Post's Krauthammer Pushes Dangerous Fantasy

Washington Post senior columnist Charles Krauthammer wants Russia to build more nuclear weapons. Why? Because he thinks we can shoot them out of the sky like clay pigeons. This is simply not true. The Post's promotion of this fantasy could lead to global disaster.

Krauthammer supported the arms control treaty negotiated by conservative President George W. Bush, but now opposes the similar agreement crafted by progressive President Barack Obama. Instead, he says we should "invite the Russians to build as many warheads as they want."

It doesn't matter because, he claims, "We can reliably shoot down an intercontinental ballistic missile." This is demonstrably false. We cannot now reliably shoot down a real long-range missile. We have never been able to do this and there is no prospect that we will able to do this in the future. Claims that we can are not true. People who repeat these claims are not telling the truth.

These false claims are based on carefully staged demonstrations where interceptor rockets hit missile targets. The trick? The targets cooperate. They have known characteristics including size, velocity, radar signature, and are carefully directed into exact position for the "intercept." They even have little transponders guiding the interceptor with an electronic "here I am." Still, the successful hits are counted in single digits after 30 years of trying.

There is close to zero chance of intercepting a real long-range missile. Why? Because real missiles don't cooperate. They hide their warheads with decoys, jammers, chaff, spin, and radar-reflective coatings. If we can't see it, we can't hit it.

Our intelligence services concluded 10 years ago that any country capable of building a long-range missile (including North Korea) could build any or all of six basic "counter-measures" that could defeat any know defensive system. Russia, China and the U.S. have already done so.

Photo: Balloon decoy for US warheads, courtesy Union of Concerned Scientists.

Tests in the 1990s with realistic decoys (balloons with the same radar and infrared signature as the warhead) showed that our sensors could not pick out the real warhead from the fakes. Did we stop the missile defense program? No. We stopped using realistic decoys. We dumbed down the tests. Testers call this "testing for success." Most of us would call this "rigged."

This is not the first time the Washington Post has knowingly published false statements. Last week, in the only oped the Post ran before the Moscow summit, the former head of the missile defense program, retired General Trey Obering, also claimed the anti-missile system for Europe he was rushing to deploy in the last years of the Bush administration would provide "cost-effective protection." He trashed an independent joint assessment by US and Russian scientists that found the system would not work.

Two of the scientists, MIT's Ted Postol and nuclear-weapon designer Richard Garwin, wrote a detailed rebuttal, correcting Obering's factual misstatements. I have seen the oped they submitted. They objectively examine the flaws of the anti-missile interceptors and the fact that the radar cannot "discriminate between warheads and decoys."

A distinguished group of scientists wrote President Obama an open letter last week. Ten of the letter's 20 signatories have won a Nobel Prize, 15 are members of the National Academy of Sciences, and seven are members of the National Academy of Engineering. They said, in part:

We assess that the planned European missile defense system would have essentially no capability to defend against a real missile attack. ... This system has not been proven and does not merit deployment. It would offer little or no defensive capability, even in principle. At the same time, its deployment would result in large security, political, and monetary costs.

...

Congress has required that the Secretary of Defense certify that the interceptors have been shown to work "in an operationally effective manner" through "successful, operationally realistic flight testing" before they can be deployed in Europe. This has not occurred. Testing of the interceptors has not begun and will not be completed for several years.

The interceptors proposed for Europe would use the kill vehicle and a modified version of the interceptor booster being fielded as part of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. This technology has not been adequately tested and has no demonstrated capability in a realistic attack scenario. None of the GMD tests have included realistic countermeasures or tumbling warheads. All flight intercept tests have been conducted under highly scripted conditions with the defense given advance information about the attack details.

For these reasons, the intercepts achieved in past tests of the GMD system say nothing about the effectiveness of these interceptors under real-world conditions. Until these systems are subjected to an honest technical assessment and a rigorous testing program, there will be no data on which to base an assessment of how effective they might be in an actual attack.

Claiming that this system is effective when it is not is dangerous and could contribute to unwise decisions by U.S. policy makers.

But President Obama should not wait for the Washington Post to re-discover its obligation to provide its readers with facts instead of spin. He should call these scientists to the White House so he can hear first-hand why he should stick to his guns and only deploy weapons that work. Starting a new arms race is bad enough. But deploying scarecrows while the other side deploys nuclear weapons is dereliction of duty.

Follow Joe Cirincione on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Cirincione

Comments

[pomegrante]

charles k. knows the game the pres is executing. (brilliant).

the middle east must disarm. oh,oh!

[LizM]

Congratulations to Joe Cirincione, and Ploughshares Fund, for recognition by the PIR Center in Russia for his valuable efforts and achievements in advancing WMD nonproliferation.

Many of us still miss him whenever we visit the online site for the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace.

[IntelligenceIsBliss]

Krauthammer is a neo-con stooge. This being established beyond doubt, anything he writes can be discarded as lies designed to push the agenda of endless war and its accompanying endless, wasteful military spending.

[booboo111]

I think at the height of the cold war, we each had about 30,000 warheads. I don't know how many we each have now, but if Krauthammer wants to go back to that number, I'd like to see us shoot all thirty thousand down simultaneously. Additionally each one is a multi- hydrogen warhead, that makes Hiroshima look like a firecracker. All you need is a half dozen at the most getting through to wipe out the whole nation. The Dr. Strangelove character was obviously based on Krauthammer.

[marika]

Krauthammer is another word for cringe due to the intellectual and factual ineptness of the theories he purports. He does the dirty water carrying for the neoconservatives with such evident relish and ridicule that he wouldn't know the truth if he found the word in a dictionary.

Of course with such twisted organisations someone has to do the donkey work.

[LizM]

I sure would like to read that detailed rebuttal that the Washington Post failed to publish. And, I'm just wondering if that Postol/Garwin op-ed might be published in another newspaper...say, the New York Times, with specific mention that it was meant as a rebuttal to the Post's op-ed by General Obering. I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.

Or, perhaps better yet, couldn't Ted Postol and Richard Garwin post an ‘enhanced’ version of their op-ed right here at the Huffington Post - with all appropriate links, including to the Post's Obering op-ed, and mention of the Post's failure to publish and disservice to its readers. Postol and Garwin might also mention the Post's general failure to understand, much less fulfill, the critical role of a free press and an informed citizenry to the survival of a thriving democracy, to say nothing of the future of the Washington Post, itself.

Also, Joe's link for the joint assessment by US and Russian scientists doesn't seem to work - if anyone has found this assessment elsewhere, I'd appreciate it if you could provide a link for it here. Thanks!

The Washington Post cannot be allowed to continue to get away - unscathed - with this incompetence, ineptitude, and dangerous dereliction of duty.

[melissamsouza]

WaPo's editorial page has become a joke and a disgrace. It is very telling when that paper fills its spaces with war-mongering, extreme--right, disingenous idealogues to hammer out their outdated, dangerous rants while firing someone like Dan Froomkin. Follow the bucks--the paper is on the brink of folding and probably the big bucks from corporations involved in defense-contracting are sponsoring these devils who advocate perpetual war and conflict and the promotion of excruciatingly expensive and science-fictional "defense" systems like the missile shield. It is no coincidence that as the paper's woes have intensified, so has the right-wing vitriol of its editorial pages, which has become the editorial compliment to Fox News. Nice job, WaPo--RIP soon.

[buttonz]

Joe is correct in pointing out Krauthammer's fallacies but what Joe and Krauthammer are forgetting is that Russia will do whatever it wants. The strategic reason for the high number of nuclear weapons has been that if one nation were to strike another without warning there would be too many that at least a number of nuclear weapons would survive in order to retaliate. So if Russia has 10,000 nukes and we did a first strike they would at least have a 1,000 left which would be more than enough to fight back. Obama's current quest in Moscow has been just to secure a route to Afghanistan and help them dismantle their oil nuke weapons. Everybody wins.

While there are probably less interceptor missiles than nuclear weapons Joe is incorrect about the effectiveness of our ABM systems. We have gone a very very long way and those systems can most certainly shoot down ballistic missiles with a high degree of accuracy. Citing data from the 1990's is absurd and like comparing the computers of then to the computers of today. I'm surprised he even admitted the date.

[Kaviraj]

While there are probably less interceptor missiles than nuclear weapons Joe is incorrect about the effectiveness of our ABM systems. We have gone a very very long way and those systems can most certainly shoot down ballistic missiles with a high degree of accuracy.

Blah blah.
You have no idea what you are talking about, you Krauthammer apologist. Not only in the '90s were you not able, you are not able today. Not so long ago, this was admitted by your own military and you claim the opposite. Creep back under your neocon rock.

[Freenation]

krauthammer with his other neo.con bunch are nothing but fantasy spin masters...who wants the world to be constant conflicts so that they can keep selling their twisted agendas....

[Not Blind]

President Reagan wasted billions on the "Star Wars" program which never became functional, or efficient. For the past 40 years, we've engaged in SALT talks with Russia, while continuing to build new weapons systems (many of which are unnecessary, very costly, and not effective). Both the US and Russia have enough nukes to incinerate the globe several times over, so a few more or less won't make much difference. Whether or not we reduce or increase our stockpiles of WMD's, there are many other nations that also have them: Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, etc. These nations may not go along with reductions. The real danger is non-state groups (radical extremists) procuring such weaponry. The real threat is not so much a rogue state, but small groups sneaking such weapons into our country in suitcases which would be capable of causing great destruction.

As for Charles Krauthammer, he's proven himself to be wrong, a lackey of the AIPAC and Israel, more than an American patriot. He and Paul Wolfowitz were advocating we engage Iran (after their election fiasco last month), on the premise of ensuring the promise of democracy in the region. Krauthammer conveniently forgot we deposed a democratic­ally-elect­ed, pro-western, secular leader in 1953, to replace Mozzadeq with the Shah, to placate B.P.

[Poboy]

What if WaPo had a salon, with the decision makers and defense industry execs, and offered their columnists and journalists up for a fee?

[GordonDR]

LOL!

[JudgeMoonbox]

In early to mid-2001, when there was a big debate over Bush's desire to scrap the ABM treaty and build a missile defense system, Krauthammer said that a nuclear terror attack was virtually impossible, therefore we needn't worry about the defense being a "Maginot Line." This was months before 9/11 proved him wrong, but I haven't seen any evidence he learned from the experience.

[OlongapoEd]

Hasn't one of the usual suspects tried to defend K with something like "But...but...but he won a PULITZER PRIZE!!! (pant, pant, pant)".

[jsehgal]

We can discuss the merits of missile defence systems for as long as we want, but the fact remains that they are porous. In the modern world where the value of life is high, it is unproductive to talk in these terms of nuclear weapon offence and defence. The only way I see out of these scary scenarios is to talk of reducing and eliminating weapons and war, period.

[realpolitic]

Krauthammer and other conservatives always have to back their claims with lies. Instead of lying to reinforce their arguments, why not change their point of view? Of course, since they are ideological conservatives who have made a living off their conservatism all their lives, it would be like asking them to surrender and we know these armchair warriors would never surrender.

[JGriffin]

For the love of God, can we PLEASE put Charles Krauthammer out to pasture?

The man has become a ridiculous caricature of himself. His relentless war mongering belongs to the last century (as does his hair, Fox News and the Washington Post), and more importantly, he hasn't been right about anything in the past 30 years.

It's understandable why Spawns of Satan like Roger Ailes and Katharine Weymouth continue to give this loser a soapbox from which to spew his venom. But c'mon Huffington, you're supposed to be better than that.

[realpolitic]

Which of these conservatives have been right over the last 20 years? Most are still fighting the Vietnam war.

[KHAAANNN]

Wrong.
Most are still fighting the Korean War (Bin Laden is the new Castro to them.)
NONE of them saw any service during the Vietnam War, they all, like Dick Cheney, had "other priorities" and all obtained multiple deferments, or like G.W. Bush, got moved to the head of the line (since his Dad was the Chairman of Nixon's "Committee to Re-Elect the President") of the "Martini Air Force" in Texas, then when even 1 weekend a month was "too much of a distraction" for him, just walked away 2 years early on his obligations, to no punishments.
Patriots All.
Chicken-Hawks is too nice of a term for them.