1 Boring Old Man

Rebuilding America’s Defenses

 

The program we advocate – one that would provide America with forces to meet the strategic demands of the world’s sole superpower – requires budget levels to be increased to 3.5 to 3.8 percent of the GDP.

A couple of months before Bush was elected, the Project for the New American Century published a report Rebuilding America’s Defenses. The panel included a few familiar faces – Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis Libby, William Kristol. The panel lamented the decrease in  Defense spending during the Clinton Administration and recommended a hefty increase in spending "to meet the strategic demands of the world’s sole superpower." One member of that panel was Stephen Cambone from the National Defense University. He was also on the panel in January 2001 at the National Institute for Public Policy [with Stephen Hadley] that recommended the use of Tactical Nuclear Weapons.

With Bush’s inauguration, Cambone became Rumsfeld’s Director of Program Analysis and Evaluation [known as Rumsfeld’s "henchman"]. He is the author of the notes from a meeting with Rumsfeld on 9/11 that said "Hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] @ the same time – Not only UBL [Osama Bin Laden]."

When we invaded Iraq in 2003, Cambone became the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, spearheading and directing Rumsfeld’s takover of Intelligence from the C.I.A., working closely with Douglas Feith of the Office of Special Plans.

Cambone came to public attention in the investigation of the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal. In spite of his central role in the Intelligence Program, he was evasive and closed mouthed in the hearings [see Implausible Denial, Rumsfeld’s Enforcer]. When this is all said and done, Stephen Cambone is going to join his boss and Douglas Feith as the real rogues in the coming Defense Department Intelligence gathering  and torture scandal.