Monday, July 12, 2010
Obama’s Latest Reform? NASA: Norm Augustine’s Subversive Agenda
National Security piece by
Jayme Evans
To commemorate the first anniversary of Barack Obama’s Cairo speech, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, interviewed on al Jazeera TV, said that one of his foremost responsibilities was improving relations in the Muslim world by highlighting their contributions to math, science and engineering, thereby making them feel better.
Notwithstanding that Muslims abroad learned of this outreach before the Americans who will fund it did, while your first instinct may be to focus on the emotional aspects of using taxpayer-funded NASA to enhance public relations with Muslims, a sizable majority of whom hate us, we must look at the totality of what Barack Obama is doing to America’s military and space programs and how those actions are intertwined, before the national security implications become apparent.
The Committee to Review U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans, chaired by Norman Augustine, was ostensibly tasked by Obama’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, itself led by ultra-radical Communist-sympathizer John Holdren, with weighing the pros and cons of NASA’s current manned-program and to recommend various alternatives for making it safer, more competitive and more sustainable. But if the recommendations of the committee’s final report were to be adopted, it wouldn’t be “One giant leap for mankind” as Neil Armstrong so eloquently suggested, but a giant blow; costing thousands more jobs, ushering in the end of American leadership and exceptionalism in space and threatening the very existence of the United States.
In the committee’s final report, condescendingly entitled “Seeking a Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation"(5),(which implies that the previous program wasn’t worthy), the panel leveled several rhetorical attacks at both our past and existing programs and set out several ambitious goals. But they also declared that in order to achieve them, the U.S. must establish better international partnerships with countries such as Russia and China, conveniently overlooking the fact that China would have no viable, manned space program without stolen or reverse-engineered aerospace technology pilfered during the Clinton Administration, when US arms trafficking laws were virtually ignored. Now, under the Obama Administration, history is poised to repeat itself, but in a much more dangerous way.
Perhaps the biggest threat, buried deep within the Augustine report was a call for the United States to completely scrap the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which govern the licensing, export, transfer, re-export or re-transfer of sensitive military weapons and technology listed on the United States Munitions list. The Augustine Committee deemed that these laws, which safeguard our most sensitive technology and weapons systems, were “outdated and overly restrictive for the realities of the current technological and international political environment."(1)
If this recommendation were to be followed by the Obama Administration, any item found on the USML could conceivably be bought, sold, licensed and transferred to anyone, anywhere, including foreign entities. All decisions on who could receive this technology rest with the State Department, who would evaluate each request with a bias towards granting the transfer, unless the item requested was on a narrow list of exclusions. Items on the USML have no equivalent civilian use and include, but aren’t limited to:
Automatic and semi-automatic pistols and rifles, combat shotguns, ammunition, mil-spec optics and sighting systems, body armor, weapons delivery systems and platforms, advanced composites, stealth technology, military training programs and simulations, precursor chemicals, warships, amphibious landing craft, fixed, rotary-wing and experimental aircraft, engines and propulsion systems, gun mounts, arresting gear, mine counter-measures, nuclear propulsion systems, explosives, incendiaries, target acquisition and radar systems, laser-guided/GPS-guided munitions, all bombs, rockets, missiles and projectiles, all associated software/firmware, tooling and all of the technical data and know-how needed to mass-produce and employ every single one of these items.(2)
Complicating matters is Obama’s new, National Space Policy, which provides only for deterrence from interference or attack in space, and if those methods fail, “To defeat efforts to attack them.” Omitted is any mention of any preemptive, offensive capability(3).
Although in disparate pieces, it’s all there in black and white. While we’re giving anyone with enough money the opportunity to turn our own weapons programs against us, we’re simultaneously adopting a purely defensive posture, a blueprint for destruction. But the media would rather have you focus on emotional stories about Muslim outreach. There’s still time to act, but each and every American must put as much pressure on their Congressman and Senator as possible to prevent this betrayal which threatens the stability of the entire world.
Jayme Evans
http://warofwits.org/
Author’s Notes:
1. Augustine Committee Final Report: “Seeking a Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation” - 8.1 International Partnerships, p. 105.
2. International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which are in danger of being abolished.
3. The United States Munitions List
4. The US National Space Policy
5. Seeking a Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation
HowardWasRight 
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