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Arms
Resource Center
Update
May 16, 2002
TABLE
OF CONTENTS:
I. GLOBAL REACH, GLOBAL POWER
II. NEW POGO REPORT
III. BUSH-PUTIN AGREEMENT: "OUR KIND OF
TREATY"
IV. FAREWELL CRUSADER?
V: DO AS I SAY: MILITARY BUDGET UPDATE
VI. RESOURCES AND ACTION
VII. NEW ARTICLES BY ATRC STAFF
I.
GLOBAL REACH, GLOBAL POWER
Our
friend Lora Lumpe just published a wonderful report entitled,
"U.S. FOREIGN MILITARY TRAINING: GLOBAL REACH,
GLOBAL POWER," which concludes that, "the September
11 attacks have become the justification for a sweeping
disregard for human rights and democratization concerns."
The
report, published by Foreign Policy in Focus, warns that,
"if in this current effort U.S. forces intervene
and provide training in support of regimes repressing
legitimate political activism and/or using torture or
coercion to maintain power, they are likely to foster,
rather than diminish, political violence around the globe."
The
report is online at http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/miltrain/index.html
II.
NEW POGO REPORT
The
Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has been busy.
They redesigned their website (it looks great). They have
also published an important new report, FEDERAL CONTRACTOR
MISCONDUCT: FAILURES OF THE SUSPENSION AND DEBARMENT SYSTEM.
In the report, POGO finds that, "many of the U.S.
government's largest contractors have been found to have
repeatedly broken the law or engaged in unethical conduct."
BUT, "they are never even temporarily suspended,
let alone debarred, from gaining additional government
contracts, contrary to Reagan/Bush era laws."
POGO's
research found that, since 1990, 43 of the government's
top contractors paid approximately $3.4 billion in fines/penalties,
restitution, settlements and Superfund clean-up costs.
Furthermore, four of the top 10 government contractors
have at least two criminal convictions. And yet, only
one of the top 43 contractors has been suspended or debarred
from doing business with the government, and then, for
only five days.
Who
are the biggest culprits? Our buddies in the arms industry.
Here is a summary of the track records for repeat offenders
from 1990-2002:
*
General Electric: 63 instances of misconduct or alleged
misconduct resulting in approximately $982.9 million in
fines/penalties, restitution, settlements, and Superfund
clean-up costs.
*
Lockheed Martin: 63 instances of misconduct or alleged
misconduct resulting in approximately $231.9 million in
fines/penalties, restitution, settlements, and Superfund
clean-up costs.
*
Boeing: 36 instances of misconduct or alleged misconduct
resulting in approximately $358 million in fines/penalties,
restitution, and settlements..
*
Raytheon: 24 instances of misconduct or alleged misconduct
resulting in approximately $128.7 million in fines/penalties,
restitution, and settlements.
Read
the report online at www.pogo.org/p/contracts/co-020505-contractors.html
POGO
has also added a searchable database of these companies'
misconduct, www.pogo.org/db/index.cfm
III. BUSH-PUTIN AGREEMENT: "OUR KIND OF TREATY"
William
D. Hartung
Headline
writers throughout the world predictably treated the announcement
that the United States and Russia are on the verge of
signing an agreement to reduce their deployed strategic
warheads by two-thirds over the next ten years as an historic
breakthrough. After
all, it's over a decade since the world's two nuclear
superpowers came to any sort of agreement for further
nuclear weapons reductions.
But
as Michael R. Gordon made clear in an analysis piece in
the May 14th edition of the New York Times, the agreement
leaves the Bush administration free to do pretty much
anything it wants to do in the field of nuclear weapons. While Gordon gets credit for the most
detailed early analysis of the pact, Jon Stewart of The
Daily Show on Comedy Central got to the heart of the problem
when he said that the agreement will move us from a position
where "instead of being able to blow the world up
11 or 12 times over, we'll only be able to do it 4 or
5 times."
The
agreement sets no schedule for reductions, as long as
the desired levels - 1,700 to 2,200 deployed weapons compared
with roughly 6,000 on each side now - is reached by 2012.
In theory, either side could even increase deployed
weapons between now and 2012, as long as they come back
down to the agreed levels by the end of the ten-year period
of the agreement. Weapons withdrawn from active service
do not have to be destroyed - thousands may be saved as
part of the "active response" force the Bush
administration wants to maintain so that it can redeploy
weapons on short notice.
Research
and development of new kinds of nuclear weapons, like
the bunker-busting "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator,"
will not be restricted, and missile defense development
can move full speed ahead. In fact, even once the agreement
takes force, the United States will continue to make massive
new investments - at least $33 billion in new spending
in the next five years alone - on its "New Triad"
of long-range strike systems, missile defenses, and a
revitalized nuclear weapons production complex. And that doesn't even take into account the additional billions
the administration will be spending on the militarization
of space, which Rumsfeld and company see as the "new
high ground" for guaranteeing U.S. military superiority
for generations to come. If this does allow enough "flexibility"
to U.S. nuclear war planners, either side can withdraw
from the agreement with just 90 days notice. No wonder one Bush official described it as "our kind
of agreement."
Even
taking into account the fact that the pact is really more
of a "nuclear weapons modernization pact" than
an arms control or disarmament treaty, advocates of permanent
nuclear reductions and nuclear abolition face a serious
challenge in making this clear to the American public. Photo ops of President Bush and Russian President Vladimir
Putin making nice at their mini-summit next week, combined
with the bumper sticker slogans about a "new kind
of relationship" between Washington and Moscow, will
make it hard to get people to focus on the underlying
dangers of the new agreement.
It's not as if anyone is wishing for a raging feud
between Bush and Putin. The problem is that the agreement represents
a short-term marriage of convenience between two leaders
trying to solve their own immediate political problems,
an agreement which could be invalidated at any point with
a change in the prevailing political winds.
Putin
needs to show that his courting of Washington and NATO
has been reciprocated in some fashion, while Bush wants
to quiet fears about a new nuclear arms race and demonstrate
that he's not an aggressive unilateralist.. That's fine for them, but all the most
important issues - such as eliminating Russia's remaining
arsenal of thousands of tactical warheads and meeting
U.S. and Russian obligations under the Non-Proliferation
Treaty to make an "unequivocal undertaking"
to eliminate their respective nuclear arsenals as quickly
as possible - are either ignored or contradicted by the
new pact.
Even
as the Bush-Putin agreement grabs the headlines, there
are signs of life in Congress. Last week the Senate Armed
Services Committee cut more than $800 million from the
administration's missile defense plan and eliminated the
$15.5 million in funding for the aforementioned "Robust
Nuclear Earth Penetrator."
These issues will be debated on the floor of the
Senate either next week or after the Memorial Day break,
as administration supporters try to restore funding for
these dubious and dangerous programs.
RESOURCES ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS/MISSILE DEFENSE
For a more
detailed analysis of the Bush-Putin agreement, see Bill
Hartung's May 14th piece on Commondreams.org, "Bush-Putin
Agreement: Making the World Safe For Nuclear Weapons?";
and keep an eye out for our new report About Face, which
details the role of the arms lobby and corporate-backed
conservative think tanks in shaping the Bush administration's
nuclear posture. It will be posted on our web site, at
www.worldpolicy..org/projects/arms, by Monday, May 20th.
If you haven't seen it already, you should read Theresa
Hitchens excellent essay, "Weapons in Space: Silver
Bullet or Russian Roulette?," which is posted on
the first page of the Center for Defense Information's
web site, at www.cdi.org.
Among the many telling quotes in the piece is one
from former Lockheed Martin Chief Operating Officer Peter
B. Teets, who now serves as the Assistant Secretary of
the Air Force and Director of the National Reconnaissance
Office in the Bush administration: "I believe that
weapons will go into space. It's a matter of time. And we need to be in the forefront of
that."
The
Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace has released a new, 450-page report,
Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction,
by Joseph Cirincione with Jon B. Wolfstahl and Miriam
Rajkumar. Details
on ordering the study are available on Carnegie's web
site, at www.ceip.org, if you click on "Non-proliferation
project." The
site also contains a "Path to the Summit" section,
with news and analysis on the run-up to the Bush-Putin
summit.
IV.
FAREWELL CRUSADER?
INSIDERS
WILL CASH IN REGARDLESS OF WHAT HAPPENS
William
D. Hartung
A
year and one-half into his tenure and on the brink of
pushing the military budget over $400 billion per year,
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has finally decided
to cancel a major weapons program in the name of military
"transformation."
His weapons cut of choice is the Army's $11 billion
Crusader program, the largest project of United Defense,
whose largest shareholder is the Carlyle Group, an investment
firm which employs such former Republican luminaries as
former Reagan Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci (chairman),
former Secretary of State James Baker, and former President
George Herbert Walker Bush (for the occasional $100,000
speech or overseas marketing trip).
Despite
the program's strong political ties, Rumsfeld and his
inner circle decided that the system just doesn't meet
the needs of the lighter, more rapidly deployable, precision-targeted
military force they are hoping to build. The formal announcement of the cancellation
was moved up after lobbyists for the Army leaked the decision
to key supporters of the system on Capitol Hill * most
notably Senators Don Nickles and James Inhofe and Rep.
J.C. Watts, all of Oklahoma, where an assembly plant for
the Crusader was scheduled to be built. The Army lobbyists also distributed talking
points to Congress that suggested that foregoing the Crusader
would put U.S. ground troops at risk in future conflicts
(to see the talking points, go to the web site of the
Project on Government Oversight, at Initially, it appeared
that the lobbying snafu was going to be the end for Army
Secretary Thomas White, who was already enmeshed in problems
stemming from his relationship with his former employer,
Enron.
But
instead, Rumsfeld spared White after forcing him to make
a mea culpa in front of the Pentagon press corps which
one observer suggested had the tone of a Stalinist show
trial. The
decision to save White seemed to come from two directions:
1) The Bush administration's posture of never admitting
a mistake; and 2) the fact that Rumsfeld feels that a
duly chastised White will be a "team player"
from now forward.
The
Crusader decision still needs to get through Congress,
but veteran Pentagon correspondent Pat Towell of Congressional
Quarterly expects Rumsfeld to prevail, primarily because
unlike the V-22 Osprey, which was rescued by the Texas
and Pennsylvania delegations despite efforts by former
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to cancel it, the Crusader
doesn't have a big enough "pork barrel posse"
(in the form of delegations from large states) to buck
the Pentagon. But
the fight over the Crusader may create a smokescreen that
will distract attention from the larger question raised
by George C. Wilson in the May 11th edition of National
Journal: "Is the Crusader the Beginning, or the End,
of Reform?" Wilson cites an April 29th memo by Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz which notes that even
without moving the missile defense program into production
mode, existing Pentagon weapons purchasing plans
will cost 250 billion between now and 2007, and $600 billion
thereafter, just to pay for systems already in the pipeline. That doesn't count new spending for equipment
needed to prosecute the administration's war on terrorism
(e.g., replacement bombs, ammunition, and so forth).
So,
something has to give, even with a $400 billion Pentagon
budget. Wilson's question is whether Rumsfeld
and Bush will have the staying power to cut other high
profile programs like the V-22 Osprey and the F-22 fighter
(which may have its production run cut from 339 to less
than 200), or whether they will cave to pressure from
industry, Congress, and the military services. As former Marine Corps Commandant Charles Krulak notes in the
piece, "When you say 'I'm going to stop a program,"
the political-military-industrial complex rolls in there
and says, 'No you aren't.'" Wilson ends by noting
that "If Bush wimps out on Crusader and other cancellations,
the military-industrial-political complex will roll on
its merry way and continue to take taxpayers to the poorhouse
in Cadillacs."
You
may be wondering what will happen to the "truly needy"
executives of the Carlyle Group if Rumsfeld succeeds in
cancelling the Crusader. Not to worry. According to an excellent investigative piece by Walter Pincus
which ran in the Washington Post on May 14th, after purchasing
Carlyle in 1997 for $173 million in cash and $700 million
in borrowed funds, Carlyle has already "reaped more
than $400 million in dividends and capital gains from
United." The
company also distributed over $4 million in lobbying funds
from 1998 to 2001 to well-connected Washington insiders
like former Pennsylvania Representative Joseph McDade,
former Indiana Senator Dan Coats, and the late Marvin
Leath, former Democratic representative from Texas. When Carlyle moved to make a public offering of United Defense
shares in 2001, shareholders and executives cashed in
again. Prior to the offer, the company refinanced
$180 million of its original purchase price with a $600
million loan, more than half of which ($387 million) went
straight back to shareholders as dividends.
When
the actual public offering took place in December 2001,
the company raised $225 million, much of which went to
stockholders and executives, including "performance
bonuses" of over $100,000 each to United Defense
board members Gen. Austin Peay and former chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili.
Performance bonuses are rarely given to board members,
who are not involved in the day-to-day operations of a
firm.
Pincus
further notes that even if Crusader is canceled, United
Defense will seek a big, fat cancellation fee from the
Pentagon. It
looks like Donald Rumsfeld's ex-college roommate and long-time
associate Frank Carlucci won't do so bad after all, even
with the cancellation.
While Rumsfeld deserves credit for canceling a
program so dear to the hearts (and wallets) of his political
cronies, it would be interesting to know if his one and
one-half year delay in canceling the program, which had
already been targeted by Bush on the campaign trail, had
anything to do with letting his good old friend milk some
more money out of United Defense before the program was
eliminated.
V:
DO AS I SAY:
THE
2003 DEFENSE BUDGET AND 2002 EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL UPDATE
Michelle
Ciarrocca
"Do
as I say, not as I do," is President Bush's motto
these days. White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer
told reporters last week, "The president's message
to the Congress is to hold the line on spending."
He continued," We are a nation that has a deficit,
and it's important for Congress to not add excessive spending
to make the deficit worse." Seems that the President has forgotten that it is HIS $379
billion defense budget request for 2003 that is $52 billion
over last year's budget, and $100 billion bigger than
the last Clinton defense budget! Congress is following
his lead.
The
House and the Senate Armed Services Committee have passed
their versions of the 2003 Defense Authorization Bill.
As Vernon Loeb of the Washington Post wrote, "With
polls showing the American people strongly behind President
Bush's fight against terrorism at home and in Afghanistan,
the war is fueling an appetite for defense spending that
has, for the moment at least, superseded the usual election-year
concerns on Capitol Hill about deficit spending."
Democrats
and Republicans alike have been asking for more defense
spending -- let the battles begin. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld
wants to cancel the $11 billion Crusader artillery system,
the House wants to keep it, while other Members of Congress
are hoping to add in their pet projects.
The
House approved its version of the 2003 defense budget,
which totals $383.4 billion (about $4 billion more than
the Bush request and not including Bush's $10 billion
war reserve fund), in a vote of 359 to 58. Gearing up
for a showdown, the House included funds for the $11-billion
Crusader program. Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge
Jr., the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and
Technology, was left shaking his head. "It is the
hardest thing to do, to take a weapon out of the budget,"
he said. "It is just so easy to put one in."
The Los Angeles Times reported, the "White House
Budget Office promised to recommend a veto if the defense
authorization bill required funding for the Crusader."
The House version also includes funds for research into
nuclear-tipped missiles, or bunker busters. For a detailed list of the House mark-ups
go to the Council for a Livable World website www.clw.org/milspend/fy03houseauth.html
The
Senate Armed Services Committee finished its' mark-up
of their version of the $393.4 billion Pentagon request, which
held off on a decision about the Crusader for the time
being, but cuts the administration's $7.6 billion missile
defense funding request by some $800 million. However,
funding for the Ft. Greely test bed was approved. The
majority of the funds taken from the missile defense request
was transferred to Navy ship building programs. The Senate
version also attempts to reinstate oversight and testing
requirements to missile defense programs and cuts the
administration's request for $15.5 million for work on
a new nuclear bunker buster. The Senate is aiming to bring
the bill to the floor next week, before Memorial Day recess.
For a detailed list of the Senate mark-ups go to the Council
for a Livable World website www.clw.org/nmd/senmarkup03.html
Senator
John McCain (R-AZ) won a modest victory this week when
the Senate Armed Services Committee voted in favor of
an amendment to the 2003 defense authorization bill. The
amendment requires the Secretary of the Air Force to obtain
authorization and appropriation of funds before the Secretary
can enter into any lease for 100 Boeing 767 tanker aircraft.
"This action is an important step forward in providing
the necessary oversight and scrutiny that this $26 billion
tanker leasing deal obviously needs," McCain said.
He added, "this has nothing to do with national defense
and everything to do with taking care of Boeing."
Two
reports were released last week, both estimating the leasing
arrangement to cost almost twice as much as outright buying
the planes. The President's Office of Management and Budget
(OMB) said it would cost $26 billion to lease the 100
aircraft, compared to $18 billion to buy the planes. The
Congressional Budget Office estimates it could cost $40
billion to lease, operate and later buy the planes. However,
negotiations between Boeing and the Air Force are ongoing
so all the figures are estimates until a final deal is
arranged. And, as the Seattle Times points out, "Boeing
is the only company with a patent on the crucial tanker
boom used to deliver the fuel, it likely has the leverage
to build in some extra profit."
Just
as Oklahoma lawmakers Rep. J.C. Watts and Sen. James Inhofe
are fighting on the Hill to save the $11 billion Crusader
built by United Defense Industries, Boeing has the backing
of lawmakers from Washington, Kansas, and North Dakota,
who are also ready to put up a fight. Whether or not the
Boeing tanker deal makes sense for U.S. taxpayers in the
long-term, in the short-term the deal means jobs for their
states.
The
House also added funds to the $27 billion emergency supplemental
request submitted to Congress in March by President Bush.
According to the Los Angeles Times the $3.2 billion in
add-ons are for 12 new H-60 helicopters for the Army National
Guard, 10 JPATS training aircraft for the Navy, 6 TH-67
"Creek" training helicopters, $96 million for
engine upgrades to F-15 and F-16 aircraft and more than
$1 billion in Navy shipbuilding increases. The House committee
accepted amendments to include $200 million in aid to
Israel and $50 million in aid to the Palestinians.
SUPPLEMENTAL
POSITIVES:
The
provisions stating that the funds should be provided "notwithstanding
any other provision of law" have been removed.
The
$30 million which the administration requested for financing
indigenous forces who would aid US interests appears to
have been entirely removed.
The
Senate is waiting until the House is finished with their
version of the bill before scheduling their own mark-up.
COLOMBIA:
There
were several important successes in the House concerning
aid to Colombia included in the supplemental:
The Committee draft of the bill KEEPS the human rights
and fumigation restrictions in place.
Due
to concerns by members of Congress that the shift in mission
from counter-drug to counter-terrorism would pull the
US into Colombia's civil war, the committee draft of the
bill said that US funds could support counter-terrorism
efforts in Colombia ONLY UNTIL THE END OF FY2002.
See
the Latin America Working Group's update - http://www.lawg.org/supupdate.htm
VI. RESOURCES AND ACTION
OPPOSE
FY2002 "WAR ON TERROR" SUPPLEMENTAL ACTION:
Visit
the Friends Committee On National Legislation (FCNL) website
at www.fcnl.org/act_lam_current/lam425_02.htm#con for
action alerts and updates.
"WAR
PROFITEERING: CASHING IN ON THE POST 9-11 DEFENSE BUILDUP,"
Julian E. Barnes, US News & World Report, May 13,
2002.
"TOO
MUCH IS NEVER ENOUGH: BUSH'S MILITARY SPENDING SPREE,"
Michelle Ciarrocca for more detail about the emergency
supplemental on Foreign Policy In Focus
www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/commentary/2002/0205armsspend.html
or
check out the April 18th email update.
VII. NEW ARTICLES BY ATRC STAFF
*
"Making the World Safe for Nuclear Weapons,"
William D. Hartung, AlterNet.org, May 15, 2002. www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13141
Also
on Common Dreams www.commondreams.org/views02/0514-07.htm
*
"U.S. Arms Sales to Israel End Up In China, Iraq,"
Jonathan Reingold, Common Dreams, May 9, 2002.
www.commondreams.org/views02/0509-07.htm
*
"Rewarding Indonesia while Ignoring Congress,"
Frida Berrigan, Global Beat Syndicate, May 6, 2002. www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/berrigan050602.html
Frida Berrigan
Research
Associate,
World Policy Institute
66 Fifth Ave., 9th Floor
New York, NY 10011
ph 212.229.5808 x112
fax 212.229.5579
The Arms Trade Resource Center was established
in 1993 to engage in public education and policy
advocacy aimed at promoting restraint in the
international arms trade.www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms
To sign
up for our monthly email Updates, please contact Frida
Berrigan.
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