"Defense secretary visits Bath Iron Works" by David Sharp, Associated Press | May 23, 2009
BATH, Maine - The Pentagon's decision to build all three of the Navy's next-generation destroyers at Maine's Bath Iron Works assures plenty of work for shipbuilders for "a considerable number of years into the future," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday.
Visiting a shipyard for the first time, Gates toured an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer in the final stages of construction, the Wayne E. Meyer, and met with shipbuilders and sailors who'll serve aboard the ship on a helicopter landing pad at the fantail.
Gates said the Obama administration's budget aims to give the Navy what it needs while bringing stability to the Navy's shipbuilding infrastructure. "There's plenty of money in the budget to keep this shipyard busy for a considerable number of years into the future," Gates told reporters after the event....
The stealthy Zumwalt has faced critics who've questioned the military necessity of the ship, and the Navy apparently agreed. After building the three, shipbuilders will revert to building the older destroyers, which, unlike the new destroyer, can be configured for ballistic missile defense thanks to their phased-array radar and powerful computers.
See: Maine to Steal Jobs From Mississippi
It's rare for a defense secretary to visit Bath Iron Works. The last time it happened was when Defense Secretary William Cohen attended the christening of the Winston S. Churchill.
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PFFFFFFFFTTT!
"Bath Iron Works prepares for layoffs" by Associated Press | June 2, 2009
PORTLAND, Maine - Bath Iron Works' top executive yesterday warned workers to prepare for layoffs over the summer and fall because of a long-anticipated gap in work as the shipyard transitions to the Navy's stealthy next-generation destroyer.
Despite efforts to minimize its impact, the workload gap will lead to an undetermined number of temporary layoffs over the next four to six months, Jeff Geiger, president, told employees. The announcement coincided with word of the first 67 layoffs.
The shipyard's 5,600 workers had long expected the gap, and Geiger says the shipyard is doing all it can to minimize the number of job losses.
"Layoffs are difficult for everyone, and we will explore every available avenue to help minimize the number, including polling for voluntary layoffs, pursuing reassignments, and continuing to seek emergent work," Geiger said in an e-mail.
He emphasized that the layoffs will be temporary. The shipyard anticipates that its workforce will stabilize as work on the new destroyer ramps up.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during a visit to Bath Iron Works on May 22 that the Pentagon's decision to build all three Zumwalt-class destroyers in Bath instead of splitting them with another shipyard assures plenty of work for shipbuilders for "a considerable number of years into the future."
Gates said the Obama administration's proposal aims to give the Navy what it needs while bringing stability to the Navy's shipbuilding infrastructure.
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Yeah, you guys will be plenty busy......
"Defense secretary scores big wins on weapons cuts" by Richard Lardner, Associated Press | July 26, 2009
WASHINGTON — Robert Gates is on a roll. Question is, how long will it last?
.... Gates, a Republican holdover from the Bush administration, is on a campaign to change the way the Pentagon does business. In his sights are unnecessary or financially troubled weapons that siphon money away from the troops and gear required for irregular wars now being fought in Afghanistan and Iraq.
See: Obama Cuts Defense Budget Less Than One Percent
Yet getting Capitol Hill to go along with further deep cuts to big-ticket programs remains a huge challenge as lawmakers claw to protect the jobs these projects create in their states and districts. Others have serious disagreements with the Obama administration's strategic choices.
Case in point: House lawmakers want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for equipment Gates doesn't want, including more than $400 million for the VH-71 presidential helicopter that the Pentagon wants canceled for being behind schedule and vastly over budget....
Those hoping the defense budget will be purged of Cold War-style weapons look to be disappointed. Iran and North Korea are perceived threats in the short run, and superpowers China and Russia still loom as potential threats over time.
WWIII coming up!!!!
USrael vs. the WORLD!
That means the U.S. arsenal will remain loaded with aircraft carriers, ballistic missiles, nuclear submarines, tanks and long-range bombers like the durable B-52 of Cold War-vintage.
Translation: NO CHANGE!
What Gates wants is a better balance between the heavy weapons for a large-scale war and the needs of ground troops going into their ninth year of combat against unconventional foes. For too long, he and his senior advisers have argued, those pressing demands have taken a back seat.
How much you want to bet they get both?
"It would be nice to win our current wars," Michael Vickers, the Pentagon's top special operations official, said Thursday....
Not the goal; the goal is to keep them going forever.
"It's very hard for the stars to align in a constellation that allow a hardware program to be terminated," said Gordon Adams, a former Clinton administration budget official who specializes in defense issues. "They just happened to align very nicely here."
This STARS ALIGNING talk gives me the creeps.
This isn't some UNAVOIDABLE COSMIC EVENT, jerk!!
We are talking about HUMAN DECISIONS HERE!!!!
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FLASHBACK:
"Key aide in 'Charlie Wilson's War' widens his battle against terrorism" by Ann Scott Tyson, The Washington Post | December 29, 2007
WASHINGTON - In the Pentagon's newly expanded Special Operations office, a suite of sterile gray cubicles on the "C" ring of the third floor, Assistant Defense Secretary Michael Vickers is working to implement the US military's highest-priority plan: a global campaign against terrorism that reaches far beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.
The wide-ranging plan details the targeting of Al Qaeda-affiliated networks around the world and explores how the United States should retaliate in case of another major terrorist attack. The most critical aspect of the plan, Vickers said in a recent interview, involves US Special Operations forces working through foreign partners to uproot and fight terrorist groups.
Vickers's job also spans the modernization of nuclear forces for deterrence and retaliation, and the retooling of conventional forces to combat terrorism - a portfolio so expansive that he and some Pentagon officials once jokingly referred to his efforts as the "take-over-the-world plan," one official said.
It is NOT a JOKE, and it is NOT FUNNY!
Vickers, a former Green Beret and CIA operative, was the principal strategist for the biggest covert program in CIA history, the paramilitary operation that drove the Soviet army out of Afghanistan in the 1980s. The movie "Charlie Wilson's War," released last weekend, portrays Vickers in that role, in which he directed an insurgent force of 150,000 Afghan fighters and controlled an annual budget of more than $2 billion in current dollars.
Like he was doing it alone!
Today, as the top Pentagon adviser on counterterrorism strategy, Vickers exudes the same assurance about defeating terrorist groups as he did as a 31-year-old CIA paramilitary officer assigned to Afghanistan, where he convinced superiors that with the right strategy and weapons, the ragtag Afghan insurgents could win.
Vickers, 54, said in a recent interview, looking cerebral behind thick glasses but with an energy and build reminiscent of the high school quarterback he once was:
"I am just as confident or more confident we can prevail in the war on terror."
Even though we are the Soviets now!
DANGEROUS people think this way, readers!
Vickers joined the Pentagon in July to oversee the 54,000-strong Special Operations Command (Socom), based in Tampa, Fla., which is growing faster than any other part of the US military. Socom's budget has doubled in recent years, to $6 billion for 2008, and the command is to add 13,000 troops to its ranks by 2011.
FULL-SPEED AHEAD with the PNAC plan, huh, readers?
No matter what ANYONE thinks!
Senior Pentagon and military officials regard Vickers as a rarity - a skilled strategist who is both creative and pragmatic.
Jim Thomas, a former senior defense planner who worked with Vickers:
"He tends to think like a gangster. He can understand trends, then change the rules of the game so they are advantageous for your side."
Yeah, so he is a THUG!
But he's OUR THUG!!!!!
Vickers's outlook was shaped in the CIA and Special Forces, which he joined off the street through a "direct enlistment" program in 1973. In the 10th Special Forces Group, he trained year-round for a guerrilla war against the Soviet Union. One scenario he prepared for: to parachute into enemy territory with a small nuclear weapon strapped to his leg, and then position it to halt the Red Army.
Vickers recalled that the nuclear devices did not seem that small, "particularly when you are in an aircraft with one of them or it is attached to your body." Was it a suicide mission? "I certainly hoped not," Vickers said.
An expert in martial arts, parachuting, and weapons, and second in his class at Officer Candidate School, Vickers was also fluent in Czech and Spanish, which made him overqualified when he joined the CIA's paramilitary unit in 1983. Soon after, he received a citation for combat in Grenada.
But Vickers's greatest influence was in the clinically precise way he reassessed the potential of Afghan guerrilla forces and prescribed the right mix of weaponry to attack Soviet weaknesses. This brash plan to create a force of "techno-guerrillas" able to fight year-round called for exponentially more money, which through sheer force of logic Vickers was able to obtain.
Today Vickers's plan to build a global counterterrorist network is no less ambitious. The plan is focused on a list of 20 "high-priority" countries, with Pakistan posing a central preoccupation for Vickers, who said Al Qaeda sanctuaries in the country's western tribal areas are a serious threat to the United States.
WAKE UP to the FRAUD of "TERROR," America, and SEE the WARS for what they TRULY ARE!!!
Plans for WORLD DOMINATION!!!!!
"Terrorism" is only the LYING EXCUSE to SELL and JUSTIFY these MURDEROUS WAR CRIMINAL'S PLANS!!!!!!
The list also includes Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, the Philippines, Yemen, Somalia, and Iran, and Vickers hints that some European countries could be on it. Beyond that, the plan covers another 29 "priority" countries, as well as "other countries" that Vickers does not name.
Are you SMELLING a DRAFT, readers?
Just HOW in the HELL do these MADMEN intend to carry out this SICK and INSANE PLAN?
And WHO is going to STOP THEM?!!!!
Vickers: "It's not just the Middle East. It's not just the developing world. It's not just nondemocratic countries - it's a global problem."
SEE where we are HEADED if these MONSTERS are allowed to continue?!
IMPEACH the WHOLE U.S. GOVERNMENT and SHUT IT DOWN, readers!!!!!!!!!!
With just over one year left in the Bush administration, Vickers is impatient with bureaucratic infighting within the military and between the Pentagon and other agencies, current and former officials said. One official noted that it took Socom about three years to write the counterterrorism plan, and two years for the administration to approve a classified "execute order" against Al Qaeda.
Vickers, who has advised President Bush on Iraq strategy, is convinced that more US troops are not enough to solve the conflict in Iraq and that working with local forces is the best long-term strategy for both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Working with proxy forces will also enable the United States to extend and sustain its influence, something it failed to do in Afghanistan:
"After this great victory and after a million Afghans died, we basically exited that region and Afghanistan just spun into chaos. It's imperative that we not do that again."
This man is not a patriot; he is a SOCIOPATH and PSYCHOPATHIC SERIAL KILLER is what he is!
I am SO ASHAMED to be an AmeriKan!
I wanna go puke!
