Salon.com > Department of Defense

Pentagon: North Korea close to developing long-range nuclear missile

Fri, 03 May 2013 21:56:00 +0000

North Korea "will move closer" to developing a long-range nuclear missile that can strike the US, according to the Pentagon's latest assessment.

In a report to Congress released Thursday, the US Defense Department said that North Korea's recent advances in missile technology, as showcased at the height of its standoff with South Korea, were "in line with North Korea's stated objective of being able to strike the US homeland."

"North Korea will move closer to this goal, as well as increase the threat it poses to US forces and allies in the region, if it continues testing and devoting scarce regime resources to these programs," the report said.

The Pentagon has no reason to expect that North Korea will halt its costly and controversial nuclear tests or rocket launches, the report said, since Kim Jong Un's regime appears to believe that building up a nuclear arsenal will protect it from outside attack and help undermine South Korea's alliance with the US.

Homeland security offers anything but

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:30:00 +0000

Imagine a labyrinthine government department so bloated that few have any clear idea of just what its countless pieces do. Imagine that tens of billions of tax dollars are disappearing into it annually, black hole-style, since it can’t pass a congressionally mandated audit.

Now, imagine that there are two such departments, both gigantic, and you’re beginning to grasp the new, twenty-first century American security paradigm.

For decades, the Department of Defense has met this definition to a T. Since 2003, however, it hasn’t been alone. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which celebrates its 10th birthday this March, has grown into a miniature Pentagon. It’s supposed to be the actual “defense” department -- since the Pentagon is essentially a Department of Offense -- and it’s rife with all the same issues and defects that critics of the military-industrial complex have decried for decades. In other words, “homeland security” has become another obese boondoggle.