oil field, Ghawar, has passed its prime. Because of the secrecy with which Saudi Arabia functions, one cannot really know what reality is. However, oil production is down by 1,000,000 barrels a day in the past couple of years, years in which the price of oil has been rising. This decline has occurred despite the Saudis bringing new wells into production. Does the fact that the number of oil rigs in Saudi Arabia has quadrupled since 2001 tell us that they're looking for oil in more places?

Questioning Obama

FP Passport has a rather scathing analysis of Obama's recent doings and statements. Read it here.

"an ass-kissing chickenshit"

That's how Admiral Fallon, head of Centcom, supposedly characterized the current media god, General Petraeus. Fallon apparently thinks that Petraeus is too political. For example, he held court in Mitch McConnell's office when the surge was being debated in Congress. More importantly, Fallon differs with Petraeus' strategy. Fallon wants to get out of Iraq quickly as there are other worrisome areas in his field of command; Petraeus, as we know, wants us to stay there for the long haul.

A different but related note - last week a report on NPR said that Petraeus had not seen combat until his stint in Iraq. Most of his career had been on the staff of senior officers advising but not doing.

And then there's this - is Petraeus being forthright in denying that we are arming the Sunnis?

No one is as wonderful or smart as the media thinks Petraeus is.

Scary

Mike Boyer at FP Passport is worried that too many people are pooh-poohing an attack on Iran. He thinks it likely in 2008. Let's hope he's wrong.

Stewart's take on the Petraeus hearings

A different way of looking

Oliver Goodenough compares the 'dollar auction' game to the situation in Iraq and finds lots of similarities.

What is the true cost?

We all know that the Iraq war has been a very costly venture measured only in dollars expended. The National Priorities Project has looked at the war costs in another way - the opportunity cost - and has calculated this for each Congressional district. You'd be surprised how much this fiasco is costing you.

Moving to federalism?

Hunt Oil has signed a deal with the Kurds - not the government in Baghdad - to hunt for oil in the Kurdish region of Iraq. Was it because the Kurds had passed a law allowing this and the national government had not despite Maliki's attempt to do so? Or was it a recognition that dealing with one of the 'federations' was the only way to get the deal done?

However, signing a contract is one thing. At least one other company, a small Norwegian oil company, has found and pumped oil in Kurdistan but has yet to get an export license so that it can sell the oil.

Probably the best story on yesterday's hearing

I've said before that the McClatchy Washington bureau seems to be producing the best stuff on Iraq. Read their report on yesterday's hearing. Don't forget to read the comments, especially that from Rogue Cowboy.

Questions

I did not see yesterday's hearing nor have I read anything about it, but the Center for American Progress poses some questions they wish Congress asked Petraeus:

• Is violence in Iraq down?
• Have sectarian deaths been significantly reduced?
• Is a possible drop in violence in Baghdad the result of the surge or some other factor?
• Are U.S. military casualties down?
• Are the bottom-up reconciliation and a turn by the Sunni tribes against Al Qaeda a significant turnaround in the war? Is this a result of the surge?
• Are Iraqi security forces improving?
• Have Iraqis made progress on the benchmarks agreed upon at the beginning of the surge?
• Has the Iraqi government taken advantage of the additional U.U. troops to achieve progress on their national reconciliation and political transition?
• Has the quality of life improved for ordinary Iraqis?

For the Center's answers to these questions, read this. I know that my response would essentially be 'no' to the above list.

I have to wonder whether the Congressmen viewed the hearings as another political battle between the two parties or really wanted to understand Petraeus' views. You also have to question the wisdom of the MoveOn people. Was it smart to accuse Petraeus of being a traitor? It seems as though our 'leaders' and the activists are more interested in fighting political battles and enhancing their image rather than in seriously trying to make this a better and safer world.

Progress after 11 years

In 1996 Congress passed the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act which was designed to ensure that twenty-four federal agencies complied with financial and accounting standards. Eleven years later we still don't have all twenty-four agencies meeting the requirements of the law. Depending on the issue, there are between seven and fifteen agencies that, eleven years later, have failed to comply with the law.

I know that governments move slowly, but this seems ridiculous.

Guantanamo Up Close

Here's a talk by Jeff Gleason, attorney for five of the detainees. He claims that at least one of his clients was working for the Red Crescent in Bosnia and was declared innocent of any possible terrorism by the Bosnia courts. Yet, we moved him to Guantanamo when he was freed by the Bosnian government. While Jeff is a young attorney, I suspect that his claims are valid. His speech raises once more the question of what have we become. Is this what 9/11 was all about?

Numbers, numbers. Who's got the numbers?

There has been considerable debate about the numbers being used to justify or rebut the surge efforts. This one conducted by the BBC, ABC and NHK of Japan shows that at least one important group, Iraqis, don't think the surge is going well.

The McClatchy newspapers also have a comprehensive article on life on the ground in Iraq since th surge began. It's not good.

Not a good summer for Mattel but....

an article in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal raises one's concerns as to the company's willingness to acknowledge and correct serious problems.

Companies are supposed to report potentially hazardous product defects to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) within twenty-four hours. Mattel claims - and I think rightly so - that twenty-four hours is not enough time to determine whether there is a potential hazard. However, the company seems to take much too long a time to report potential problems. Here are some examples from the Journal:

Power Wheels
Early 1995 - Mattel is notified of possible problems with the electrical system.
March 1997 - Mattel informs CPSC after the commission had already learned about the problem.
October 1998 - Mattel recalls 10,000,000 Power Wheels
2001 - 2005 - Mattel and the commission receive reports of additional fires in Power Wheels produced after the 1998 recall.

Little People Animal Sounds Farms
September 2002 - Mattel is notified of problems with screws
March 2003 - Mattel notifies CPSC

It seems to me that Mattel could do a heck of a better job in letting the commission and, more important, the public know of potential problems within a reasonable time frame. Some Power Wheels have been identified as causes of serious fires in 2000 and 2004.

A 21 Bum Salute

Bush will be mooned by 2,000 people in Sydney this weekend. Would such a protest work here?

Goat's blood will take care of almost everything

It even can make sure planes fly, or so Nepal believes.

The End Days

The candidacy of Mitt Romney has brought attention to some odd Mormon practices. Armageddon is apparently something that figures prominently in the religion. They have stored 9,000,000 bushels of wheat in 60 silos around the country. Mormon families are encouraged to have a year's supply of emergency food on hand.

He's not in Crawford

Bush, Gates, Rice et al are in Iraq. It's a good idea as long as it's not just for show.

I suspect he knows what he is talking about

It was just a four line brief bio introducing the author of the article, "Nuclear Insecurity" in Foreign Affairs: Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky is a particle physicist...worked on the Manhattan Project....served as Science Policy Adviser to Presidents. The four lines don't really give a clue as to what Panofsky has accomplished in his career. If you follow the previous link, you have to agree that we should listen to him when he talks about nuclear weapons. His basic message is that our current policy vis-a-vis nuclear weapons focuses on chimeras and rather than protect this country makes it less secure. Here are some excerpts.

The problem is that this capabilities-based approach destroys a rational response to emerging threats. Rather than encouraging decision-makers to interpret the political context, judiciously measure the capability and intent of an adversary, and do what is necessary, it encourages them to respond to threats simply based on what they can do.

The administration's current policy provides little clear guidance on the deployment and readiness of nuclear forces; if pressed on these questions, officials generally say only that "all options are on the table." Even after the recent Bush-Putin talks in Kennebunkport, Maine, queries regarding future nuclear force levels have been answered with vague references to "the minimum level consistent with national security." Worse still, the notion that the Bush administration's broader defense strategy, which is known in shorthand as "assure, dissuade, deter, defeat," can be applied to nuclear policy is misguided and dangerous.

Instead, it would make more sense to adopt the narrowest interpretation of assurance, stating clearly that a U.S. nuclear response would only follow a nuclear attack on the United States or its allies.

The United States' large nuclear arsenal does nothing to dissuade minor states from acquiring nuclear weapons; on the contrary, it only adds to their incentives to do so. Nuclear weapons have become the great equalizer: once a state acquires, or appears to have acquired, a small number of deliverable nuclear weapons, it can deter attacks itself and thus gains a substantial degree of political clout. Large U.S. military deployments, particularly of nuclear forces, thus do not dissuade potential adversaries from a military buildup -- they help persuade them to acquire nuclear weapons of their own.

Under the new threat environment, the same deterrent effect as before can be achieved with much smaller nuclear arsenals. Consequently, MAD does not have to be the necessary implication of a prudent deterrence policy in today's world.

A dramatically reduced U.S. arsenal would still provide more than enough weapons to deter such a threat. Small and elusive nonstate actors, such as terrorist groups, meanwhile, having no fixed or independent home address, are not subject to the logic of nuclear deterrence. Whatever one thinks of the "war on terror," it would be hard to maintain that nuclear weapons should play any significant part in it.

The defeat concept, finally, implies that nuclear weapons remain a usable military tool for the United States in actual warfare. But beyond deterrence, these weapons serve no useful mission in this day and age. As President Ronald Reagan declared in 1985, "A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought."

At the same time that the Bush administration has pursued such misguided nuclear doctrines, it has allowed international nonproliferation efforts to wither.

The existing nuclear weapons states, in general, and the United States, in particular, bear a substantial share of the responsibility for these disquieting developments. Washington has consistently disregarded its obligations under the NPT to minimize the role of nuclear weapons in international relations and to work in good faith toward their eventual elimination. The United States' effort to build and deploy a new, modernized arsenal -- exemplified by the Bush administration's proposal for a Reliable Replacement Warhead program, which would create a new generation of nuclear weapons deemed safer than their Cold War predecessors -- is the most recent example of such disregard. Rather than seizing the opportunity to limit the role of nuclear weapons, the current administration is searching for new nuclear missions with narrow military goals.

For instance, the United States condemns Iran's fledgling uranium-enrichment activities while condoning very similar activities by Brazil.

Guaranteeing a supply of nuclear fuel to non-nuclear-weapons states would reduce this risk. Access to an assured supply of fuel for peaceful nuclear power initiatives would remove any justifiable motive for states to acquire indigenous enrichment and reprocessing facilities. But providing such a fuel supply while inhibiting countries from developing dual-use elements of the nuclear fuel cycle would require international or multinational ownership of nuclear fuel stockpiles with strong safeguards against diversion to rogue states or terrorist groups. The indigenous production of all forms of plutonium and highly enriched uranium would have to be suspended pending the establishment of such a regime. Only a broad international approach that does not discriminate between "good states" and "bad states" can secure each state's "inalienable right" to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes without increasing the risk of proliferation.

Therefore, interdiction efforts must rely instead on high-quality intelligence and rigorous physical searches at borders and cargo terminals.

Finally, all parties to the NPT should be required to subscribe to the International Atomic Energy Agency's Additional Protocol, which allows the agency to conduct more comprehensive and frequent inspections of declared and undeclared nuclear facilities than provided for under the current minimum protocols. At the same time, states that opt to withdraw from the NPT should be deemed a threat to international peace and security and referred to the UN Security Council, which could then take action against them.

Policymakers crafting a new nuclear posture need to start their deliberations by considering the extremely limited number of justifiable uses for nuclear weapons today and the grave risks and costs generated by the maintenance and improvement of vast nuclear arsenals. If they do so, they will conclude that the United States can reduce its nuclear stockpile substantially while still maintaining a strong enough deterrent to prevent the use of nuclear weapons against the United States or its allies.

In the meantime, Washington should withdraw all U.S. nuclear forces from Europe and de-alert its deployed strategic nuclear forces, thus sending an unequivocal signal to Moscow that it is serious about nuclear disarmament.

Similarly, Washington would send an important message by adhering to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Washington's insistence on maintaining its prerogative to test new weapons and its refusal to ratify the CTBT have been major obstacles to the treaty's coming into force and a continued blow to the world's nuclear nonproliferation efforts. The purely technical leverage of the CTBT is limited: modern technology allows states to develop and deploy safer and more reliable nuclear weapons without testing them in advance. But stopping nuclear tests, which the CTBT mandates, would make it harder to upgrade nuclear arsenals and would prevent non-nuclear-weapons states from developing any but the most primitive weapons. Accordingly, U.S. ratification of the CTBT would be an important political step forward.

The United States is faced with many decisions concerning nuclear weapons development, acquisition, and deployment as well as the reliability and readiness of its current stockpile. These decisions should be guided by a risk-benefit analysis of nuclear weapons policy. Since the Cold War, the risk-to-benefit ratio of nuclear weapons has grown dramatically. Maintaining a U.S. nuclear arsenal presents only one benefit today: deterring the use of nuclear weapons by others. Thus, there is simply no reason for nuclear weapons to play a central role in U.S. defense policy any longer. On the other hand, there is good reason for Washington to commit to a major nuclear rollback and to strengthening multilateral nonproliferation initiatives: doing so would demonstrate that it is serious about minimizing the role of nuclear weapons both at home and abroad. These moves would greatly enhance the national security of the United States.

Some Good Economic News

Fittingly on Labor Day, this item is about labor. A UN report on labor productivity finds that we are the most productive country in the world when measuring GDP and the labor force. We produce $63,385 of GDP per worker, Ireland is second at $55,896 and Luxembourg third at $55,641. Measuring on an hourly basis we come in second (at $35.63) to Norway (at $37.99) with France third with $35.15.

While we work a lot more hours per year than Europeans (1800 to 1500), we work a lot less than many Asian countries including China where the average person works 2200 hours per year.

And it started August 15

Flimsy Sanity documents the latest appearance of the Virgin Mary.

57 is less than 123...

There were fewer American soldiers killed in Iraq in August (57) than in May (123) or February (74) when the surge began. That's great! But why? The answer to that question has many experts confused. Is it the surge? Have we become irrelevant? Is it joining with the Sunnis in Anbar?

The important point is will the number continue to decline and decline at a faster rate.

1773 is greater than 1753.....

which, in turn, is greater than 1227. The numbers are the Iraqi civilians killed in Iraq war-related incidents in August (1773), July (1753) and June (1227) according to the Iraqi government. But, hey, the surge is working.

Another infrastructure problem

This time it's in China and this time it's with a new project - the Three Gorges Dam, which happens to house the largest hydroelectric dam in the world.

The dam was finished in May of last year. But, already London geologists have found that only 75% - not 100% - of the riverbanks upstream from the dam are truly stable. 3% of the banks are already falling, 7% are quite likely to fall soon and 15% may have problems. Erosion caused by the sheer weight of the water behind the dam as well as frequent fluctuation of the water has caused landslides.

Further, the industrialization and urbanization along the river has generated an unbelievable amount of raw sewage which has collected in the reservoir rather than move downstream. This is not the only construction project in trouble. Some have estimated that there are 85,000 reservoirs with serious structural problems.

Name the football teams

Team A's quarterbacks put on infrared goggles to use a program to improve their eyesight. Team B bought a $50,000 video game to help their quarterbacks remember their plays better. Team C has a studio where players dressed in motion-capture outfits compete against life-sized computer-generated opponents. Team D uses seven cameras to record every practice.

You might think that these teams are NFL teams. You would be wrong. They are all college teams. Is there something wrong with this?

The sports budget for Division 1 teams is growing faster than the universities' overall budget. The budget for Ohio State's athletics department is over $100,000,000. Tennessee has an assistant strength and conditioning coach. In most colleges, coaches are among the highest paid employees. Is there something wrong with this?