“See, in my line of work, you’ve got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”—George W. Bush
While I was participating in a demonstration against predator drone warfare at the U.S. Armed Forces “Career” Center at Times Square, I watched the passersby closely. From the brief conversations we provoked, I garnered the unsurprising news that plenty of Americans have been conditioned to accept the concepts of targeted assassinations and presidential kill-lists—all in the holy name of national security.
But that’s for a future article.
What inspired this particular piece is the widespread belief—all across the political spectrum—that the vaunted U.S. technology might actually allow for “surgical strikes” and “pinpoint” bombing.
Ah, the magic of corporate propaganda . . .
With 54 percent of U.S. Federal tax used to fund the most violent institution on the planet—the U.S. Department of Defense [sic]—this expenditure must be justified through a variety of spins. For example: U.S. weapons are the most technologically advanced the world has ever seen.
Like all spin, evidence to the contrary is not hard to find . . .
Define “precision”
Good War Fun Fact: During World War II, Allied bombing raids killed 672,000 Japanese civilians and 635,000 German civilians.
U.S. bombers in the European theater initially stuck to a policy of daylight “precision” bombing but the risks of daytime runs did not pay off in accuracy—only 50 percent of U.S. bombs fell within a quarter of a mile of the target. America soon joined its English allies in the execution of nighttime area bombing campaigns of civilian targets in Germany and later, Japan.
Day or night, the number of shells falling where they were not aimed easily debunked the myth of precision. A July 24–25, 1944, bombing operation named COBRA called for 1,800 US bombers to hit German defenders near Saint-Lo. The planes arrived one day early and bombed so inaccurately that 25 Americans were killed and 131 wounded—causing some U.S. units to open fire on their own aircraft.
The next day, with the American soldiers withdrawn thousands of yards to avoid a repeat performance, the bombers still missed their mark and ended up killing 111 GIs and wounding nearly 500 more.
“In order to invade the Continent,” says historian Paul Fussell, “the Allies killed 12,000 innocent French and Belgian civilians who happened to live in the wrong part of town, that is, too near the railway tracks.”
Subsequent technological “progress” has offered no relief for those in war zones. What is euphemistically known as “friendly fire” or “collateral damage” is still a mainstay of war. In fact, as war became more technologically advanced, civilian casualties did not decrease.
Delay the news until it no longer matters
All throughout Operation Desert Storm, the Pentagon and an acquiescent media sold the American public on the accuracy and efficiency of U.S. weaponry.
“Although influential media such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal kept promoting the illusion of a ‘clean war,’” write media critics Martin A. Lee and Normon Solomon, “a different picture began to emerge after the U.S. stopped carpet-bombing Iraq. The pattern underscored what Napoleon meant when he said that it wasn’t necessary to completely suppress the news; it was sufficient to delay the news until it no longer mattered.”
That delay lasted from February 1991 until July 1996 when the General Accounting Office released a study that found the claims made by the Pentagon and its principal weapons contractors concerning the pinpoint precision of the Stealth fighter jet, the Tomahawk land-attack missile, and laser-guided smart bombs “were overstated, misleading, inconsistent with the best available data, or unverifiable.”
“The accounting office concluded,” wrote Tim Weiner in the New York Times, “that new, costly ‘smart’ weapons systems did not necessarily perform better than old-fashioned, cheaper ‘dumb’ ones.”
“When laser-guided bombs miss, it means that something got screwed up in the control mechanism, so they can go 10 miles away; they can go anywhere,” adds Noam Chomsky. “No high-technology works for very long, certainly not under complicated conditions.”
This pattern held during the 78-day bombing campaign over Yugoslavia in 1999. During the assault, Defense Secretary William Cohen declared: “We severely crippled the (Serbian) military forces in Kosovo by destroying more than 50 percent of the artillery and one-third of the armored vehicles.”
One year later, a U.S. Air Force report revealed a different story:
Original Claim: 120 tanks destroyed
Actual Number: 14
Original Claim: 220 armored personnel carriers destroyed
Actual Number: 20
Original Claim: 450 artillery pieces destroyed
Actual Number: 20
Original Claim: 744 confirmed strikes by NATO pilots
Actual Number: 58
The report also found that Serbian military fooled U.S. technology with simple tactics like constructing fake artillery pieces out of black logs and old truck wheels. One vital bridge avoided destruction when a phony was constructed out of polyethylene sheeting 300 yards upriver. NATO pilots bombed the fake bridge several times.
When confronted with this evidence, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon summed it up as such: “We obviously hit enough tanks and other targets to win.”
“Seriously flawed”
Even when expensive, high-tech U.S. weapons are aimed at actual targets, they often fail due to inadequate testing. In Counterpunch, Jeffrey St. Clair exposed one example of weapons testing in late 2002 when he wrote about a “recently leaked memo from Pentagon’s top weapons inspector” warning that that the Navy is “deploying for battle ‘an increasing number’ of combat systems that may be seriously flawed.”
Thomas Christie is director of operational testing and evaluation for the Department of Defense and author of the memo. “I am concerned about an apparent trend by the Navy to deploy an increasing number of combat systems into harm’s way that have not demonstrated acceptable performance,” he wrote.
“Christie cited the weapons systems used by the Navy’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter as being the most suspect,” says St. Clair. Other over-hyped and under-tested weapons like the AWACS, Stealth fighters and bombers, and smart bombs used in the first Gulf War demonstrated what U.S. technology had to offer.
“It turned out that these new systems didn’t turn out to be very efficient or very smart,” says St. Clair. “The stealth systems didn’t work in cold weather or heavy winds. The smart bombs hardly lived up to their advanced billing or the daily Pentagon videos of missiles dropping into Iraqi smokestacks.
“In fact, post-war bombing assessments showed that the smart bombs hit their targets only about 30 percent of the time.” The biggest bust of all may have been the much-vaunted Patriot Missile.
“The public and the Congress were misled”
On Jan. 22, 1991, ABC-TV reporter Sam Donaldson reported on an alleged Patriot Missile intercept. “A Scud missile is heading toward Dharan in eastern Saudi Arabia,” Donaldson said as the screen showed a bright object rocketing across the sky. “And rising to intercept it, a U.S. Patriot missile.” After a beat, Donaldson gleefully cheered, “Bullseye! No more Scud!”
“But on the screen,” says Jennifer Weeks, a defense analyst with the Congressional Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus, “the Scud seems to continue right through an explosion on its path toward the ground.”
The U.S. Army told Congress that Patriot missiles had intercepted 45 of the 47 Scuds at which they were fired. “Desert Storm provided gripping images of Patriots arcing across the night skies over Israel and Saudi Arabia to intercept Iraqi Scuds, and U.S. officials quickly claimed that the Patriot (originally designed to shoot down airplanes and slow-flying cruise missiles) was effective against ballistic missiles,” says Weeks.
President George H.W. Bush visited the Raytheon plant in Andover, Mass., where the Patriot is made. “Patriot is proof positive that missile defense works,” the president declared—and the matter appeared to be settled.
Theodore A. Postol is professor of science, technology, and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The current National Missile Defense interceptor tries to identify warheads and decoys by ‘looking at them’ with infrared eyes,” Postol wrote in a June 15, 2002 Boston Globe op-ed, explaining:
“Because the missile defense is essentially using vision to tell which objects are decoys and which are bombs, this technique is no more effective than trying to find suitcase bombs at an airport by studying the shape and color of each suitcase.”
In 2000, Postol wrote a letter to the White House, describing how “how the Missile Defense Agency had doctored results of National Missile Defense tests.”
In the Boston Globe, Postol explained, “After the first two tests in 1997 and 1998, the agency learned that decoys shaped like nuclear warheads—and even balloons with stripes on them—could not be distinguished from actual warheads. The agency responded by removing these decoys from all subsequent flight tests. In one of the flight tests, the agency claimed a success in telling warheads from decoys that was beyond expectations.”
A 1992 report by a House of Representatives Operations of Government subcommittee concluded:
“The Patriot missile system was not the spectacular success in the Persian Gulf War that the American public was led to believe. There is little evidence to prove that the Patriot hit more than a few Scud missiles launched by Iraq during the Gulf War, and there are some doubts about even these engagements. The public and the Congress were misled by definitive statements of success issued by administration and Raytheon representatives during and after the war.”
Even then-Secretary of Defense [sic] William S. Cohen, in January 2001 eventually confessed, “The Patriot didn’t work.”
What we’re up against
In advertising campaigns not unlike those hawking SUVs or cell phones, American military technical superiority (and the related benefit to avoiding civilian casualties) is packaged, marketed, and sold to a far too willing nation.
Fighter jets perform flyovers at sporting events. Hollywood deifies weapons of war. Politicians from all sides support “defense” spending. War toys sanitize the impact of such spending and desensitize children to the cause and effect of military action.
In the end, however, human beings manufacture and utilize these weapons . . . and that should never be forgotten when the fighting begins.
Something else to not forget, comrades: This is what we’re up against.
With that in mind, please allow me to repeat:
Occupy Counter-Recruitment: Educate yourself on the realities of U.S. foreign policy and spread the word far and wide—especially to those young enough to volunteer. If Americans of any gender learn the truth and refuse to enlist, the interventions—and the inevitable atrocities—will decrease proportionally.
Message to all potential enlistees: The U.S. Department of Defense [sic] is the most violent institution on the planet. Paid volunteers are nothing more than willing accomplices to the continuing carnage.
New Yorkers: Join us at a weekly protest against predator drone warfare at the U.S. Armed Forces “Career” Center at Times Square, Thursdays at 5 p.m. Everyone else: Why not start a similar on-going protest at a recruiting center near you?
Mickey Z. is the author of 11 books, most recently the novel Darker Shade of Green. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on an obscure website called Facebook.
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The lie of ‘precision’ bombing drones on (what we’re up against)
Posted on April 11, 2013 by Mickey Z.
While I was participating in a demonstration against predator drone warfare at the U.S. Armed Forces “Career” Center at Times Square, I watched the passersby closely. From the brief conversations we provoked, I garnered the unsurprising news that plenty of Americans have been conditioned to accept the concepts of targeted assassinations and presidential kill-lists—all in the holy name of national security.
But that’s for a future article.
What inspired this particular piece is the widespread belief—all across the political spectrum—that the vaunted U.S. technology might actually allow for “surgical strikes” and “pinpoint” bombing.
Ah, the magic of corporate propaganda . . .
With 54 percent of U.S. Federal tax used to fund the most violent institution on the planet—the U.S. Department of Defense [sic]—this expenditure must be justified through a variety of spins. For example: U.S. weapons are the most technologically advanced the world has ever seen.
Like all spin, evidence to the contrary is not hard to find . . .
Define “precision”
Good War Fun Fact: During World War II, Allied bombing raids killed 672,000 Japanese civilians and 635,000 German civilians.
U.S. bombers in the European theater initially stuck to a policy of daylight “precision” bombing but the risks of daytime runs did not pay off in accuracy—only 50 percent of U.S. bombs fell within a quarter of a mile of the target. America soon joined its English allies in the execution of nighttime area bombing campaigns of civilian targets in Germany and later, Japan.
Day or night, the number of shells falling where they were not aimed easily debunked the myth of precision. A July 24–25, 1944, bombing operation named COBRA called for 1,800 US bombers to hit German defenders near Saint-Lo. The planes arrived one day early and bombed so inaccurately that 25 Americans were killed and 131 wounded—causing some U.S. units to open fire on their own aircraft.
The next day, with the American soldiers withdrawn thousands of yards to avoid a repeat performance, the bombers still missed their mark and ended up killing 111 GIs and wounding nearly 500 more.
“In order to invade the Continent,” says historian Paul Fussell, “the Allies killed 12,000 innocent French and Belgian civilians who happened to live in the wrong part of town, that is, too near the railway tracks.”
Subsequent technological “progress” has offered no relief for those in war zones. What is euphemistically known as “friendly fire” or “collateral damage” is still a mainstay of war. In fact, as war became more technologically advanced, civilian casualties did not decrease.
Delay the news until it no longer matters
All throughout Operation Desert Storm, the Pentagon and an acquiescent media sold the American public on the accuracy and efficiency of U.S. weaponry.
“Although influential media such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal kept promoting the illusion of a ‘clean war,’” write media critics Martin A. Lee and Normon Solomon, “a different picture began to emerge after the U.S. stopped carpet-bombing Iraq. The pattern underscored what Napoleon meant when he said that it wasn’t necessary to completely suppress the news; it was sufficient to delay the news until it no longer mattered.”
That delay lasted from February 1991 until July 1996 when the General Accounting Office released a study that found the claims made by the Pentagon and its principal weapons contractors concerning the pinpoint precision of the Stealth fighter jet, the Tomahawk land-attack missile, and laser-guided smart bombs “were overstated, misleading, inconsistent with the best available data, or unverifiable.”
“The accounting office concluded,” wrote Tim Weiner in the New York Times, “that new, costly ‘smart’ weapons systems did not necessarily perform better than old-fashioned, cheaper ‘dumb’ ones.”
“When laser-guided bombs miss, it means that something got screwed up in the control mechanism, so they can go 10 miles away; they can go anywhere,” adds Noam Chomsky. “No high-technology works for very long, certainly not under complicated conditions.”
This pattern held during the 78-day bombing campaign over Yugoslavia in 1999. During the assault, Defense Secretary William Cohen declared: “We severely crippled the (Serbian) military forces in Kosovo by destroying more than 50 percent of the artillery and one-third of the armored vehicles.”
One year later, a U.S. Air Force report revealed a different story:
Original Claim: 120 tanks destroyed
Actual Number: 14
Original Claim: 220 armored personnel carriers destroyed
Actual Number: 20
Original Claim: 450 artillery pieces destroyed
Actual Number: 20
Original Claim: 744 confirmed strikes by NATO pilots
Actual Number: 58
The report also found that Serbian military fooled U.S. technology with simple tactics like constructing fake artillery pieces out of black logs and old truck wheels. One vital bridge avoided destruction when a phony was constructed out of polyethylene sheeting 300 yards upriver. NATO pilots bombed the fake bridge several times.
When confronted with this evidence, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon summed it up as such: “We obviously hit enough tanks and other targets to win.”
“Seriously flawed”
Even when expensive, high-tech U.S. weapons are aimed at actual targets, they often fail due to inadequate testing. In Counterpunch, Jeffrey St. Clair exposed one example of weapons testing in late 2002 when he wrote about a “recently leaked memo from Pentagon’s top weapons inspector” warning that that the Navy is “deploying for battle ‘an increasing number’ of combat systems that may be seriously flawed.”
Thomas Christie is director of operational testing and evaluation for the Department of Defense and author of the memo. “I am concerned about an apparent trend by the Navy to deploy an increasing number of combat systems into harm’s way that have not demonstrated acceptable performance,” he wrote.
“Christie cited the weapons systems used by the Navy’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter as being the most suspect,” says St. Clair. Other over-hyped and under-tested weapons like the AWACS, Stealth fighters and bombers, and smart bombs used in the first Gulf War demonstrated what U.S. technology had to offer.
“It turned out that these new systems didn’t turn out to be very efficient or very smart,” says St. Clair. “The stealth systems didn’t work in cold weather or heavy winds. The smart bombs hardly lived up to their advanced billing or the daily Pentagon videos of missiles dropping into Iraqi smokestacks.
“In fact, post-war bombing assessments showed that the smart bombs hit their targets only about 30 percent of the time.” The biggest bust of all may have been the much-vaunted Patriot Missile.
“The public and the Congress were misled”
On Jan. 22, 1991, ABC-TV reporter Sam Donaldson reported on an alleged Patriot Missile intercept. “A Scud missile is heading toward Dharan in eastern Saudi Arabia,” Donaldson said as the screen showed a bright object rocketing across the sky. “And rising to intercept it, a U.S. Patriot missile.” After a beat, Donaldson gleefully cheered, “Bullseye! No more Scud!”
“But on the screen,” says Jennifer Weeks, a defense analyst with the Congressional Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus, “the Scud seems to continue right through an explosion on its path toward the ground.”
The U.S. Army told Congress that Patriot missiles had intercepted 45 of the 47 Scuds at which they were fired. “Desert Storm provided gripping images of Patriots arcing across the night skies over Israel and Saudi Arabia to intercept Iraqi Scuds, and U.S. officials quickly claimed that the Patriot (originally designed to shoot down airplanes and slow-flying cruise missiles) was effective against ballistic missiles,” says Weeks.
President George H.W. Bush visited the Raytheon plant in Andover, Mass., where the Patriot is made. “Patriot is proof positive that missile defense works,” the president declared—and the matter appeared to be settled.
Theodore A. Postol is professor of science, technology, and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The current National Missile Defense interceptor tries to identify warheads and decoys by ‘looking at them’ with infrared eyes,” Postol wrote in a June 15, 2002 Boston Globe op-ed, explaining:
“Because the missile defense is essentially using vision to tell which objects are decoys and which are bombs, this technique is no more effective than trying to find suitcase bombs at an airport by studying the shape and color of each suitcase.”
In 2000, Postol wrote a letter to the White House, describing how “how the Missile Defense Agency had doctored results of National Missile Defense tests.”
In the Boston Globe, Postol explained, “After the first two tests in 1997 and 1998, the agency learned that decoys shaped like nuclear warheads—and even balloons with stripes on them—could not be distinguished from actual warheads. The agency responded by removing these decoys from all subsequent flight tests. In one of the flight tests, the agency claimed a success in telling warheads from decoys that was beyond expectations.”
A 1992 report by a House of Representatives Operations of Government subcommittee concluded:
“The Patriot missile system was not the spectacular success in the Persian Gulf War that the American public was led to believe. There is little evidence to prove that the Patriot hit more than a few Scud missiles launched by Iraq during the Gulf War, and there are some doubts about even these engagements. The public and the Congress were misled by definitive statements of success issued by administration and Raytheon representatives during and after the war.”
Even then-Secretary of Defense [sic] William S. Cohen, in January 2001 eventually confessed, “The Patriot didn’t work.”
What we’re up against
In advertising campaigns not unlike those hawking SUVs or cell phones, American military technical superiority (and the related benefit to avoiding civilian casualties) is packaged, marketed, and sold to a far too willing nation.
Fighter jets perform flyovers at sporting events. Hollywood deifies weapons of war. Politicians from all sides support “defense” spending. War toys sanitize the impact of such spending and desensitize children to the cause and effect of military action.
In the end, however, human beings manufacture and utilize these weapons . . . and that should never be forgotten when the fighting begins.
Something else to not forget, comrades: This is what we’re up against.
With that in mind, please allow me to repeat:
New Yorkers: Join us at a weekly protest against predator drone warfare at the U.S. Armed Forces “Career” Center at Times Square, Thursdays at 5 p.m. Everyone else: Why not start a similar on-going protest at a recruiting center near you?
© WorldNewsTrust.com
Mickey Z. is the author of 11 books, most recently the novel Darker Shade of Green. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on an obscure website called Facebook.