What a coincidence.

Just as the Alaska State Legislature allocates $2 million for a conference promoting climate change deniers' "expert" analysis of why polar bears aren't really endangered, a poster boy for polar bear junk science emerges from the woodwork.

Enter J. Scott Armstrong, who is a marketing professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. His research emphasizes forecasting methods, which he has used as the cornerstone for - you guessed it - claims  that the IPCC climate change projections are actually all wrong.

Now he's extended his "forecasts" to say that polar bears are doing just fine. He alluded to his research when Sen. James Inhofe called him  as an "expert" to testify before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee regarding the proposed endangered status of the polar bear; now, Armstrong has released an official statement advertising his paper.

Here's the link  (warning, slow website):

Research done by the U.S. Department of the Interior to determine if global warming threatens the polar bear population is so flawed that it cannot be used to justify listing the polar bear as an endangered species, according to a study being published later this year in Interfaces, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).

[...]

Professor J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School says, "To list a species that is currently in good health as an endangered species requires valid forecasts that its population would decline to levels that threaten its viability. In fact, the polar bear populations have been increasing rapidly in recent decades due to hunting restrictions. Assuming these restrictions remain, the most appropriate forecast is to assume that the upward trend would continue for a few years, then level off.

[...]

Prof. Armstrong and colleagues originally undertook their audit at the request of the State of Alaska. The subsequent study, "Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public Policy Forecasting Audit," is by Prof. Armstrong, Kesten G. Green of Monash University in Australia, and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It is scheduled to appear in the September/October issue of the INFORMS journal Interfaces.

Armstrong's claims regarding the increasing polar bear population have been debunked again  and again  (which doesn't stop Inhofe and others  from repeating the claims, of course).

Also, those who are familiar with climate change deniers will recognize Willie Soon's name.  He's one of the true believers that solar activity causes global warming, which has also been repeatedly debunked (quite conclusively, in fact).

Click here  (pdf) to read the paper.

My forecast is that it will be quoted over and over again throughout the deniersphere.  

As the saying goes, "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with..," well, you know the saying.

Whether you're a conservationist or a climate change denier, undoubtedly you've been following the ongoing efforts to officially declare Ursus maritimus (also known as the polar bear) listed as an endangered species, under the US Endangered Species Act.  

In 2005, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned for the polar bear's protection, based on research done by climate and wildlife experts worldwide (pdf).  Indeed, there is international scientific agreement that the polar bear is heading toward extinction unless it is protected (details here).  At last, in 2006, the US Fish and Wildlife Service responded to the Center's petition, and proposed  that the polar bear be listed as endangered.

Predictably, those interested more in the welfare of the fossil fuel industry than in the survival of the polar bears have been doing their best  to prevent the bears from being protected.  

To make a long story short, there was an initial Senate hearing  in which Senator James Inhofe and a carefully chosen "expert" did their best to confuse the issue;  there was a follow-up hearing  investigating the Bush administration's foot-dragging (to which a senior officialdidn't even bother to show up ).  Finally, a federal judge put her foot down  and ordered the Department of the Interior to make a final decision by May 15, 2008.

The Alaska State Legislature has decided to go "scientist" shopping:

A $2 million program funded with little debate by the Legislature last month calls for using state money to fund an "academic based" conference that highlights contrarian scientific research on global warming. Legislators hope to undermine the public perception of a widespread consensus among polar bear researchers that warming global temperatures and melting Arctic ice threaten the polar bears' survival.

 Republican legislative leaders say a federal decision to declare the polar bears "threatened" by climate change would have troubling effects on Arctic oil development and the state's economic future.

 [...]

 Legislative leaders said they are frustrated that researchers skeptical of the doomsday scenario get marginalized as crackpots or industry shills by the media and scientific agencies.  "We want to have the money to hire scientists to answer the Interior (Department) scientists," House Speaker John Harris, R-Valdez, said last week.

In other words, they want a few good climate change deniers to present "proof" that the Interior Department scientists  are wrong.

Both House Speaker Harris and Senate President Lyda Green are behind the request for the $2 million.  Notably, Green was a co-sponsor of a 2007 Senate Resolution to oppose listing the polar bear as threatened.

At least Harris is honest about their motives, and what he thinks of scientists:

But the point is not to seek some non-biased measure of scientific truth. The point, said Harris, is to provide a forum for scientists whose views back Alaska's interests.

"You know as well as I do that scientists are like lawyers," Harris said.

Rick Steiner  is a conservation scientist at the University of Alaska.  For months, he has been attempting to get Alaska state officials to make public any scientific reasons they have for preventing the protection of polar bears:

[He said] "This truly is the conference to nowhere," [...]

On Friday [May 2, 2008], Steiner released a long chain of e-mail correspondence, saying the state first promised to send internal documents and then refused. The state Department of Law is now reviewing the internal memos from scientists to see if they can be released under the state's open records laws.

"It is stunningly hypocritical that the state will spend $2 million to convene a scientific conference on this issue, but they will not release their own scientific analysis," Steiner said.

At the end of the Anchorage Daily News article, there is a summary of a conference call (with Harris and Green).   Note the part I've highlighted in bold:

The project will include research methodologies such as computer modeling and perceived consensus. Research shall be non-biased to specific groups' opinion and shall present scientifically fact based outcomes.

Non-biased?  Since when were climate change skeptics "non-biased"?  By definition, this conference is being paid for and convened to dispute extensive research that proves polar bears are endangered, to provide a platform for those tired old denier talking points  with which we are so familiar.  

Stay tuned.  I'm sure we'll see soon enough that the "experts" they'll call aren't exactly "non-biased".

• There are a couple of updates on the Heartland Institute's "500 Scientist List" smackdown.  Not only has it turned out that many of the scientists on the list are not climate change deniers, and never consented to be on the list, but some of them are even dead.  Also:

  The Heartland Institute has withdrawn its claim of having identified "500 Scientists with Documented Doubts about Global Warming Scares," but is refusing the demands by dozens of those scientists to be removed from the Heartland's original offending document.

  And, five New Zealand scientists have actually sent out a press release saying although the Heartland Institute put them on the list, they also never consented to be put on the list.

  The story continues to develop.  You can follow it on the blog that broke the story, at DeSmogBlog.com.  Bloggy activism at its best!

• Cool story:

  One of the first things U.S. Rep. Steve Kagen (D–Wisc.) did when he took office last year was to nix his congressional health care coverage. The move stunned a human resources staffer, who, the lawmaker says, looked at him as though he were insane.  

  "I'll respectfully decline until you can make that same offer for all of my constituents," he says he told her, explaining his decision to turn down what many say is the Cadillac of U.S. health plans.

  [snip]

  Kagen's seemingly brazen act was part of his health care reform strategy. In February he introduced the "No Discrimination in Health Insurance Act of 2008" (H.R. 5449), which would bar insurance companies from hiking rates or denying coverage for preexisting medical conditions.

• Nerd news from New Mexico:

  Los Alamos National Laboratory is looking for a private developer to pay for and build a new science complex, officials said Wednesday.

  Under the proposal, LANL would lease the 5-acre complex from the developer to consolidate about 1,600 employees— about a third of the lab's work force— now housed in aging buildings spread throughout the lab.

  Officials say construction can begin relatively soon because the proposal does not depend on congressional funding.

  Any LANL scientists out there?  What do you think -- should the proposal have the advice of Congress?

• More from New Mexico:  if you're a Martin Heinrich fan, or want to find out more about him, his campaign office opening event is on May 10, 2008 (this upcoming Saturday).  RSVP here.  Heinrich is running for the NM-01 congressional seat, against Bush's good buddy Darren White.  Enough said.
• Bush approval rating down to 60 percent among Republicans, Gallup finds.
• Gitmo judge threatens to suspend trial of Canadian detainee because the government's withholding records, according to AP.
• A couple of mining companies are finally called to task for miner deaths. First, Massey Energy is cited by MSHA for safety violations that led to a death in West Virginia. Then, a Congressional investigation recommends that the general manager of Crandall Mine in Utah be brought up on criminal charges for hiding information from the feds.
• Since 2003, a total of 43,000 troops may have been deployed when they were medically unfit for combat, according to a Pentagon report cited by USA Today.
• Get ready for Paulville, a proposed gated community for Ron Paul acolytes.
• Business Week finds men are getting hit harder by the job slump and women are actually gaining.

It's a very bad day for the chronic climate change deniers at the right wing "think" tank, the Heartland Institute.

The folks at DeSmogBlog have discovered an inconvenient truth about the Heartland Institute's "500 climate scientists" list:

Dozens of scientists are demanding that their names be removed from a widely distributed Heartland Institute  article entitled 500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares.

The article, by Hudson Institute director and Heartland "Senior Fellow" Dennis T. Avery (inset), purports to list scientists whose work contradicts the overwhelming scientific agreement that human-induced climate change is endangering the world as we know it.

DeSmogBlog manager Kevin Grandia emailed 122 of the scientists yesterday afternoon, calling their attention to the list.

They updated the news with:

UPDATE: we have received notes now from 45 outraged scientists whose names appear on the list of 500. We've published more quotes here.

A sample quote:

"I am horrified to find my name on such a list. I have spent the last 20 years arguing the opposite."

Dr. David Sugden. Professor of Geography, University of Edinburgh

Ouch.

Make sure you click all the links, especially the one in the update, and bookmark DeSmogBlog so you can keep up with the story as it develops.

This is an open thread.  The Flat Earth floor is yours, for eco-news and anything else that's on your mind.

And, of course, you can read the Overnight News Digest here.

• NH Senator John Sununu thinks net neutrality is dangerous.
• New Mexico GOP Senator-wannabees Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce continue to roll out the "I'm more conservative than you" ads.  Heather Wilson has released her first ad a couple of days ago:

  "Why is Steve Pearce running a negative campaign?" the ad's narrator asks. "Because on important issues, he's wrong. Steve Pearce voted against adding 3,000 border guards to secure our border. And when Democrats tried to cut funding for the troops and require early withdrawal, Steve Pearce didn't vote."

  The ad goes on to tout Wilson as the "commonsense conservative who can win in November."

• More NM Senate race news, from our side of the political fence:

  Senate candidate and U.S. Rep Tom Udall, D-N.M., has joined with U.S. Senate candidate Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., in New Hampshire to create a joint fundraising committee called New Hampshire/New Mexico Victory 2008 according to CQ Politics.

  Udall and Shaheen are also both part of the three Senate seats a coalition of environmental groups are targeting to help put pro-environment candidates in office.  The third is the Colorado Senate race with Udall's cousing, Mark Udall, D-C.O.

• For all you Donna Edwards fans, here's some news from Maryland:

  Democratic Party leaders in Montgomery and Prince George's counties have chosen lawyer Donna Edwards as their candidate for a special election to fill the remaining six months of Rep. Albert R. Wynn's term.

  Edwards had defeated Wynn in the February primary. She is scheduled to face Republican Peter James in the November election for the 4th District seat.

• Bush is definitely Commander-in-Chief of stupid jokes, but at least Craig Ferguson was mildly entertaining at Bush's last White House Correspondents' Dinner:

  Scottish-born Mr Ferguson asked Mr Bush what he was planning to do after leaving office, suggesting: "You could look for a job with more vacation time."

  The president has been criticised for the amount of time he has spent away from the White House during his presidency.

  Vice-President Dick Cheney, Mr Ferguson said, "is already moving out of his residence. It takes longer than you think to pack up an entire dungeon".

• And finally, some history: on this day in 1945, Russian and American troops literally joined hands at the River Elbe in Germany.

• Ivan Oelrich of the Federation of American Scientists slams Ben Stein's Flat Earther Porn "intelligent design" movie, in his blog post "Ben Stein Is Very, Very Wrong: Problems with Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed".
• Speaking of Flat Earthers, Sen. James "Global Warming Is A Hoax" Inhofe (R-OK) has received another award to bolster his "Enemy of the Environment" cred (as if he needed more):

  U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) this week was honored with the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association’s (OIPA) "2008 Friend of the Wildcatter" award for his service to Oklahoma’s oil and natural gas industry.  Inhofe, who serves as ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has long supported efforts to increase domestic production.The award recognizes Inhofe as " ‘Friend of the Wildcatter’ for voting consistently in the 110th Congress to grow the economy, protect Oklahoma’s oil and natural gas industry jobs, and increase domestic exploration and production."

  ("Wlldcatter" defined here.)

• Check out this cool BBC News interview with some of Obama's childhood friends... in Indonesia:

  In the playground of his old school, I met up with two of his classmates - Mary and Rina. Was there anything special about him, I asked?

  "No," said Mary. "He wasn't a special boy, just an ordinary one. But maybe that's the special thing; he had a capability to blend with any kind of situation."

  One thing marked him out as different though, said Rina - his ambition, noted in the school memoir book.

  "At that time, here in Indonesia, all the parents pushed their kids: 'You have to become a doctor' or 'You have to become an engineer'," she told me. "But he wrote that he'd like to be a president. So we thought, 'Oh in your dreams!'"

  And maybe in January 2009....?

• Also from the BBC:  Radio 4's "Donald Rumsfeld Soundbites".  Click here for the streaming audio.

  "I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past.  I think the past was not predictable when it started."

  Thanks for the memories, Rummy.  Not.

• The Albuquerque Journal started a series today on the primaries.  They kicked it off with the Heather Wilson - Steve Pearce "who's more conservative?" war.  Of course, the Journal screws it up right away, buying into Wilson's spin:

  The battle-tested congresswoman from the Albuquerque-based 1st Congressional District is once again fighting for her political life as she campaigns for the U.S. Senate seat Sen. Pete Domenici will relinquish in January after 36 years in office.

  Wilson, a moderate Republican, faces Rep. Steve Pearce, a conservative, three-term congressman from southern New Mexico, in the June 3 Republican primary election.

  She's about as "moderate" as McCain.  Pearce is more conservative, but not by much.  Oh well, it's the Albuquerque Journal... New Mexico Dems are familiar with its unreliable reporting.

  New Mexico blogger Heath Haussamen has more on the current state of the Senate race here.

• Funny stuff: "If ABC ran the Lincoln-Douglas Debates".

Note:  see update at the end.  He changed his mind.  Well, he got some free press to help his "straight-talkin' tough guy, just like Dubya" image take hold.

Maybe he'll start clearing brush next.

It could be a campaign ad.  "I'm John McCain.  I'm badass.  I don't need Secret Service protection."

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) may be the presumptive GOP nominee for president, but, by his own wishes, he is not being protected by the Secret Service.

"He has not requested protection," Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan told a congressional subcommittee this morning. "We have no involvement at this point."

In opting not to take the protection, McCain is following through on plans he outlined to reporters late last year on his Straight Talk Express campaign bus.

Last November, McCain said:

"It's my intention, if we win this nomination, to reject Secret Service," he said during one of his many conversations with reporters on his Straight Talk Express this weekend. "Why do I need it?"

He adds: "The day that the Secret Service can assure me that if we're driving in the motorcade and there's a guy in a rooftop with a rifle, that they can stop that guy, then I'll say fine. But the day they tell me, 'well, we can't guarantee it,' then fine, I'll take my chances."

McCain rejected Secret Service protection in 2000, after winning the New Hampshire primary. But he wants to go further, rejecting the massive security apparatus should he become president.

"It's the inconvenience," McCain said. "It's the inconvenience it causes people. It's a waste of the taxpayers money. It's just everything I don't like."

Read the whole thing.  It's just bewildering.  "It's a waste of taxpayers money,".  Well, how about the Iraq War?

Speaking of which, if McCain is so tough, why'd he need all that protection when he took his famous stroll in Baghdad last year?

NBC’s Nightly News provided further details about McCain’s one-hour guided tour. He was accompanied by "100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead." Still photographs provided by the military to NBC News seemed to show McCain wearing a bulletproof vest during his visit.

This is a guy who's running for Commander-in-Chief of the United States.  This is the guy who'll have access to "The Football".  This is the guy who is supposed to have good judgment.

There's really nothing much more to say.

Update: Looks like he changed his mind.  I assume he'll stick with that decision.

October 6, 2001.  Across America, people were opening their newspapers to read about Bush's impending war in Afghanistan, or maybe another article about the September 11 terrorist attacks.  Chances are, most only gave the following article a brief glance:

Florida Man Dies of Rare Form of Anthrax

A 63-year-old Florida man who had been hospitalized with pulmonary anthrax on Tuesday died today, state health officials said.

Of course, in light of the September 11 attacks, the word "terrorism" was whispered, but public health officials firmly stated that did not yet know how the man had contracted the disease.

A New York City Emergency Service police officer inspects a mailbox on New York's Fifth Avenue, yesterday. (October 17, 2001) -- AP photo

However, by October 9, the FBI had taken over the case, which was now making front page news;  by October 11, three people had died in Florida.  On October 13, the news broke that an NBC employee in New York had contracted anthrax:

Anthrax case confirmed in New York

An NBC employee in New York today tested positive for anthrax, following tests at the offices of the TV network after mail containing a suspicious powder was received.

The anthrax was not the inhaled form of the disease, which killed a Florida man a week ago. The female NBC employee has the skin form of the disease and is expected to recover, the network said.

With the US Capitol in the background, members of the US Marine Corps' chemical-biological incident response force demonstrate anthrax clean-up techniques... — AP photo

Three days later, headlines across the nation announced:

Anthrax threat comes to Congress

New security precautions and a swelling unease swept the U.S. Capitol and much of the nation yesterday after a letter testing positive for anthrax was opened in the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

The discovery of a letter containing a powdery substance and a Trenton, N.J., postmark brought the reality of terrorism literally to Congress' desktop in the most direct way since the attack Sept. 11 on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. It caused officials to redouble efforts to secure the buildings and people on Capitol Hill and to search for a common thread.

Until 2001, there had only been 18 fatal cases of pulmonary anthrax in the US in the past 100 years;  the 10 fatal cases in 2001 were the first in US history caused by an intentional release of anthrax.  Eventually, public health officials were able to determine that seven anthrax-laden letters were were mailed;  four were opened.

Americans waited on the edge of their seats for the FBI to announce that they’d caught the culprit (or culprits). Publicly, it looks like they hit some rough spots early on; investigators argued about the possible source of the anthrax: who might have formulated the weapon?  Was it "weaponized"?  Military grade?  Were the perpetrator(s) former US military lab researcher(s), or maybe just researcher(s) in a civilian lab?  (The Bush administration immediately tried to pin it on Saddam, of course.)

In any case, it was agreed that the anthrax was "energetic", and "professionally done", became airborne easily, and was therefore readily inhaled and effective as a weapon.

Five years (and many conspiracy theories) later, the feds gave their last update.  They said that they're still on the case, and that it has high priority.

However, yesterday Fox News claims to have obtained an email exchanged between US Army scientists regarding "about four" possible suspects:

The FBI has narrowed its focus to "about four" suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned.

Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID.

The FBI has collected writing samples from the three scientists in an effort to match them to the writer of anthrax-laced letters that were mailed to two U.S. senators and at least two news outlets in the fall of 2001, a law enforcement source confirmed.

[snip]

.. in an e-mail obtained by FOX News, scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed how the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues.

"Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared ... to duplicate the letter material," the e-mail reads. "Then the bombshell. He said that the best duplication of the material was the stuff made by [name redacted]. He said that it was almost exactly the same ... his knees got shaky and he sputtered, 'But I told the General we didn't make spore powder!'"

This is not news.  In my opinion, it's only slightly more specific than any previous knowledge gained from the investigation, which has been plagued with problems and scientific disagreements from the beginning.  And, even though the FBI publicly chose to focus on one "person of interest", it has been implied that there were multiple suspects since the beginning of the investigation, as Richard Preston describes in his book The Demon in the Freezer.

Preston quotes a conversation he had with a forensic microbiologist who is also a former FBI agent:

We just don't know who these perpetrators are, and it could be years before we get a break... I personally find it hard to believe that it was done by only one person.  That's just gut.  I don't know why, I can't put my finger on it.

Fox may think they have a scoop, but their article (and most likely the email) is essentially a re-hash of old speculation, and is only slightly more specific than the musings of Preston's source.

This is a pretty exciting election year for voters in the Land of Enchantment (or the "Land of the Enchanted", as Bush once called it).  We have races in all three of our congressional districts, plus a Senate race.  Last week, mcjoan updated us on the Senate race;  the fine folks at New Mexico FBIHOP have a great summary of all three Congressional races here.

A couple of days ago, CQ Politics turned the spotlight on NM-01 (click the map to enlarge) -- a small district whose complicated race was triggered by Sen. Pete Domenici's retirement:

New Mexico faces an unusual total turnover of its U.S. House delegation, with all three members — Democrat Tom Udall and Republicans Heather A. Wilson and Steve Pearce — running for the Senate seat left open by retiring Republican Pete V. Domenici . And while each of the three districts is staging an open house for open-seat candidates, the most intense scramble may be occurring in the Albuquerque-based 1st, a partisan battleground district of long standing.

The state’s preliminary candidate filing deadline passed Tuesday, and seven major-party candidates — five Democrats and two Republicans — are in the race to succeed Republican Wilson, who won a hard-fought and narrow re-election victory in 2006 over Democrat Patricia Madrid, then New Mexico’s attorney general.

In 2004, the district voted Kerry over Bush by 3 percent.  CQ has rated the district as "no clear favorite", but that will most likely change soon:

One recent officeholder, former New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron, announced Feb. 2 she would run for the Democratic nomination, emphasizing her background as an 11th generation New Mexican. Other well-known figures seeking the nomination are former Albuquerque Councilman Martin Heinrich and former state Health Secretary Michelle Lujan Grisham.

Vigil-Giron and Lujan Grisham both are Hispanic. Christine Sierra, a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, said this could boost them in a district in which Hispanics make up well more than two-fifths of the population. But they could split the Hispanic vote, which also will be pursued by Heinrich, the best-known among the non-Hispanic white candidates. Heinrich entered the race in April, before Domenici announced his retirement plans and incumbent Wilson shifted her sights to the Senate race.

The other two candidates are Robert Pidcock and Jessica Wolfe, who was an aide to Bill Richardson.  Heinrich is easily the front-runner;  he's been in the race longer, and has raised some serious money:

Year-end reports indicate Heinrich led the Democratic pack in fundraising, aided in part by his early start. By Dec. 31, Heinrich raised $465,000 and had $277,000 left on hand. Lujan Grisham, the other Democrat who filed a campaign finance report, had raised $116,000 and had $96,000 on hand. The other candidates will be required to file their initial reports, for the first quarter of 2008, by April 15.

He has out-raised all of his opponents, both Democratic and Republican.

The two Republicans in the race are Bernalillo County sheriff Darren White, and state Senator Joe Carraro, who touts his experience, saying that White should "run for the Legislature" before setting his sights on D.C..

White was chairman of Bush's campaign in New Mexico in 2004, and chaired Guiliani's NM campaign as well.  He's doing his best to get the hell away from his history as a Bush acolyte, saying he's wingnut-lite "independent".  He's even changed his campaign rhetoric from "our troops must return in victory [from Iraq]" (video) to not saying anything about "victory" at all.

The NM primary is on 3 June.  Whether you're a Democratic or Republican voter, you're going to wish the choice was as simple as "red or green".

Race tracker wiki: NM-01

A B-52H bomber with a full load of 12 Advanced Cruise Missiles under the wings. (Click to enlarge.)

Michael Hoffman reports in Military Times that five (some say six) nuclear-armed Advanced Cruise Missiles were mistakenly flown on a B-52H bomber from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana on August 30.

I disclosed in March that the Air Force had decided to retire the Advanced Cruise Missile (ACM), and the Minot incident apparently was part of the dismantlement process of the weapon system.

The post is very thorough, and I highly recommend reading it.  He goes into detail, explaining how the DoE and DoD keep track of our nuclear weapons, a brief history of how they have been transported via aircraft (including some "incidents"), and how the transfer from Minot Air Force Base was part of decreasing our cruise missile stockpile.

Last month, the Washington Post reported on subsequent changes the Air Force has made in how they handle nuclear weapon transport:

A key change is a firm prohibition against storing nuclear armed and nonnuclear armed weapons in the same storage facility, a contributing factor in the Aug. 29 mix-up. A crew at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., using outdated information, picked up six missiles with dummy warheads and six carrying nuclear warheads from the same storage hangar. The missiles eventually were loaded on a B-52 and flown to Louisiana, where the missiles were to be decommissioned.

"Do not co-mingle nuclear and non-nuclear munitions/missiles . . . in the same storage structure, cell or WS3," the new instructions state. (A WS3 is an underground vault.) The instructions were first disclosed by Stephen Aftergood on his Secrecy News Web site.

[Click here for Aftergood's post.]

Sounds like a fantastic idea.  Too bad they didn't think of it sooner...

... which leads us to what you'll find on page A02 of today's Washington Post.  The news is not good:

The Defense Department is displaying a "precipitous decrease in attention" to the security and control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, according to a Defense Science Board task force that examined the broader causes behind the U.S. flight in August of a B-52 bomber that inadvertently carried six cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads.

"The decline in DoD focus has been more pronounced than realized and too extreme to be acceptable," the task force said in a report released yesterday by its chairman, retired Air Force Gen. Larry D. Welch, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Welch, who served in the 1980s as head of the Strategic Air Command and later as Air Force chief of staff, told the senators about his concern that "the nation and its leadership do not value the nuclear mission and the people who perform that mission."

I've always said that the last person (next to John McCain) who needs to have thousands and thousands of nukes (on hair-trigger status, mind you) under his control is George W. Bush.

More from the article:

The Welch panel pointed out that Air Force colonels, Navy captains and mid-level civilians are now responsible for managing the Pentagon's nuclear programs -- a task that during the Cold War was handled by senior flag officers or senior civilians. One of the panel's recommendations is the appointment of an assistant secretary of defense for nuclear enterprise reporting directly to the defense secretary, as well as the naming of flag officers in each of the services who would focus solely on nuclear weapons.

The task force's findings were reflected in a statement made before the committee by three senior Air Force officers who had supervised two other inquiries after the B-52 flight. They said the Air Force's once-central focus on its nuclear mission "has diminished since 1991," after the end of the Cold War. At the same time, they said, "the Air Force began 17 years of continuous combat including conventional air power commitments" using aircraft, such as B-52s, once reserved for nuclear operations.

[Click here (pdf) for the report, "Permanent Task Force on Nuclear Weapons Surety Report: Unauthorized Movement of Nuclear Weapons".]

Although it is expected that the Air Force would shift some of its focus from our nuclear mission after the Cold War ended, one would certainly hope that the emphasis on the safety and security of the arsenal would not diminish, especially since we have less nukes than we used to.  The key is in Ret. General Welch's quote above, which bears repeating:

"the nation and its leadership do not value the nuclear mission and the people who perform that mission."

They just value a different mission.  A George W. Bush-style mission:

The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and White House guidance issued in response to the terrorist attacks against the United States in September 2001 led to the creation of new nuclear strike options against regional states seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction, according to a military planning document obtained by the Federation of American Scientists.

As Meteor Blades pointed out last November, Syria and Iran are on this new nuclear "hit list".

I'm sure John McCain loves the sound of that.

It’s naive to say that we will never use nuclear weapons.

-- John McCain, August 5, 2007, Republican Presidential Debate

Sing it, John.

Update: CNN has called Colorado and Utah for Obama.  MSNBC has called it for Clinton.

Georgia (87 Delegates)

95% of districts reporting Barack Obama 225,698 66% Hillary Clinton 140,015 32%

Update:  CNN has called it for Obama.

Christopher Helleman and Travis Sharp of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation have put the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars into perspective.  There's really not much to say, except... wow:

Last night, John McCain appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and gave us yet another glimpse into the fantasyland in his head.  He reminisced about his April 2007 visit to Iraq, which included a heavily armed stroll through a Baghdad market.  He told Jay Leno:

I was in Iraq with my friend Senator Lindsey Graham ... 688 brave young Americans , temperatures like 125, re-enlist to stay in Iraq and fight... one of the most moving experiences I've ever had.  On the plane on the way back we were talking, I said "you know, you've got these kids, these brave young Americans out there, and I'm worried about my political future, and they're puttin' it on the line.  We’re not gonna let them get defeated. We’re not gonna have them surrender. And they’re gonna win. And by golly, they are winning, my friends. They are winning. They are winning."

So let me get this straight, Senator McCain.  Winning means suicide?

Suicides among serving American soldiers reached a record high last year, as more troops were sent back for multiple tours of the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The US Army saw suicides among active duty troops leap 20 per cent from 2006, with 121 soldiers taking their own lives during 2007. The increase in attempted suicides and self-inflicted injuries was higher still, jumping six-fold since the war in Iraq began in 2003.

The army suicide rate now stands at twice that of 1980, when records began, and for the first time in American military history more soldiers are killing themselves in wartime than in peace.

The findings are contained in an internal military report that concludes that the army was utterly unprepared for the psychological fall-out from fighting two parallel and demanding insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Winning" means bombs and bloodshed?

Powerful blasts triggered by female suicide attackers ripped through two Baghdad pet markets on Friday, killing 64 people in the most lethal bombings in the Iraqi capital in six months, officials said.

[snip]

Some bodies were packed into bags and put in the back of police pick-up trucks.

Emergency workers sifted through the bomb-blackened and rubbish-strewn site in search of a wallet, a watch, a piece of paper -- anything that could help to identify the unrecognisable corpses.

Bloodied identity cards, watches and sets of prayer beads were placed one by one into a plastic box.

A mobile phone lay amid the wreckage, ringing incessantly -- perhaps a relative trying desperately to reach a loved one.

The carcasses of dead animals lay scattered among the human flesh, while workers hosed down the site and ambulances raced away from the market.

Really, Senator McCain?  That's "winning"?

Oh really, John?

Negroponte, who currently serves as deputy secretary of state, told the National Journal that the country has made improvements and that it has been years since interrogators used the simulated drowning technique, often described as torture.

"We've taken steps to address the issue of interrogations, for instance, and waterboarding has not been used in years," Negroponte told the magazine.

"It wasn't used when I was director of national intelligence, not even for a few years before that."

He was Director of National Intelligence from 2005 to 2007.

When he says "not even for a few years before that", what does he mean?  Three years?  Two years?  Does it matter?  Maybe he's using this to split those hairs:

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture "abhorrent" in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto Gonzales's arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Well, consider the source.  It's Mr. Death Squads talking, so what else would we expect?

We knew they'd find a way to sneak him back into the administration.  The Boston Globe reports:

Paul Wolfowitz, the former World Bank president and former deputy secretary of defense who was instrumental in the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003, has been named chairman of a panel that advises the State Department on arms-control issues.

"Arms control", as in WMDs.  Oh, the irony...

In case you're wondering where Wolfowitz has been since his demise last year as president of the World Bank, he's been hanging out with the sensitive, thoughtful souls at the American Enterprise Institute.

The State Department panel that he will chair is the ISAB, or the International Security Advisory Board.  As described on the State Department website:

The Secretary of State's International Security Advisory Board (formerly called the Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board (ACNAB)) provides the Department with independent insight and advice on all aspects of arms control, disarmament, international security, and related aspects of public diplomacy. The ISAB is sponsored and overseen by the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security. The Board provides its recommendations directly to the Secretary of State.

The Boston Globe article continues with a great quote from an expert in the field of nuclear nonproliferation:

Joseph Cirincione, a senior fellow and director for nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based policy research group, criticized Wolfowitz's appointment.

"The advice given by Paul Wolfowitz over the past six years ranks among the worst provided by any defense official in history," Cirincione said. "I have no idea why anyone would want more."

As Arms Control Wonk's Jeffrey Lewis mentioned here and here, it's noteworthy that Wolfowitz will be chairing a panel that already leans to the right.  It includes Kathleen Bailey, Amb. Robert Joseph, and Keith B. Payne, who are members of a right wing think tank that has advocated the development of nuclear "bunker busters".  The board also includes James R. Schlesinger (Secretary of Defense under Presidents Nixon and Ford), and former CIA director R. James Woolsey (1993-1995), who, on September 12, 2001, claimed that "the most likely, certainly not the only possibility [behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks) is Iraq."

One of the other board members is William van Cleave, who, like Wolfowitz, was a member of the infamous "Team B", way back when George H. W. Bush was head of the CIA:

The outside experts on Team B were led by Harvard Professor Richard Pipes and included such well-known hawks as Paul Nitze, William Van Cleave, and Paul Wolfowitz. Not surprisingly, Team B concluded that the intelligence specialists had badly underestimated the threat because they relied too heavily on hard data, instead of extrapolating the Soviets' intentions from ideology.[1] According to some Team B members, "the principal threat to our nation, to world peace, and to the cause of human freedom was the Soviet drive for dominance based upon an unparalleled military buildup."[2]

Although the Team B report contained little factual data, it was enthusiastically received by conservative groups such as the Committee on the Present Danger, whose members included Ronald Reagan, and the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.  But the report turned out to be grossly inaccurate.

[snip]

Team B was right about one thing. The CIA estimate was indeed flawed. In 1989, the agency published an internal review of the threat assessments from 1974 to 1986. The report concluded that the Soviet threat had been "substantially overestimated" every year. In 1978, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that the selection of Team B members yielded a flawed composition of political views and biases.[4] Consequently, the Team B analysis was deemed a gross exaggeration and completely inaccurate.

In other words, Wolfowitz learned the art of threat inflation way back during the Cold War, and perfected it in the buildup to the Iraq war.  So, he'll definitely be in good company in his new job.

So, what's the next threat inflation project?  Iran?

For those of us who grew up during the later years of the Cold War, the acronym "NATO" brings back memories of watching the evening news with our families, when most discussions of US foreign policy weren't complete without mentioning "nuclear weapons" and "the Soviets".  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (or NATO) is a Cold War military alliance that was founded in 1949, basically as a counter-balance to the USSR, where:

The [NATO] Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them...  will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

[NATO member countries today]

The NATO countries played an important role in the Cold War nuclear arms race by either having their own nuclear weapons (e.g. France and the UK), or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their soil (e.g. Pershing nuclear missiles in West Germany).  The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' "Doomsday Clock" is a vivid historical indicator of the Cold War nuclear tensions (click the image at right).

The Cold War ended in 1991.  The US and Russia have fewer nuclear weapons than they did, but still have far more than enough to render the Earth uninhabitable;  the US has about 9,900, and Russia has about 15,000 (pdf).  NATO has changed its mission to adapt to post-Cold War conflicts;  one of the most recent examples is the takeover of US-lead military operations in southern Afghanistan by a NATO-lead force in the south of Afghanistan.

What does the future hold for NATO?  General John Shalikashvili (former NATO commander in Europe), General Klaus Naumann (ex-chairman of Nato's military committee), General Henk van den Breemen (former Dutch chief of staff) Admiral Jacques Lanxade (former French chief of staff), and Lord Inge (former chief of the general staff and defense staff in the UK) have proposed reforms for NATO that make me wonder if they are yearning for the Cold War days.

From yesterday's UK Guardian:

Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, Nato told

The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the "imminent" spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists.

Calling for root-and-branch reform of Nato and a new pact drawing the US, Nato and the European Union together in a "grand strategy" to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world, the former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a "first strike" nuclear option remains an "indispensable instrument" since there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world".

[snip]

"The risk of further [nuclear] proliferation is imminent and, with it, the danger that nuclear war fighting, albeit limited in scope, might become possible," the authors argued in the 150-page blueprint for urgent reform of western military strategy and structures. "The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."

The authors " ...paint an alarming picture of the threats and challenges confronting the west in the post-9/11 world and deliver a withering verdict on the ability to cope...", and include the following as part of the key threats:

• Political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism.
• The "dark side" of globalisation, meaning international terrorism, organised crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

It's really stretching the imagination try to understand how a new doctrine of pre-emptive nuclear strikes can possibly be part of the War on Terror™.  The concept of nuclear deterrence can't apply if your perceived enemy doesn't have nuclear weapons.  "We think they might be making them," is not the same as a nation having them, and being overtly hostile toward another nation, as was the case in the Cold War.  There are no clear targets;  we're talking ideologies and small groups of people.  And, let's quit waxing theoretical:  the use of a nuclear weapon period is a horrific proposal.

Andy Grotto at Arms Control Wonk points out something even more important:

The goal of the manifesto, according to its authors, is to revive the troubled trans-atlantic alliance.

Huh?!? How could a renewed emphasis on the preemptive use of nuclear weapons possibly promote NATO unity?!? The authors apparently missed the Schultz-Perry-Kissinger-Nunn op-eds in the WSJ endorsing the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.

Click the link for the WSJ op-ed.  It's a great piece, and they specifically say:

Apart from the [nuclear] terrorist threat, unless urgent new actions are taken, the U.S. soon will be compelled to enter a new nuclear era that will be more precarious, psychologically disorienting, and economically even more costly than was Cold War deterrence. It is far from certain that we can successfully replicate the old Soviet-American "mutually assured destruction" with an increasing number of potential nuclear enemies world-wide without dramatically increasing the risk that nuclear weapons will be used. New nuclear states do not have the benefit of years of step-by-step safeguards put in effect during the Cold War to prevent nuclear accidents, misjudgments or unauthorized launches. The United States and the Soviet Union learned from mistakes that were less than fatal. Both countries were diligent to ensure that no nuclear weapon was used during the Cold War by design or by accident. Will new nuclear nations and the world be as fortunate in the next 50 years as we were during the Cold War?

Indeed.  NATO may need new life, but a new doctrine of pre-emptive nuclear strikes should not be part of it.

The other day, just for giggles, I looked at Chris Matthews' profile on the MSNBC website.  It says, that, among other things, he is:

[A] television news anchor with remarkable depth of experience, Matthews has distinguished himself as a broadcast journalist, newspaper bureau chief, Presidential speechwriter, and best-selling author.

It's sad that over the past few years, his idea of "journalism" has degenerated to Rush Limbaugh/talk show quality, namely offensive and juvenile sexist remarks about Senator Hillary Clinton as well as other women.  His obsession with Sen. Clinton reached tabloid levels the day after she won the New Hampshire Democratic primary, when he said that:

"the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win there on her merit."

You can read more about his near-nuclear meltdown here and here.  ("It's not an obsession."  Right, Chris.)

Thankfully, the good people at Media Matters watch Matthews so we don't have to.  They've brought us the latest, which is - gasp - an apology from Matthews.

Here's the video:

It's a start, I suppose, although parts of it are more like "I'm sorry I was an ass.  I'd like to rephrase that insulting thing I said about Hillary.  Oops, I'm sorry, I was an ass again."  For example:

So, did I say it right? Was it fair to say that Hillary Clinton, like any great politician, took advantage of a crisis to prove herself? Was her conduct in 1998 a key to starting her independent electoral career the following year? Yes.

Was it fair to imply that Hillary's whole career depended on being a victim of an unfaithful husband? No. And that's what it sounded like I was saying and it hurt people I'd like to think normally like what I say, in fact, normally like me. As I said, I rely on my heart to guide me in the heated, fast-paced talk we have here on Hardball -- a heart that bears only goodwill toward people trying to make it out there, especially those who haven't before.

(The entire transcript is below the fold.)

Well, Chris, I'm sure you mean no malice, and you're just a bumbling oaf when it comes to apologies.  We'll give you the benefit of the doubt.  Kind of.

You aren't off the hook yet.  Please install a filter between your brain and your mouth, and don't forget that we'll be watching and holding you accountable to your apology.

[Update]:  David Brock of Media Matters has posted a diary about this.  Click here to read it.  Note that he also mentions that Hillary isn't the only woman about whom Matthews has said inappropriate things.