The truth is that the recent economic growth seen in the US has been, in large part, the result of a massive increase in consumer debt.

More Americans this year will file for bankruptcy than for divorce, or get a heart attack, or get diagnosed with cancer, or graduate college.

Jeremy Rikin on Economic-Political Panel

This country has a longstanding history of equal opportunity, an underlying value that once compelled us to work to connect everyone to the telephone network. Now it must mean providing the ability to connect with broadband. Since 2001 when I came to the commission, the number of high-speed lines has increased more than sixfold. We stand ready to tackle the remaining challenges to our goal of universal, affordable broadband access for all Americans.

The writer is chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission

Why every American should have broadband access

The Bush team tried to make history on the cheap in Iraq. But you can't will the ends without willing the means.

Condi and Rummy, by Tom Friedman

I’ve decided to start prude-proofing myself via a series of daily micro-immersions in sex and violence. Last week, for example, I sat on my couch looking at a bra for over an hour. Then I forced myself to watch a video of a duck being hit by a car. Then I tried listening to the sound of the duck on the video being hit by the car, while looking at the bra. Next, I turned up the sound, while looking at a slightly sexier bra. Then I watched the duck being hit while I ran my hand over the bra. Then I had my wife put on the bra, which was a very effective technique, because as I tried to run my hand over the bra my wife nailed me with an ashtray just as the duck was hit by the car—one of the best micro-immersions in sex and violence a guy could ask for.

Nostalgia | The New Yorker

In the last 5 years, the Department of Defense (DOD) has doubled its planned investments in new weapon systems from about $700 billion in 2001 to nearly $1.4 trillion in 2006. While the weapons that DOD develops have no rival in superiority, weapon systems acquisition remains a long-standing high risk area. GAO’s reviews over the past 30 years have found consistent problems with weapon acquisitions such as cost increases, schedule delays, and performance shortfalls.

This report provides congressional and DOD decision makers with an independent, knowledge-based assessment of selected defense programs that identifies potential risks and needed actions when a program's projected attainment of knowledge diverges from the best practices.

GAO assessed 52 systems that represent an investment of over $850 billion, ranging from the Missile Defense Agency’s Airborne Laser to the Army’s Warfighter Information Network-Tactical. DOD often exceeds development cost estimates by approximately 30 to 40 percent and experiences cuts in planned quantities, missed deadlines, and performance shortfalls. Such difficulties, absent definitive and effective reform outcomes, are likely to cause great turmoil in a budget environment in which there are growing fiscal imbalances as well as increasing conflict over increasingly limited resources. While these problems are in themselves complex, they are heightened by the fact that this current level of investment is by no means final and unchangeable. A large number of the technologies under development in these systems are sufficiently new and immature that it is uncertain how long it will take or how much it will cost to make them operational.

Most of the 52 programs GAO reviewed have proceeded with lower levels of knowledge than suggested by best practices. Programs that start with mature technologies do better. As shown in the figure below, programs that began with immature technologies have experienced average research and development cost growth of 34.9 percent; programs that began with mature technologies have only experienced cost growth of 4.8 percent.

There are a lot of programs in the DoD portfolio. This report provides a good snapshot of the largest and most important ones. Here's a typical nugget:

The Air Force has not demonstrated the F-22A can achieve its reliability goal of 3 hours mean time between maintenance. It does not expect to achieve this goal until the end of 2009 when most of the aircraft will have already been bought.

Is it just me, or does that seem like a rather modest reliability goal? What about when the mission calls for refueling by tanker? And yet, this is said to represent as much as a 100% improvement over other fighters in the inventory.

An earlier GAO report explains further:

Mean time between maintenance is a measure of aircraft reliability defined as the total number of aircraft flight hours divided by the total number of aircraft maintenance actions in the same period. The F-22's goal is 3 flight hours between maintenance actions by the time the F-22 reaches system maturity (100,000 flight hours, in about 2008).

The Air Force estimates that by the time the F-22 reaches system maturity, it will only require maintenance every 3.1 flight hours. The estimate was calculated using a reliability computer model that uses factors such as the design of the aircraft's systems and scheduled maintenance activities. Maintenance data will be collected from the 500th through the 5,000th hour of flight testing throughout the development and operational flight-testing phases to update the maintenance estimate.

GAO Assessments of Selected Major Weapon Systems

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Stratfor Podcasts - Strategic Forecasting

If Baghdad remains a killing zone, where Iraq's leaders can safely gather only under U.S. protection, then the prognosis for the Iraqi national identity, which has always had Baghdad at its center, is poor. Lasting political compromises will probably be impossible if the increasingly vicious sectarian strife in Baghdad and its environs intensifies. Within a year, at most two, Iraq could become Algeria.

The unanticipated consequences of 'Iraqification'

Some analysts now see a new "axis of Islam" arising in the Middle East, uniting Hizballah, Hamas, Iran, Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood, elements of Iraq's Shiites, and others in an anti-American, anti-Israel alliance backed by Russia.

Whether or not any such structure exists or can be forged, the fact is that the fuel of Islamic imperialism remains as volatile as ever, and is very far from having burned itself out. To deny its force is the height of folly, and to imagine that it can be appeased or deflected is to play into its hands. Only when it is defeated, and when the faith of Islam is no longer a tool of Islamic political ambition, will the inhabitants of Muslim lands, and the rest of the world, be able to look forward to a future less burdened by Saladins and their gory dreams.

Islam's Imperial Dreams

A small group of current and former conservatives -- including George Will, William F. Buckley Jr. and Francis Fukuyama -- have become harsh critics of the Iraq war. They have declared, or clearly implied, that it is a failure and the president's effort to promote liberty in the Middle East is dead -- and dead for a perfectly predictable reason: Iraq, like the Arab Middle East more broadly, lacks the democratic culture that is necessary for freedom to take root. And so for cultural reasons, this effort was flawed from the outset.

Or so the argument goes.

Let me address each of these charges in turn.

...

Mr. Wehner is deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives.

Standard (and lame, and transparent) attack strategy ... Opponent makes claim X, which is valid. To refute opponent's claim, restate it after amplifying it by a factor of 10. Then show how claim 10X has weaknesses. Finally, declare victory.

Bush Explains Why Fukuyama Is Wrong

Rumsfeld did a bunch of softball interviews with red radio today. It's like a Hollywood star doing press for a summer movie. I found this particular exchange amusing.

GILL: One of the things that we're hearing so much these days is a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking.

You've used the term fog of war in describing ... that the best laid plans sometimes have to be changed based upon the circumstances in combat. Why don't these people get that?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: I suppose a couple of reasons, maybe. Maybe they don't read history.

I suppose the other reason; a lot of those folks are trying to peddle books they've written.

Why don't you people get that? It's so simple. If even the best laid plans have to be changed on the fly, why waste time making plans? Just get in there, already!

And speaking of books, why can't I pick up Zarqawi's latest book at Borders? Or that novel Saddam was writing? Why is that? At least put them up on Lulu or something.

... it's much more difficult to go after networks and a network of networks ...

I think maybe he's getting his GIG mixed up with his GWOT.

DoD News: Radio Interview with Secretary Rumsfeld on WTN 99.7, Nashville, TN