This Week in National Insecurity: July 4th Edition

Membership Ticker

Are there any guardrails left?

Autocratic forces are ascendant in America, but the story isn’t fully written. Truth-telling independent media is one remaining bulwark against the unrestrained exercise of power. At a time when billionaire owners of corporate media are making accommodations to power, our nonprofit newsroom cannot be bought, bent, or broken. Depend on it, and please stand with us.

Luigi Crespo/<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/crespoluigi/1557536517/sizes/l/in/photostream/">Flickr</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Happy (almost) birthday, America! Nothing says red, white, and blue firecrackin’ love of country like a roundup of defense dementedness. Each Friday, we grab our lensatic compass, rucksack, and canteen, then mount out across the global media landscape for a quick national security recon. Whether you think our military is too damned busy—or not busy enough—here’s all the ammunition you’ll need, in a handy debrief.

In this installment: No to “toe shoes”! And no to tech support! But yes to ugly cars, loads of marijuana, $5 trillion wars, and coating your colleagues in “foreign substances.”

The sitrep:

The government’s national threat level is ~~Elevated, or Yellow~~ “at a heightened level of vigilance.“

Bye bye, Bob Gates. Care for a Presidential Medal of Freedom on your way out? All outgoing defense secretaries get a medal now. (Stars & Stripes)

And what does the new secdef, Leon Panetta, get? A $5 trillion war on terror. A new study says that’s the actual cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (not the $1 trillion the Pentagon estimated last week). The report also gives an “extremely conservative” estimate of 225,000 deaths and 365,000 injuries in the wars. (Time)

So what are we spending all that money on? Computer systems that don’t work, apparently. The Army’s $2.7 billion DCGS-A network is supposed to give commanders real-time battlefield data, but “was unable to perform simple analytical tasks” and has actually helped insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. “There’s a lot of bugs in the workflow,” says one officer. Lesson learned: Computers can make chocolate rain, but they can’t rebuild failed nations. (Politico)

But here’s something the Army’s unwilling to spend money on: “toe shoes” for exercising soldiers. According to a new directive from the brass: “…only those shoes that accommodate all five toes in one compartment are authorized for wear. Those shoes that feature five separate, individual compartments for the toes, detract from a professional military image and are prohibited” during workouts. (Washington Post)

Speaking of soon-to-be-ex-soldiers, congratulations to the new chief spook, David Petraeus. CIA officers, he’ll be the one rolling around your Langley headquarters in his favorite toe shoes. (Stars & Stripes)

Here’s something nobody in the Senate asked Petraeus about in his confirmation hearing: There’s a quiet debate on the Hill over whether to keep the intelligence budget buried in the Pentagon’s spending bill, where nobody can see any real details about how spies spend taxpayer money. James Clapper, the US intel czar, would like a separate, sort-of-more-transparent budget for intel operations, but a key House committee has stymied him. Given Clapper’s job, he probably should have seen that coming. (Washington Post)

There’s plenty of other military budget news this week: Republicans say they are considering deeper military spending cuts, but they’re long on talk and short on details as yet. Lockheed, maker of the trillion-dollar Joint Strike Fighter, has an online map to show how much of that money (theoretically) gets funneled back to your state. The Senate is actually trimming more than $1 billion in base construction spending that Obama wanted. (The body is making “tough decisions in Guam, Bahrain, and Germany,” says one lawmaker.) Perhaps they can use the savings to pay for these Boeing helicopter parts, which were marked up 21,772 percent when sold to the Pentagon.

What do you get when you crowdsource the Army’s tactical vehicle of the future? Apparently, a dune buggy in a Humvee’s clothing:

Lest you forget that the Coast Guard is a branch of the military, its members would like to remind you that they, too, haze their colleagues (if you could call being “tied down, stripped, coated in foreign substances and called derogatory names” getting hazed). (Navy Times)

And while Capitol Hill conservatives have been busy warning about a post-DADT upheaval in the ranks, the Navy is making splendid progress integrating women into the submarine service. (Military Times)

Finally, US soldiers scored half a ton of weed in Afghanistan. Must be the same guys who thought up that Army tactical vehicle of the future. (DOD via Attackerman)