It's So Cool

Andrea Seabrook talks to "Colonel John Forsythe, call sign 'Ripper'" about the retirement of the US stealth bomber, F-17A, called "the Nighthawk." Seabrook gets really excited about this bomber. Here's a taste of this love fest:

Seabrook: "It's the plane that I always call the Batman symbol."
Ripper: "It does look like the Batman symbol."

Seabrook: "This plane the Nighthawk has had a big role in many US conflicts over the past thirty years: both Iraq wars, Serbia, the Panama invasion just to name a few, how is it used in combat?"
Ripper: "...allows us to go right to downtown Baghdad, downtown Belgrade, any target set within a country we can get to..."

Seabrook: "Do you think there's anything you'll miss though, about the Nighthawk?"
Ripper: "One thing about the Nighthawk, particularly because of its physical appearance, It's really etched in the national psyche."
Seabrook: "Yeah, it's so cool."
Ripper: "It is."

I agree, there is just something so cool about bombing cities whether in Panama, the first Gulf War, or Serbia; it's like seeing the Bat Light bouncing off the clouds.

Integrated Systems

Thursday morning NPR aired another war-products commercial. Adam Hochberg was at a trade show and took a shine to the Integrated Tourniquet System designed by Blackhawk! Products Group. It's a uniform for soldiers with 8 tourniquets built right into it - a product worthy of the Yes Men. Gosh, what will they think of next. I'm kind of hoping for the Integrated Healthcare System outfit for the uninsured - just pull a tab and voila! you get a complete physical: blood pressure and heart check, prostate exam, urine test, etc. all without ever having to unzip a single zipper - or see a single doctor. Man, you've got to love the inspired NPR News program directors!

Ignoring the superficiality and stupidity of the piece, the way Steve Inskeep introduces the report speaks volumes about the ideology at NPR. He begins the segment with

"Next, let's look at an effort to improve the odds of surviving the war on terror."

Consider a few aspects of this little Inscreepy^® statement:

• "An effort"

It is an effort all right; an effort to make a lot of money off a product that may or may not help soldiers avoid bleeding to death immediately after they've been seriously wounded.

• "Surviving the war on terror"

What "war on terror"? Could he be talking about the illegal, immoral, stupid, violent and rapacious war in Iraq, launched by the Bush administration and the US government (a war that has by all accounts increased global non-state terror)? And surviving? Most of the nearly 4000 soldiers killed in Iraq (not to mention the 1 million plus Iraqis) might have survived the "war on terror" if news outlets like NPR had done their jobs from the beginning. Where was the skepticism and investigative reporting starting way back in 2002 as the war on Iraq "product line" was launched?

It really is an amazing statement. I can only guess that Inskeep was wearing his nifty DHS Integrated Statement System suit for journalists: put it on, pull the right (far right) tab and everything you say will dovetail nicely with the policies and goals of both the Department of Defense and The Department of Heimat Security.

It's a Guy Thing

This morning Guy Raz gives us a peak into his soft-porn obsession with military aircraft. He begins by bragging "so in the past few weeks alone, I've ridden in an Army Black Hawk helicopter in Kuwait...hovered over Paris in a twin-rotor [sic] Marine CH-53 helicopter...flown around the world on the E-4B which is basically the most secretive and classified 747 in the world...been over Afghanistan in a Chinook helicopter...but nothing I've seen, no aircraft can quite compare to the F-22...there is nothing quite like it on earth; it looks like something out of the future....

The F-22 has caught his fancy: "...the plane is called The Raptor and there are only about 70 of them in existence, most of them at Langley...there are only 100 F-22 pilots in the world. The Air Force likes to call the plane America's insurance policy...sometimes I dream of going up in an F-22, but alas, I never will, there's only room for the pilot."

America's insurance policy! That's rich.

Given the utter non-coverage of the current escalating death-from-the-air being waged in Iraq, and the slaughter that the USAF has unleashed in places a widespread as Panama, Cambodia, Iraq (in 1991), and Afghanistan there is something positively necrophilic about Raz's panting aircraft fantasy.

Raz opens his report by describing the little windowless room that NPR has deep inside the Pentagon. He says, "It's NPR's Pentagon office and working in that windowless room under the hum of fluorescent lighting can be soul destroying..." I hate to break it to him, but it's going to be hard to destroy something that he's already sold.

Drones, Reapers, and Dinner with the Wife

NPR has a particular fondness for the weaponry of war and domination - both lethal and non-lethal - but yesterday's commercial for the US military's brand new "hunter-killer" drone, The Reaper, sets a new standard.

Opening the report Siegel tells us that The Predator - the smaller predecessor to The Reaper - "has emerged as the one of the most useful and controversial weapons in the US military's arsenal." However, what follows is Mary Louise Kelly's homage to this new killing machine with barely a mention of why it might be controversial. Consider the following comments that Kelly makes:

• "...this [heavier payload capacity] is the key advantage a Reaper can offer..."
• "...a huge step forward for the military."
• "It can hover for hours waiting for a terrorist target to appear."
• "It can carry missiles at the same time; if you don’t want to level a whole building, but just take out - say - a single sniper sitting in a third story window."
• "...no American lives are risked."

You have to hear the clip about "leveling a whole building" to appreciate how crass and flip her tone is - as if she were talking about taking out the trash instead of trashing people and their buildings.

So when do we hear about the controversy? Kelly briefly notes that "critics have accused The Predator of carrying out assassinations, and asked whether terror suspects who pose no immediate threat shouldn’t be arrested, rather than blown up..." For a thoughtful response we get Lt. Colonel Johnathon Green assuring us that "as long as you have the legal authority and the moral high ground that’s what we’re out there to do is protect our country in the war on terror." Yes Colonel we really have established legality and the moral high ground in Iraq!

With that problem taken care of we hear from Maj. John Chesser, who is training to operate The Reaper. Compared to flying real jets with bombs, he says that The Reaper "may not be as sexy, but we’re definitely going to get the mission done." Oh yea, bombing is so sexy. But Kelly notes there is an upside; since The Reaper is piloted remotely from the United States, after a shift "you get to go home and eat dinner with your wife."

Wish Lists

What could be more upbeat and exciting than "a huge display of new weapons and defense technology?" NPR takes us to the Marine West Expo which Michele Norris tells us is "an opportunity for defense contractors to meet with their most reliable customers, the Marines who use their gear on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan."

In the story, guest reporter Alison St. John, provides a lively tour:

• One weapons salesman proudly relates, "the products you see here are primarily shoulder-fired rockets and then the SMAI’s(?) the large enhanced-blast rocket that can be used to take snipers out of buildings; it basically knocks the building down with the sniper in it… the Marines love it." (the image above is from Fallujah and looks like it had a sniper "taken out of it.")
• Of a high-tech 3-D tactical map of Iraq, St. John breathlessly says, "It’s almost like virtually going there before you’ve gone there."
• When she sees a new drone she gushes, "there’s new technology that could have come out of a science fiction movie like an unmanned aircraft…it does look a bit like R2-D2."
• As the report ends, you'd swear that it was about school kids leaving the county fair and not about people who are being sent off to slaughter and be slaughtered: "The young Marines left the expo with bags full of posters and free samples. Many of these products will be on their wish list the next time they deploy."

God, isn't war just great? As Chris Hedges noted, it gives us meaning, at least NPR thinks so.