Follow the war money trail

[XtremeDisciple2k3]

Lockheed Martin wins moon rocket contract
Saturday, September 2, 2006

SETH BORENSTEIN

WASHINGTON - The Associated Press

NASA this week gave a multibillion-dollar contract to build a manned lunar spaceship to Lockheed Martin Corp., the aerospace leader that usually builds unmanned rockets.

The U.S. space agency plans to use the Orion crew exploration vehicle to replace the space shuttle fleet, take astronauts to the moon and perhaps to Mars. Reusable and like Apollo and earlier spacecraft, it is perched atop the rocket. NASA estimated the cost at $7.5 billion (5.8 billion euros) through 2019.

The last time NASA awarded a manned spaceship contract to Lockheed Martin was in 1996 for a spaceplane that was supposed to replace the space shuttle. NASA spent $912 million (710 million euros) and the ship, called X-33, never got built because of technical problems.

The only other competitors for the contract were a team made up of Northrop Grumman Corp., the world's largest shipbuilder and third-largest military contractor, and Boeing Co.

"We feel we have an achievable design," said Doug Cooke, a deputy associate administrator when asked why Lockheed Martin was chosen over the competing team. "This is a design that is based on known capabilities. We know that this can be built so there are some differences there, perhaps."

Although all of NASA's 10 centers will provide engineering support on Orion, the majority of the work will be at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and final assembly will be completed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

In picking Lockheed Martin for Orion, described by NASA's chief as "Apollo on steroids," NASA bypassed Apollo throwbacks Northrop Grumman and its chief subcontractor Boeing. Northrop Grumman predecessor built the Apollo lunar lander. Companies bought by Boeing built the Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury capsules, Skylab and the space shuttle.

"NASA decided to do something different and go with a company that has not been in manned space before, sort of spreading the wealth and making sure they've got two contractors that know the manned space business," said aerospace industry analyst Paul Nisbet, president of JSA Research.

Lockheed Martin built several unmanned probes, including: 1998's Lunar Prospector; 1976 Viking probes of Mars; Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which entered the red planet's orbit earlier this year; and the 1999 Mars Climate Orbiter, which crashed because of a Lockheed Martin/NASA mismatching of metric and English measurement units.

Before Thursday's announcement, Lockheed Martin released few details about its proposal. Their plan was heavily open-ended, allowing NASA the ultimate decision on reusability of Orion and landing sites.

Lockheed Martin's initial proposal was vastly different from what NASA wanted. Its first submission looked more like the since-abandoned X-33 spaceplane and less like a capsule. NASA told Lockheed Martin it wanted an Apollo-like capsule, so the company changed its proposal.

If all goes well, the first test flight of Orion will be September 2014 and astronauts could return to the moon by late 2019 or 2020, NASA estimates. Lockheed Martin Vice President John Karas said, if asked, his company could make the first flight in 2013.

Orion will be the Apollo capsule-like replacement for the 25-year-old space shuttle fleet that is supposed to retire in four years, after completion of the international space station.

"Space is no longer going to be a destination that we visit briefly," NASA associate administrator Scott Horowitz said on Thursday. "We're going to learn to live off the land like the pioneers did."

This is hardly the first time NASA has made a big deal over a next-generation spaceship. Since the 1980s, NASA has spent about $4.8 billion on shuttle follow-up ships that never were built, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the independent auditing arm of Congress.

This time it is different, NASA claims. That's because after the Columbia accident in 2003, President George W. Bush proposed a massive exploration plan. It would put astronauts on the moon for the first time since 1972, with plans for a home base. The plan also would ultimately send people to Mars.

Orion is just part of an exploration program called Constellation that includes the Ares I and V rockets that will power the Orion capsule and a cargo vehicle into orbit and beyond.

The program will reduce the risk of a fatal accident to astronauts from 1-in-200 currently for the shuttle to 1-in-2,000 for the new Constellation program, Orion project manager Skip Hatfield said last week.

In July, the GAO warned that NASA was heading down the wrong path in choosing an Orion-builder by late August or early September. The auditors said the space agency would be choosing a contractor before it had "well-defined requirements, a preliminary design, mature technology and firm cost estimates for the project."

"This approach increases the risk that the project will encounter significant cost overruns, schedule delays and decreased capability," the GAO warned.

NASA told the contractors to build a capsule that looks just like Apollo and can carry four astronauts to the moon and six to the international space station orbiting Earth. It should have a service module that brings it to the moon.

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/a...?enewsid=53035

[XtremeDisciple2k3]

When war is on the horizon, follow the money

GARY FERDMAN AND MYRIAM MIEDZIAN
GUEST COLUMNISTS

Pop quiz: Who founded the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq?

A. A prominent Iraqi political exile.

B. Bruce Jackson, former Lockheed Martin vice president

C. Neoconservatives William Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz.

Answer: b.

What does this mean? To understand our nation's foreign policy, including military interventions, follow the money.

This should come as no surprise. Our country is built on the profit motive; we proved its effectiveness by outlasting the Soviet Union.

While Americans understand that making money motivates McDonald's or Wal-Mart, and some are concerned about businesses donating large sums to influence politicians, most are unaware of how the profit motive helps shape U.S. foreign policy.

This is caused in part by our leaders draping decisions, especially wars, in patriotism. Take Iraq; President Bush leads Americans to believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11, has weapons of mass destruction, and threatens our national security. Once he invades Iraq, any questioning is portrayed as endangering our troops and homeland.

By the time most Americans realize that none of it is true, thousands of young soldiers are killed or maimed and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars are flowing to often incompetent, politically connected Pentagon contractors.

For most decent, caring Americans it is almost unthinkable that the profit motive played a significant role in putting our soldiers in harm's way. It is painful to acknowledge that we have been lied to, and to ask, why? Why was this war started? What role did our president's, vice president's, and secretary of state's close ties to the oil industry play? Which powerful American companies stood to profit?

Bruce Jackson founded the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq in 2002, a few months after retiring from Lockheed Martin. In 2001, he and other members of the neocon Project for a New American Century wrote to President Bush stating that "American forces must be prepared to back up our commitment to the Iraqi opposition by all necessary means." A year earlier, Jackson had chaired the subcommittee that produced the Republican Party's foreign policy plank that George Bush ran on in 2000.

Any chance that the views Jackson promoted had something to do with the billions that Lockheed Martin pockets thanks to the war?

For war profiteers, soldiers returning maimed or in caskets, and a $500 billion Pentagon budget paid for by the taxes of ordinary citizens, are externalities -- costs and consequences borne by others.

There is nothing new about weapons manufacturers encouraging wars and profiteering from them.

During the Civil War, President Lincoln stated that those profiteering from defective weapons "ought to have their devilish heads shot off."

The role of weapons manufacturers in creating the tensions that led to World War I is well documented, and no doubt influenced President Roosevelt's 1934 message to Congress that "the uncontrolled activities of the manufacturers, and merchants of engines of destruction," were a menace to world peace.

Profiteering was so common during WWII that then-Sen. Harry Truman became a national hero by bringing to heel war contractors whose waste and inefficiency threatened the war effort.

In his famous farewell address, President Eisenhower warned the nation of the "undue influence" of the military-industrial complex, and the need to control it.

As the war in Iraq grinds on at a cost of more than $250 million per day, and another contractor-heavy organization, the Iran Policy Committee, calls for a pre-emptive strike against Iran, there is a dire need to act on his warning.

Just as government food inspection and child labor laws were enacted to protect us against the worst excesses of capitalist exploitation, our government must assure that corporate interests do not trump the national interest in foreign policy.

Pentagon contractors' congressional allies routinely defeat or bury in committee initiatives that could curtail war profiteering. This June, for example, all 55 Senate Republicans voted to kill an amendment strengthening laws governing waste, fraud and abuse in defense (43 of 45 Democrats voted for it).

In his farewell address, Eisenhower called for "an alert and knowledgeable citizenry" to stand up to the military industrial complex. Isn't it time to heed his call and demand that our representatives rein in the war profiteers?

Myriam Miedzian is the author of "BOYS WILL BE BOYS: Breaking the Link between Masculinity and Violence." Gary Ferdman is former executive director of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, dedicated to increasing federal support for education and health care using funds spent on Pentagon weapons.


http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinio...ratewar23.html

[Lyrical Content]

your a liberal ?

[XtremeDisciple2k3]

Originally Posted by Lyrical Content

your a liberal ?

I'd like to see myself beyond the shackling labels that dominate our political current nowadays. I'm neither liberal, nor conservative, anti-democrat and anti-republican.

[Lyrical Content]

Originally Posted by XtremeDisciple2k3

I'd like to see myself beyond the shackling labels that dominate our political current nowadays. I'm neither liberal, nor conservative, anti-democrat and anti-republican.

I wouldn't go as far as to say your not anti-republican, just my thought though.

[XtremeDisciple2k3]

Originally Posted by Lyrical Content

I wouldn't go as far as to say your not anti-republican, just my thought though.

actually I'm. Both parties are cousins. They are only different in the rhetoric they use. Their policies are the same, but since the rhetoric differs so radically they appear to be different, when they arent.