There's a reason why witnesses called to testify in a court of law are required to pledge to

Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Things left out or embellishments stuck in pervert the truth and turn it into a lie. We recently saw that happen with Hillary Clinton's sniper fire in Tuzla and it's also been apparent in the stories told by the twenty-two dirty pensioners--perjurers in the court of public opinion--who spread half-truths and snippets of mis-information about the invasion/occupation of Iraq to deceive the American people and enrich themselves.

And yesterday Secretary Robert Gates joined them. Or maybe he just decided to do his own dirty work. Because the dirty pensioners were a Department of Defense operation.

In the event, like Secretary Rice in the previous week, Secretary Gates showed up at the Air University in Alabama to give a speech. Presumably, (I haven't read a transcript) the operation in Iraq was a central topic, not just an afterthought as in Secretary Rice's. And he was critical.

Gates says Air Force not doing enough in Iraq war effort

Certainly, there's good reason to be critical of the Air Force. As the Associated Press report reminds us:

the Gates remarks come at a stressful time for Air Force leaders, including the service's top officer, Gen. Michael Moseley, and its civilian chief, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne. They have come under fire on a number of fronts, including criticism from some quarters that the Air Force is too wedded to Cold War-era weaponry like the F-22 stealth fighter at the expense of less glamorous items that could be used in smaller-scale conflicts like the counterinsurgency fight in Iraq.

But, it wasn't the nuclear missiles that went on a joy ride from North Dakota to Louisiana or the nuclear detonators that got sent to Taiwan by mistake that had Gates in a tizzy. And he didn't mention that out in Utah, where they couldn't find the paper work, they lit a bonfire to dispose of uranium wastes.

Uranium bonfire: Air Force incinerated radioactive waste

Tribune Editorial

Article Last Updated: 04/21/2008 04:57:24 PM MDT

Officials at Hill Air Force Base inadvertently orchestrated a uranium bonfire in a waste incinerator at Layton.

Over the past eight months, Hill sent a nine-ton batch of obsolete military hardware to the burn plant, unaware that the items contained "trace" amounts of depleted uranium. And when you're burning nine tons of waste, "trace" amounts add up. All told, five pounds of uranium went up in smoke.

The Weapons System Program Office at Hill is at fault. The documents spelling out the contents of the materials to be burned, according to a Hill press release, "were not readily accessible." So, instead of taking the time to track down the paperwork, officials callously threw it on the fire, and Utahns be damned.

Nor did Gates mention the on-going mess in the Air Force procurement process where not only the awarding of the contract for mega flying gas tankers is being challenged, but a possible criminal conspiracy is involved in the awarding of a contract (since rescinded) to promote the Thunderbirds on the ground.

Small company regrets bidding on Air Force contract

April 21, 2008 - 6:51am

He turned to the Internet to look up SMS, and quickly found that the company was incorporated in Pennsylvania about two weeks after the Air Force released its RFP.

He also found that all of SMS' examples of past performance submitted as part of its proposal involved either volunteer work, work other companies had done as part of the volunteer effort, or work that fell outside the time frame for which performance references were to be offered.

And he found that Hornburg was listed as a principal in SMS on a patent application the company filed June 1, 2005, for its "Thundervision" broadcast system, combining Jumbotron screens, video and sound.

...

Waitkus and his staff wrote the protest themselves and sent it to the GAO. They were assigned an attorney at the watchdog agency, who took over and shepherded the protest through the system.

"As I recall, he was pretty amazed and he agreed with our protest. And of course our protest was correct, because they took the contract away" from SMS, he says.

But then SMS sued Video West and the government in federal district court over the termination of the contract. SMS accused Waitkus' company of conspiring with some Air Force personnel to steal its Thundervision concept.

...

Adding insult to injury, when the Air Force terminated SMS' contract, the company had already received a $1.99 million payment "for work done to date" - though the contract was awarded Dec. 14, 2005 and ended Feb. 16, 2006 - and received an additional $592,000 for "termination costs."

Now, that may look like a lot of money, but the contract was for 50 million dollars to promote an air show--a sweet deal that the retired General Hal M. Hornburg was apparently keen to participate in. Though the investigation by the Defense Criminal Investigation Service found, among other things:

The investigation indicates that preferential treatment may have been given to SMS in the award of the TAPS contract and that senior USAF officials may have influenced the award to SMS. In addition, during the course of this investigation, several other USAF contracts awarded by the 99th CONS were reviewed and irregularities were found in the award of those contracts. Because of that, the investigation also focused on those related procurements; and also found was an apparent patter of USAF military and Government Civilian personnel not following applicable rules and/or regulations; and possible violations of criminal statutes, which may have led to unfair procurement practices and wasteful and/or unnecessary expenditures.

the United States Attorney in Nevada declined to prosecute. So, very likely, it didn't make much impression on the Secretary. And it was before his time.

Too bad. He might have got a clue.

According to the IR/R, the following allegations were reported:

a. The principals of SMS were/are either former USAF personnel or had privileged relationships with the Thunderbirds, and thus, had been given an unfair and unethical advantage in the bidding and award process. One of the principals of SMS was/is General (retired)Hal M. Hornburg, USAF. General Hornburg's role in SMS may have represented a violation of post-employment restrictions.

b. SMS was created by its principals for the sole purpose of fulfilling the terms of solicitation FA4861-05-R-C008.

c. SMS appeared to exist on paper only; it did/does not appear to have physical facilities from which to fulfill the contract needs, nor did/does it appear to have a sound financial history from which to guarantee fulfillment of said contract.

f. SMS submitted a proposal and was awarded a contract for a cost/price amount that far exceeds what is reasonable and prudent for the requirements of the solicitation; almost double the cost of the equipment, services and personnel submitted by competitors SRO Media (SRO) and Video West, Inc., thus egregiously overcharging the U.S. Government for their services. SRO's bid submission for this contract was $24,925,965, while SMS' bid proposal was $49,925,795. moreover, the U.S. Government rated SRO equal to or higher than SMS in each of the five major categories relevant to the award of this contract.

But then, the Air Force has just undertaken an 81 million dollar advertising campaign to promote its new Cyber Command, a program that doesn't yet have "physical facilities from which to fulfill" their mission either and summarized the SMS kerfuffle thusly:

the Pentagon said its investigators had found that a $50 million contract to promote the Air Force's Thunderbirds aerial stunt team was tainted by improper influence and preferential treatment. The Defense Department's Inspector General found no criminal conduct, but laid out a trail of communications from Air Force leaders — including from Moseley — that eventually influenced the 2005 contract award.

Half truths. Sad to say that can be said about what the Secretary actually addressed--the Air Force failure to do enough in Iraq. And it's not just about the drones that the Secretary in calling for--more unmanned surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft--where the fact that these machines kill people on the spot is conveniently left out. When he observes,

"All this may require rethinking long-standing service assumptions and priorities about which missions require certified pilots and which do not," Gates said, referring to so-called unmanned aerial vehicles that are controlled by service members at ground stations.

he's ignoring that there's already serious concern about having people sitting in air-conditioned comfort at a console pushing a button to drop a five hundred pound bomb or dispatch a hellfire missile into somebody's house.

But, even more important, that the Air Force has been flying close to a hundred sorties each and every day and subjecting Iraq to what the Helsinki Agreement referred to as "continuous bombardment" (which they want to stop) hasn't even registered. Perhaps that's because Robert Gates is, like the Bushes and John McCain, an old flyboy who doesn't pay much attention to what happens on the ground when you "bomb, bomb, bomb Iraq."

If he did, perhaps he'd recognize that when bombs and missiles are raining down from the air night and day, year after year, smashing everything up, there's really no response to expect from the people down below but that they'd plant their bombs in the ground and carry missile launchers on their backs. And, if he could think that far, perhaps he'd consider that the reason six thousand vets a year are committing suicide is because they can't get the sight and smell of those body parts that the aerial bombardment leaves behind out of their minds--those bodies that the Secretary of Defense now wants to see dispatched by console--and by people who have no idea about the difference between what the eye of a camera and the eye of a pilot sees.

But, never mind the moral implication of letting drones decide whom to kill on a battlefield that's a city, not a battlefield. As a practical matter, there's no way that the Air Force is going to be able to secure the perimeter of its bases by remote control. 24/7 surveillance is great. But, the tape has to be checked and by the time it's checked, whatever raised suspicion is long gone. And then, there's the sandstorms............

I wasn't aware that Gates was in the Air Force before he went to the CIA to start gathering intelligence and I don't know if he was a flyboy like John McCain, but this quote

He said the Air Force and the other branches of the military need to protect those in their ranks who are maverick thinkers, who defy convention and push for creative solutions to hard problems.

suggests he's got a similar problem with being out of touch. I mean, he's looking for mavericks among people who burn up uranium, lose track of nuclear missiles, and worry a lot about whether or not their uniform tops and bottoms match.

Oh yes, and an Air Force that's going all stealth with its fighters so the enemy won't see them at the same time they're doing "shows of force" on a daily basis to "deter enemy activities."