Fear of North Korea Overblown

Yesterday Colorado Congressman Doug Lamborn disclosed a previously classified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) evaluation that North Korea could put a nuclear warhead on a missile, according to the New York Times.  When I worked at the State Department, including in its Bureau of Intelligence and Research, people uniformly thought that DIA's intelligence analysis was poor, except in areas such as particular tactical weapons evaluations.  In strategic areas, such as nuclear weapons development, DIA always tended to overplay the threat, presumable because it meant budget money.  The Pentagon needed dire threats to justify spending the huge amounts of money it wanted for its various weapons programs.  Thus, it needed to build up the threatening image of the enemy, whoever it was, the old Soviets, or the new terrorists, or North Korea. 

I think there probably was some collusion between Congressman Lamborn and the Pentagon.  It may not just be accidental that the sentence or paragraph that Lamborn quoted was unclassified, while the rest of the report was.  Somebody at DIA probably wanted to get that analysis out, and worked out a way to do it through Lamborn.  But the rest of the US Government has pretty much disavowed the statement as just the unfounded opinion some crazy DIA analysts. 

I don't think that even next door neighbor South Korea needs to worry about being hit by a nuclear tipped North Korean missile, although it might need to worry about a nuclear weapons delivered by some more conventional means, such as aircraft, truck or ship.  In addition, North Korea probably has few nuclear weapons.  Despite their flouting restrictions on their nuclear program, over the years the international pressure has slowed down their program, meaning that they have relatively little nuclear material, either plutonium or enriched uranium. Just recently they have threatened to restart the plutonium production reactor which has been shut down for years. 

Fear of North Korea Overblown

Yesterday Colorado Congressman Doug Lamborn disclosed a previously classified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) evaluation that North Korea could put a nuclear warhead on a missile, according to the New York Times.  When I worked at the State Department, including in its Bureau of Intelligence and Research, people uniformly thought that DIA's intelligence analysis was poor, except in areas such as particular tactical weapons evaluations.  In strategic areas, such as nuclear weapons development, DIA always tended to overplay the threat, presumable because it meant budget money.  The Pentagon needed dire threats to justify spending the huge amounts of money it wanted for its various weapons programs.  Thus, it needed to build up the threatening image of the enemy, whoever it was, the old Soviets, or the new terrorists, or North Korea. 

I think there probably was some collusion between Congressman Lamborn and the Pentagon.  It may not just be accidental that the sentence or paragraph that Lamborn quoted was unclassified, while the rest of the report was.  Somebody at DIA probably wanted to get that analysis out, and worked out a way to do it through Lamborn.  But the rest of the US Government has pretty much disavowed the statement as just the unfounded opinion some crazy DIA analysts. 

I don't think that even next door neighbor South Korea needs to worry about being hit by a nuclear tipped North Korean missile, although it might need to worry about a nuclear weapons delivered by some more conventional means, such as aircraft, truck or ship.  In addition, North Korea probably has few nuclear weapons.  Despite their flouting restrictions on their nuclear program, over the years the international pressure has slowed down their program, meaning that they have relatively little nuclear material, either plutonium or enriched uranium.  Just recently they have threatened to restart the plutonium production reactor which has been shut down for years. 

Jury Duty

I had to report for jury duty on Monday for the first time in my life.  When I lived in Virginia, lawyers were automatically exempted, at least for part of the time that I lived there, plus I was overseas for much of my career and thus unavailable for jury duty.

I was one of the jurors initially selected for a misdemeanor trial.  The judge and the lawyers asked the potential jurors a number of questions, and my reply to one surprised me.  They asked how much faith we had in the American legal system on a scale from 1 to 10.  I decided on 6, which made me lower than most. I chose such a relatively low number because I am unhappy with the American legal system.

I think that we are approaching a double standard for justice before the law, one for the rich and famous and one for everybody else.  In particular, I'm unhappy that more people have not been brought to trial (and convicted) for the financial shenanigans that produced the banking crisis that created the "Great Recession."  In addition, insider trading seems to be the rule, rather than the exception, for the rich.  There have been a few trials, but I think it is only the tip of the iceberg.  More and more rich people don't even trade on the public market; they trade in dark pools, where who knows what they do.  They also come up with complex transactions, often through foreign markets, since much of their money is probably already in overseas tax havens.  Hollywood actors may go to trial, but they seldom get convicted, and if they do, they seldom serve any actual jail time.

In theory the jury system, providing a jury of regular people, should counter this favoritism for the rich and famous, but good, expensive lawyers manage to sway jurors, who may already be overawed by the fame of the people they are judging.

Cheney's Military Service

I watched the Showtime movie "The World According to Dick Cheney," but was disappointed at its failure to challenge Cheney's views.  My first objection was that it did not say anything about Cheney's failure to serve in Vietnam.  It talks about how he was expelled from Yale and worked back in Wyoming as an electric lineman before resuming his education in Wyoming and then Wisconsin.  This was in the 1960s, prime time for the Vietnam draft.  His Wikipedia page and this Slate article describe how he weaseled out of the draft.  Normally a student deferment was for only four years; Cheney got more.  For his fifth deferment, he reportedly got a hardship deferment because his wife was pregnant.  Wikipedia says he told that Washington Post, "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service."

I don't think that everybody who avoided the draft was a coward, but it certainly raised questions about their patriotism.  I think that Cheney thought he was more important than America.  Maybe he thought he was destined to save America from itself.  If so, it didn't work out.  The wars have probably weakened the US militarily and damaged our image abroad.  The huge costs incurred without increasing taxes to pay for the wars damaged the US economy for years to come.

One new, unfavorable fact about Cheney that I learned from the movie was that toward the end of the Bush administration, he became seriously estranged from President Bush.  Bush thought that Cheney had led him astray on foreign policy and defense issues, and in particular had sandbagged him on the issue of illegal wiretapping by the government.

I think it is safe to say that Cheney has no regrets because he has no heart and no conscience.  While he avoided the draft as a young man, he let young men from Wyoming serve in the wasteful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, although it looks like only 14 from Wyoming died in Iraq.

Dick Cheney: unpatriotic coward who undermined American greatness.