Government Executive - Authors - Eric Levenson

Dick Cheney Knows Exactly Who's to Blame for This Iraq Mess (Hint: It's Not Him)

Eric Levenson, The Wire — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 08:58:11 -0400

"Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many," Dick and Liz Cheney write in a criticism of the American policy toward Iraq in the Wall Street Journal. No, they are not talking about George W. Bush.

The op-ed appearing in Wednesday's paper attacks President Obama for withdrawing American troops from Iraq and blames his foreign policy weakness for the renewed strength of ISIS insurgents, who took over several Iraqi cities in recent weeks. "He seems blithely unaware, or indifferent to the fact, that a resurgent al Qaeda presents a clear and present danger to the United States of America," the Cheneys write. "President Obama seems determined to leave office ensuring he has taken America down a notch."

Notably, the piece is heavy on criticism of Obama "abandonment" of Iraq, but light on touting Cheney's own role in launching the war that put the United States there in the first place. The piece does mention the success of the surge in battling back vicious sectarian fighting: "When Mr. Obama and his team came into office in 2009, al Qaeda in Iraq had been largely defeated, thanks primarily to the heroic efforts of U.S. armed forces during the surge," the Cheneys write. However, they claim Obama bungled the withdrawal, undoing those gains.

The Cheneys don't address that al-Qaeda was not present in Iraq as a force until he and the Bush administration took down the Saddam Hussein-led government. "Unsurprisingly, there's no mention of whose stupid idea it was to go into Iraq in the first place," the Daily Intelligencer writes.

Cheney certainly isn't alone in former Iraq War planners voicing their opinions on the burgeoning crisis. Many of the war effort's most important voices have returned to the spotlight to defend the policies of a decade ago, including Paul Wolfowitz, John McCain, and Tony Blair. As Jon Stewart pointed out on Monday, Iraq's prominence in the news again has brought the neocon gang back together.

"This president is willfully blind to the impact of his policies," the Cheneys write. Perhaps they should consider the impact of the former vice-president's, as well.

The op-ed is actually a launch announcement of sorts for the Cheneys' new advocacy group, The Alliance for a Strong America. The non-profit is listed as a 501(c)(4), which means it's a "social welfare" organization that must spend less than 50 percent of its money on political activities. However, that also means it doesn't have to disclose the names of its donors.

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U.S. Air Force Failed Another Nuclear Security Test

Eric Levenson, The Wire — Thu, 22 May 2014 10:15:25 -0400

Security forces at an Air Force base in Montana failed to stop a simulated capture of a nuclear weapon, revealing a "critical deficiency," according to internal documents obtained by the Associated Press.

The Malmstrom Air Force Base was tested with an "Empty Quiver" scenario last August, in which a nuclear weapon is stolen from one of the base's 150 nuclear-tipped missiles. But security forces failed to recapture the weapon within a certain time frame, thereby flunking the test. In January, a commander at the base told the AP that the simulation "confused our airmen. We were off by a matter of seconds." Meanwhile, the internal report placed blame on several areas:

It said insufficient training was at the heart of the problem, beginning with a lack of familiarity among the security forces with "complex scenario" exercises. It also cited unspecified shortcomings in "leadership culture" and a lack of standardized simulations not only at Malmstrom but throughout the nuclear missile corps.

After this critical internal report, the base faced another test two months later and security forces passed.

The Air Force failure comes less than a year after Eric Schlosser's explosive book Command and Control, which found that the U.S. Air Force has come incredibly close to accidentally setting off nuclear weapons several times. At the "Damascus Incident" in 1980, for example, a worker at an Air Force base dropped a socket during regular missile maintenance and pierced a Titan II ballistic missile, sending rocket fuel spraying. That almost led to an accidental nuclear explosion in Arkansas.

In a conversation with The Wire last September, Schlosser noted that because of the Air Force's compartmentalization and secrecy, many of its leaders didn't know about the safety breaches until he uncovered them. That suggests that outside reporting by the AP and others is just as valuable as the Air Force's own internal investigations. The AP's reporting over the last six months has numerous concerns with the Air Force's nuclear missile units, including low morale, poor training and leadership, and institutional neglect.

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Insane Clown Posse Sues the FBI for Thinking They Are a Gang

Eric Levenson, The Wire — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 10:29:40 -0500

The "horrorcore" rap group Insane Clown Posse filed a federal lawsuit against the FBI and the Justice Department today for the “unwarranted and unlawful decision” to label the Juggalos a "loosely-affiliated hybrid gang" back in 2011. That moniker has meant unfair police treatment and “significant harm” to the Posse's many fans, according to the complaint, filed with help from the ACLU.

Conflating Juggalos with gangs is absurd, preposterous, and any other synonym for insane, the Posse explains. "Organized crime is by no means part of the Juggalo culture," the complaint reads. Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope (legally, Joseph Bruce and Joseph Utsler) say they are neither engaged in organized violence nor mass scale dope dealing, even though their fans — as evidenced by their massive annual festival known as "The Gathering of the Juggalos" — are quite organized. But mostly harmless.

The Insane Clown Posse has been mulling a suit against the FBI for some time, and gathered evidence of what the group alleges is unfair treatment directed at their fans. Four Juggalos joined in the suit to tell personal stories of mistreatment. One of those suing said he has been consistently stopped by police for wearing a necklace of a man with a hatchet (right), a symbol of the Insane Clown Posse. Another fan claims that the Army told him he had to get rid of his Juggalo tattoos before he could join because they were gang-related.

Veterans Are Sick Because the Military Dumped Trash in Massive Burn Pits

Eric Levenson, The Wire — Mon, 28 Oct 2013 16:37:24 -0400

Many American troops were injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars not by bombs or bullets, but by something seemingly innocuous: getting rid of trash. The American military dumped garbage -- human waste, dead animals, paper, plastic, electronics, batteries, asbestos, whatever — into huge pits and set it all on fire with jet fuel. The particles the burn pits spewed are causing lung problems for some troops, according to an investigative report by The Verge's Katie Drummond. This despite long-standing military policy and environmental recommendations to avoid using burn pits.

Movie-goers might remember the poop-burning scene from Jarhead, but these trash piles don't just consist of human waste, the Verge reports. Drummond explains, "The military’s burn pits emitted particulate matter laced with heavy metals and toxins -- like sulfur dioxide, arsenic, dioxins, and hydrochloric acid -- that are linked to serious health ailments." They sent black soot high into the air.

Needless to say, inhaling these airborne particles is bad for the lungs, as The Verge discovered in detail when speaking with several former soldiers. "I remember waking up with soot on me; you'd come out and barely see the sun because it was so dark from the smoke," said 28-year-old Air Force veteran Dan Meyer, who lived near an Afghanistan burn pit and now needs an oxygen tank to breathe. "We always called it 'black snow.'" That snow affected Le Roy Torres in Iraq, as well, when he was stationed next to Balad base's 10-acre wide burn pit. "It started with a cough. I was coughing up this gunk stuff, like black phlegm that kept coming and coming," he said. "The medical officer told me it was 'Iraqi crud' and it'd go away in a few days. I thought, 'I’ve been here a month, how much longer?'"

Senate Republican Leader Says There Will Be No More Shutdowns

Eric Levenson, The Wire — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 16:32:04 -0400

The day after Congress voted to end the government shutdown, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared there would be no repeat of the shutdown that he didn't want in the first place.

"A government shutdown is off the table," McConnell told The National Review. "We’re not going to do it." In raising the debt limit and opening the government on Wednesday night, Congress set Dec. 13 as the deadline for Democrats and Republicans to come to a budget agreement. Government funding runs out Jan. 15. But those deadlines won't bring another crisis, he said.

McConnell didn't mention Sen. Ted Cruz, who led the shutdown-the-government-to-defund-Obamacare fight. In fact, when National Review's Robert Costa asked about Cruz, McConnell "had no comment--at all. Stone-faced." But McConnell's comments are pretty clear criticism of Cruz's actions. "I think we have fully now acquainted our new members with what a losing strategy that is," McConnell told The Hill. (Cruz was elected last year.) McConnell said:

"One of my favorite old Kentucky sayings is there’s no education in the second kick of a mule. The first kick of a mule was when we shut the government down in the mid 1990s and the second kick was over the last 16 days... There is no education in the second kick of a mule. There will not be a government shutdown."

Obama Closes Gun-Buying Loopholes with Executive Action

Eric Levenson, The Wire — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 15:00:00 -0400

The Obama administration is using executive authority to close two gun-buying loopholes, a narrower version of the post-Newtown gun legislation that fell apart in the Senate four months ago. The new rules — one concerning background checks, the other the reimportation of weapons — could reduce the number of gun purchases a year by 70,000.

"It's simple, it's straightforward, it's common sense," Vice President Joe Biden said today from the White House. The executive action will only apply to relatively few gun purchases, though. The first loophole closed by Obama was used 39,000 times last year and allowed weapon purchasers to avoid background checks by registering a gun to a corporation or trust. With the second loophole, American military weapons were sold to allies and then re-imported back into the U.S. and sold through private groups. That loophole has resulted in the re-importation of 250,000 such guns since 2005, which equates to about 31,000 guns per year.

That total of 70,000 guns may sound like a lot, but it's a drop in the tank-sized bucket compared to the 17 million applications for background checks to buy guns in the U.S. in just the last year.

Read more at The Atlantic Wire.

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How Much Will It Cost to Dispose of 30 Million Defective $100 Bills?

Eric Levenson, The Wire — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 17:34:30 -0400

The new and improved 100-dollar bill, designed to cut down on counterfeiters, was expected to be released back in 2010, but production snafus delayed that date to 2011, and then again to October 2013. Today, David Wolman of The New Yorker reports that 30 million of the new $100 bills were incorrectly produced, and so the Federal Reserve might have to delay the bills' release once again.

It's another embarrassing problem for the Federal Reserve, which budgeted for the bills' release, and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which was responsible for its production. (Appropriately, the bureau's website is named moneyfactory.gov.) The bills' release in October can still be salvaged if the Fort Worth, Texas, branch of production makes up for the problems at the Washington, D.C., mint, but that timetable might not be feasible.

Importantly, though, the problem won't cost the government that much to fix, even though the bills represent $3 billion. Because the defective bills were not approved for release to the public, the cost of this faulty episode won't approach that number. Certainly, the production of new bills and disposal of the defective bills will cost taxpayers. Exactly how much will this error cost? With some back-of-the-napkin calculations, we came to a cost of $3.79 million. Let's go through that process.