Clinton administration vets involved in Obama transition find White House "unrecognizable"

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: ‘Political Archaeologists’ Find Surprises During the Transition
By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: December 2, 2008

....“The buildings look the same,” one said over coffee, “but everything inside is unrecognizable.” And as they dig, they have tripped across a few surprises.

None of these newly arrived archaeologists would allow their names to be used when discussing their findings; to preserve cooperation with the Bush White House in a handover-of-power that still has 49 days to go, President-elect Barack Obama’s top aides have imposed a gag rule. But few can contain their amazement, chiefly at the sheer increase in the size of the defense and national-security apparatus. “For a bunch of small-government Republicans,” one former denizen of the White House who has now stepped back inside for the first time in eight years, “these guys built a hell of an empire.”

Eight years ago, there were two deputy national security advisers; today there are a half-dozen, each with staff. In the downstairs suites of the West Wing and across the street in the Old Executive Office Building, the returnees tripped into the Homeland Security Council, created to keep order in the new, vast, often dysfunctional Homeland Security Department. In the Pentagon’s deepest crevices, the Joint Special Operations Command has mushroomed in size and influence because of the demands of operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The list goes on.

But several say that their biggest surprise came when they learned more about how President Bush spends his day, and how he gets his information.

It’s not clear what they expected; perhaps after all those jokes on Letterman and Leno, they thought Mr. Bush spent the heart of his day on the stationary bicycle. Instead, they have been surprised to see the degree of tactical detail about two wars and a handful of insurgencies — from the tribal areas of Pakistan to Sudan and the Congo — that surrounds him. Partly this is because the high-tech makeover of the Situation Room, completed about two years ago, makes instantaneous conversation with field commanders easier than ever.

Both the transition officials and some White House insiders say it may make this communication too easy, sucking the commander-in-chief into a situation in which real-time, straight-from-the-battlefield discussions of tactics masquerade as a conversation about strategy....(S)everal veterans of the White House have noted in conversations over the past two years that the secure video does not lend itself to open, vigorous debate. Instead, it can squelch it. The picture is being piped into too many places; field commanders don’t want to speak their mind to the president if their immediate superiors at the Pentagon or Central Command are tuned in, too. There may be recordings for posterity, or presidential libraries.

One recently departed National Security Council official noted earlier this year that in his view, the problem is that the system is largely in the hands of war-fighters; only on a rare day, and only toward the end of his presidency, did members of Provincial Reconstruction Teams and other aid workers involved in nation-building pop up on Mr. Bush’s screen....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/us/politics/02web-sanger.html

[misanthrope]

1. DHS needs to be eviscerated**nm

**

[IndyOp]

2. Step 1: Lose "Homeland" -- just my opinion, but the word sounds like an echo

of the Nazi "fatherland". "Homeland" is a rhetorical flourish we would be better off without.

:scared: :(

[MazeRat7]

9. Opps wroing sub-thread. Sorry n/t

[msongs]

14. russians refer to the motherland - the mother and father duked it out and mom won nt

[Ilsa]

19. Chris Matthews was saying this yesterday on Hardball. I can't

remember who he was talking to, but he said he'd prefer a name like "Civil Defense Dept." I think it is a pretty reasonable name change. And yes, I despise "Homeland" as well.

[JDPriestly]

20. The German word is "Heimat," and it means homeland.

Homeland is a direct translation of Heimat. The word for fatherland is "Vaterland." It also is almost the same as the English word.

[tavalon]

28. I've thought that from the beginning

But then there are so many references in this area that reference Naziism that I stopped believing this was a chance occurence.

[DS1]

3. Wars should not be micromanaged from the White House

Broad objectives should be given, and let the military complete them.

[MazeRat7]

11. You would think we learned this when trying to micro-manage bombing missions in Vietnam. n/t

[old mark]

29. We evidently learned a lot of things from Vietnam, and promptly

forgot them all.
So many have been killed or maimd as a result of very simple, basic mistakes that no one had bothered to find - lack or armor, lack of protection on Hummers, etc.

As soon as the shooting stops, the military forgets most of what it has painfully learned in combat.

mark

[Bandit]

31. Were our bombing missions in Vietnam a huge failure?

Granted we bombed North Vietnam but we also bombed South Vietnam and I haven't heard of any such missions that didn't do what they were supposed to do.

[wyldwolf]

4. I thought they would have found all the "O's" removed from keyboards

[TheDebbieDee]

6. Lol! Turn about IS fair play, MFers!

[w4rma]

27. lol. (nt)

[arcadian]

5. "The picture is being piped into too many places"

The surveillance state eating itself.

[annabanana]

10. "The surveillance state eating itself. " . .exactly..

How ironic. That is an excellent description.

[PeaceNikki]

7. .

Dammit someone beat me to it. x(

[stillcool]

8. More about that "sheer increase in the size...

of the defense"

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Military_Budget/Mega_Pentagon.html
The Mega-Pentagon: A Bush-Enabled Monster We Can't Stop
The Pentagon has developed a taste for unrivaled power and unequaled access to the treasury that won't be easily undone by future administrations.
by Frida Berrigan, Tomdispatch.com
www.alternet.org/, May 28, 2008

--------------------------------------------------
1. The Budget-busting Pentagon: The Pentagon's core budget -- already a staggering $300 billion when George W. Bush took the presidency -- has almost doubled while he's been parked behind the big desk in the Oval Office. For fiscal year 2009, the regular Pentagon budget will total roughly $541 billion (including work on nuclear warheads and naval reactors at the Department of Energy).
The Bush administration has presided over one of the largest military buildups in the history of the United States. And that's before we even count "war spending." If the direct costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the Global War on Terror, are factored in, "defense" spending has essentially tripled.
As of February 2008, according to the Congressional Budget Office, lawmakers have appropriated $752 billion for the Iraq war and occupation, ongoing military operations in Afghanistan, and other activities associated with the Global War on Terror. The Pentagon estimates that it will need another $170 billion for fiscal 2009, which means, at $922 billion, that direct war spending since 2001 would be at the edge of the trillion-dollar mark.
As New York Times columnist Bob Herbert has pointed out, if a stack of bills roughly six inches high is worth $1 million; then, a $1 billion stack would be as tall as the Washington Monument, and a $1 trillion stack would be 95 miles high. And note that none of these war-fighting funds are even counted as part of the annual military budget, but are raised from Congress in the form of "emergency supplementals" a few times a year.
With the war added to the Pentagon's core budget, the United States now spends nearly as much on military matters as the rest of the world combined. Military spending also throws all other parts of the federal budget into shadow, representing 58 cents of every dollar spent by the federal government on "discretionary programs" (those that Congress gets to vote up or down on an annual basis).
The total Pentagon budget represents more than our combined spending on education, environmental protection, justice administration, veteran's benefits, housing assistance, transportation, job training, agriculture, energy, and economic development. No wonder, then, that, as it collects ever more money, the Pentagon is taking on (or taking over) ever more functions and roles.

[DeepModem Mom]

15. Thanks for posting this additional info, stillcool. Unbelievable! nt

[grannylib]

25. Does that include the 2.3 TRILLION they misplaced and that was announced on 9/10/2001?

I say not another red cent for the War Machine until they cough up every taxpayer dime they've squandered and shipped off on pallets to Iraq and spent on mercenaries and God only knows what else.

[stillcool]

26. the article is pretty intense..

I think the Pentagon is the real seat of power in this country. Empire rules. I looked for that figure..the 2.3 trillion and couldn't find it. Do you happen to have a link for that?

[Beausoleil]

30. Try this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU4GdHLUHwU

9/10/2001: Rumsfeld says $2.3 TRILLION Missing from Pentagon

[gratuitous]

12. Yoyodyne

"John Smallberries."

[BeFree]

13. Oh gawd

....makes instantaneous conversation with field commanders easier than ever.

Can you imagine those poor fucks on the front line having to listen to the ramblings of the mad man in the WH?

And let us hope the recordings are saved. We can use them in the trial. Of course the defense may use them to prove insanity. Whatever, we'll take the chance, eh?

[gogoplata]

16. Let's hope Obama cuts this crap out.

[Stand and Fight]

17. Replying to read tomorrow. n/t

[FarCenter]

18. The "Department of Defense" should be "Department of War"

Go back to the old name, and reintroduce some honesty to the language.

[unblock]

21. in shrub's case, it's an entire "administration of war".

there seems to be little else.

oh, yeah, i forgot about the department of looting.

[Captain Hilts]

24. Dept. of War became the Dept of the Army. Dept. of Defense was a new creation placed on top...

of the existing departments.

My mother worked for the Sec. of War/first Sec. of the Army and their offices were given to the Sec. of Defense.

[bertman]

22. The revelations are just beginning. The deeper they go, the scarier it will get. We have

become worshippers of the military.

I find that those of us who have actually been in the military and in a war are not seduced by the idea of warfare. We recognize it as necessary at times, but to be avoided if AT ALL POSSIBLE. The likes of Bush, Cheney, and co-conspirators filled their ranks with warrior-wannabees. Couple that with career military types who love the attention and the power and it's Nazi Germany all over again.

To me, the big question is can President Obama resist the temptation to be awed by the military options when so many around him are geared toward that approach.

I keep going back to his promises to make our military bigger and stronger and his assertion that no option is off the table--in reference to Iran. All the tough talk. Lordy, I would love to see that go away.

[Ilsa]

23. Incredible article. It is fascinating how differently

just these two administrations have governed, even without looking at the technology part of it. I hope historians like Michael Beschloss, etc document this sort of thing and thrash it out: how much is related to using appropriate technology and how much is related to micromanagement.

[DeepModem Mom]

32. Daytime kick.

[zorahopkins]

33. OUT!! NO*!!!

Get those vile, disgusting bastards from the corrupt and illegal Bush/Cheney regime of thugs and cronies OUT!! RIGHT NO*!!!!

And get our troops OUT OF IRAQ and AFGHANISTAN!!! NO*!!

Dismantle ALL of the Imperial mechanisms!! NO*!!

note: In protest of the continuing occupation of OUR *hite House by the illegal and totally corrupt Bush/Cheney regime of thugs and cronies, I REFUSE ot use the letter bet*een "V" and "X".