Sunday funnies

Somewhere in the shadows of the White House and the Capitol this week, a small group of super-secret commandos stood ready with state-of-the-art weaponry to swing into action to protect the presidency, a task that has never been fully revealed before.

As part of the extraordinary army of 13,000 troops, police officers and federal agents marshaled to secure the inauguration, these elite forces were poised to act under a 1997 program that was updated and enhanced after the Sept. 11 attacks, but nonetheless departs from how the military has historically been used on American soil.

I'm sure John Titor, wherever he may be , would say this is sounding more and more familiar.

These commandos, operating under a secret counterterrorism program code-named Power Geyser, were mentioned publicly for the first time this week on a Web site for a new book, "Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operation in the 9/11 World," (Steerforth Press). The book was written by William M. Arkin, a former intelligence analyst for the Army.

The precise number of these Special Operations forces in Washington this week is highly classified, but military officials say the number is very small. The special-missions units belong to the Joint Special Operations Command, a secretive command based at Fort Bragg, N.C., whose elements include the Army unit Delta Force.

In the past, the command has also provided support to domestic law enforcement agencies during high-risk events like the Olympics and political party conventions, according to the Web site of GlobalSecurity.org, a research organization in Alexandria, Va...

Mr. Arkin, in the online supplement to his book (codenames.org/documents.html), says the contingency plan, called JCS Conplan 0300-97, calls for "special-mission units in extra-legal missions to combat terrorism in the United States" based on top-secret orders that are managed by the military's Joint Staff and coordinated with the military's Special Operations Command and Northern Command...

Of course, redRumsfeld is pissed this got out.

...officials said the units operated in the United States under "special authority" from either the president or the secretary of defense.

Civilian and uniformed military lawyers said provisions in several federal statutes, including the Fiscal Year 2000 Defense Department Authorization Act, Public Law 106-65, permits the secretary of defense to authorize military forces to support civilian agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation...

Now, in one branch of the multiverse, these would be the best of the best. They would be super efficient, top secret Patriots charged with keeping us all safe from terrorists.

In our branch, though, it seems they're ...Special Operations forces who are hunting top insurgents in Iraq and Osama bin Laden in the mountainous wilds of Afghanistan and Pakistan... also conducting counterterrorism missions in support of civilian agencies in the United States..

Hmmm... that was Tora Bora , right?

It's a good thing these Special Ops knocking on doors at 2 AM in the morning are sensitive to political nuance. The politics driving them are those of the Secretary of Defense. Perhaps we can look forward to similar efficient operations.

As usual, there's so much of note in the The New York Pravda, excuse me, Times.

Officials in the Bush administration.. said NASA was one of the few agencies that would get a proposed budget increase next year. However, a mission to service Hubble, estimated to exceed $1 billion, will not be part of that package.

Real science takes a backseat to Mars Ho!

Aside from the usual porkbarrel profiteering, what's going on here?

Bu$hCo knows oil- and in a desert, where you find water, you also find oil. There is lots of evidence for water action on Mars. And who's in line for drilling for oil- er, excuse me, water on Mars? Halliburton.

And now they know about Titan, a moon of Saturn about the size of Mars, where water is a mineral, with rivers and oceans of hydrocarbon.

When faced with a finite resource, if you want to have a monopoly on energy, you don't develop renewable sources of fuel for everyone to use for global economic progress.

You make it so that you are the only person with access to that energy source.

Titan Ho!