Dispatches From The Edge

2011 Dispatches News Awards

By Conn Hallinan 

January 1, 2012

Every year Dispatches From The Edge gives awards to
news stories and newsmakers that fall under the
category of “Are you serious?” Here are the awards for
the year 2011.

The Golden Lemon Award to Lockheed Martin, the world’s
biggest arms company, whose F-22 Raptor fighter has
some “performance” problems: the pilots can’t breathe.

The U.S. Air Force was forced to “stand down” its fleet
of 160+ F-22s—at $150 million apiece, the single most
expensive fighter in the world—when pilots began
experiencing “hypoxia-like symptoms” from a lack of
oxygen.  But the company got right on it, according to
Lockheed Martin vice president Jeff Babione, who said
he was “proud to be a part” of the team that got the
radar-evading aircraft back into the air—for five
weeks. When pilots continued to have problems, the F-22
fleet was grounded again.

According to the Air Force, no one can figure out why
oxygen is not getting to the pilots, but that pilots
“would undergo physiological tests.” To see if the
pilots can go without air?

Runner-up in this category is Lockheed Martins’ F-35,
at $385 billion the most expensive weapon system in
U.S. history. The cost of an individual F-35 has jumped
from $69 million to $113 million a plane, and while
this is cheaper than the F-22, the U.S. plans to
eventually purchase more than 16 times the number of
F-35s than F-22s. It seems the F-35 fighter has
“cracks” and “hot spots” that, according to the
director of the program, Vice Adm. David Venlet, are
“hard to get at.”

Dispatches suggests that the Air Force issue ice packs
and super glue to pilots.

The P.T. Barnum Award to Dennis Montgomery, a computer
programmer who scammed the U.S. government for more
than $20 million. Montgomery claimed he had software
that could spot terrorist conspiracies hidden in
broadcasts by the Qatar-based Arabic news network, Al-
Jazeera. He said his program could also detect hostile
submarines and identify terrorists in Predator drone
videos.

The Bush administration took his claims so seriously
that in December 2003 it turned back flights from
Britain, France and Mexico because the software had
“discovered” the planes flight information embedded in
an Al Jazeera’s crawl bar. The White House, fearing the
planes would be used to attack targets in the U.S.,
actually talked about shooting the planes down.

The CIA eventually concluded the software was a
fabrication, but rather than rebuking those in charge
during the hoax—Donald Kerr and George Tenet—both men
got promotions. The spy agency also didn’t bother to
tell anyone in the military, so in 2009 the U.S. Air
Force bought the bogus software for $3 million.

C. Northcote Parkinson Award to the U.S. Defense
Department for upholding the British sociologist’s
dictum that “work expands so as to fill the time
available for its completion.” Parkinson—a social
scientist with a wicked sense of humor—was hired after
World War II to examine the future of the Royal Navy.
He concluded that, given the military’s deep love of
fancy gold lace, as well as its addiction to
bureaucracy, eventually there would be more admirals
than ships. Needless to say, that is exactly what
happened.

But it is not just the Brits who yearn for the golden
epaulets. According to the Project On Government
Oversight (POGO), the U.S. military is adding brass to
its ranks at a record pace. While the enlisted ranks
have grown by 2 percent from 2001 to 2011, three and
four star generals and flag rank admirals have
increased 24 percent, one and two star generals and
admirals by 12 percent, and lower ranking officers by
9.5 percent.

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made an
attempt to cut the ranks of the top brass, but as soon
as Leon Panetta took over the post, he reversed the
cuts and added six more generals. In fact, at the same
time as the Pentagon was cutting the enlisted ranks by
10,000 in anticipation of an end to the Iraq War, it
added 2,500 officers.

According to POGO, “Today’s military is the most top-
heavy force in U.S. history.” Between 2012 and 2021,
POGO estimates that the six new generals Panetta
appointed will cost taxpayers $14 million.

However, there may be a silver lining here. Generals
and admirals don’t fight, that’s the job of enlisted
men. At this rate the U.S. will run out of privates and
the business of war will be left to generals and
admirals. If that comes to pass, Dispatches predicts an
outbreak of pacifism.

The Confused Priorities Award is a three-way tie
between British Prime Minister David Cameron, Canadian
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and former Irish
Taoiseach (prime minister) Bertie Ahern.

In the midst of a savage austerity program, with
massive cutbacks in social spending, Cameron’s
Conservative-Liberal government will spend up to $40
billion on a new generation of missile-firing
submarines. While British Defense Secretary Liam Fox
said the submarine was necessary to maintain the
country’s nuclear deterrence, critics say the program
is really a boondoggle for BAE Systems, the United
Kingdom-based arms company that will make the new
weapon system.

Canada’s Harper got into the winner’s circle by
spending over $100 million on summit meetings and pork
barrel projects for Conservative cabinet member Tony
Clement. The summit expenditures included $13,711 for
“glow sticks,” $62 million for accommodations, and $4.3
million for a temporary fence to keep Canadians away
from the lake where the Group of 8 meeting took place.
Half of the summit money was used to build an office
building in Fraser’s district, as well as develop
airports and communities that the cabinet member could
take credit for. In the meantime, Harper slashed
spending for health care and education, and cut $200
million from environmental protection and monitoring.

Ahern, Taoiseach of the Irish Dail from 1997 to 2008,
oversaw the bank speculation and real estate bubble
that destroyed Ireland’s economy in 2008. Ahern claimed
that no one told him that the financial situation was
so dire, although an investigation by independent
analyst Rob Wright found that the Fianna Fail
government had repeatedly been warned that a crash was
coming. Asked what his greatest regret was, Ahern
replied that it was his failure to build a stadium to
match those in Arab states. “I think unfortunately when
I see little countries like Qatar and Kuwait…talking
about their 10 stadiums and we never succeeded in
getting one national stadium. That’s an achievement I
tried hard to do but I didn’t get.”

The White Elephant Award to the Greek Army for
considering taking 400 free M1A1 Abrams tanks from the
U.S. “This is a free offer,” said Greek army spokesman
Yiannis Sifakis.

Well, sort of free.

The Abrams, the U.S.’s main battle tank, is a 67.6-ton
behemoth that burns 10 gallons of gas just to start,
and gets 1.6 gallons to the mile. The tanks will also
cost $11 million to transport to Greece.

In the meantime, the Greek Socialist government has
laid off tens of thousands of workers, cut wages,
slashed health care, increased sales taxes, and
advanced the retirement age. Massive demonstration and
general strikes have convulsed major cities, and the
country is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Maybe the army is thinking that if German banks try to
repossess the country, those 400 Abrams tanks might
come in handy (if Greece can afford to gas to run
them)?

The Dr. Frankenstein Award to former U.S. Secretary of
State Madeline Albright for her sponsorship of Kosovo
Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, a man accused of murdering
Serb prisoners during the 1999 Yugoslav War and selling
their body parts.

Reporting on the scandal in CounterPunch, reporter
Diana Johnstone, author of “Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia,
NATO and Western Delusions,” cites a report by Swiss
Senator Dick Marty implicating former Kosovo Liberation
Army commander Thaci of running “safe houses” during
the war where Serb prisoners were tortured and killed.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a
human rights organization with 47 member states,
sponsored the Marty investigation.

“An undetermined but apparently small number of
prisoners were transferred in vans and trucks to an
operating site near Tirana international airport
[Albania], from which fresh organs could be flown
rapidly to recipients” the Marty Report says. “Captives
were killed, usually by a gunshot to the head, before
being operated on to remove one of more of their
organs.” Kidneys seem to have been the major harvest.

Thaci has also been linked to the heroin trade and
prostitution.

Albert and her aide, the late Richard Holbrooke, pushed
Thaci into the leadership of Kosovo during the
Rambouillet negotiations leading up to the war.
According to Johnson, far more prominent leaders of the
Kosovo delegation to those talks were pushed aside, and
Thaci—known in law enforcement circles as “The
Snake—became the face of Albanians secession movement.

Asked about the Marty Report, U.S. State Department
spokesman Phillip Crowley said the Americans would
continue to work with Thaci because “any individual
anywhere on the earth is innocent until proven
otherwise.” Of course, it also helps that Thaci
approved the construction of a massive U.S. base in
Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel, giving the U.S. its first
military foothold in the Balkans.

The Surreal Award to the U.S. Justice Department for
finally agreeing that lawyers defending prisoners at
Guantanamo can view classified files that were
prominently displayed on the WikiLeaks website. The
Department ruled that lawyers may access the documents,
but cannot “download, save, print, or disseminate” the
material, a ruling that attorney David Remes said was
“still surreal.”

The Grinch Award to the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) for complaining that Colombia’s minimum wage was
too high, and driving up the cost of labor. The minimum
wage is $1.80 an hour and, for full time workers,
brings in around $300 a month.

The Historical Re-write Award to Jean-Francois Cope,
general secretary of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s
conservative Union for Popular Movement and the man
behind the “Burka Ban.”  Cope organized a recent
conference on secularization that, according to French
Prime Minister Francois Fillon, led to “a
stigmatization of Muslims.”

Cope defended the conference as “controversial but
necessary,” adding that “the values of France are like
the Three Musketeers: liberty, equality, fraternity.”
Except that the Alexander Dumas novel was set in 1625,
and the Musketeers were fighting for Louis XIII and the
Catholic Church. “Liberty, equality, fraternity” was
the slogan of the 1789 French Revolution, and was not
highly thought of in the Feudal court of Bourbons.

The Creative Language Award to the Obama administration
for its denial that the American bombing of Libya
constituted a war. It was, according to the White
House, a “time-limited, scope-limited military action.”

Conn Hallinan can be read at his blog
dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and
middleempireseries.wordpress.com

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