I believe we are heading for the complete collapse of the U.S. as we know it, and one reason is a widespread inability to tell the difference between sense and nonsense.

        Consider, as an example, this story about the U.S. military’s supposedly most effective weapons.  One of them is the F-22 Raptor fighter plane, a super-stealthy plane that is, supposedly, the best thing in the world for shooting down other fighter aircraft.  According to the story that terms it so effective, it has a tendency to fall out of the air.  It also cost nearly three times as much per plane as originally projected.  It’s supposedly perfect at blowing enemy aircraft out of the sky without being shot down by the other side’s fighters, and pretty good at evading the notice of ground-based anti-aircraft batteries.  It’s not much good for anything else.  Since it came into service, the only time the U.S. had an opportunity to deploy it for it’s designed role was last year in Libya, where it might have been useful for enforcing the no-fly zone.  It wasn’t used there, though.  No one in the Defense Dept. will say why.

        Over at Wikipedia, there’s an article listing all U.S. aircraft known to be shot down since the end of the Viet Nam war.  I count thirty manned aircraft shot down by hostile action.  One of these thirty losses was by a hostile aircraft, the other twenty-nine were lost to ground fire.  According to two other Wikipedia articles, the U.S. lost seventy-seven planes in the Viet Nam War to air-to-air combat, and 1670 more to ground fire (we’re not counting helicopters here).  Clearly, being shot down by AAA and SAMs is the major threat our aircraft face.

        We spent $79,000,000,000 (seventy nine billion dollars) to develop the F-22, and obtained 188 planes that are supposed to last fifty-five (55) years.  The plane sucks at attacking ground targets, lacking an on-board laser designator.  There has been so little real fighter combat since Vietnam that it’s difficult to draw any conclusions, except that no one really wants to fight our planes in the air.  So tell me, in what sense is the F-22 effective?  It’s never been used in combat, and it’s designed to be bad at doing what most needs to be done to win air superiority: attacking ground targets.

        The stupidity gets worse when we get to the F-35 Raptor, which the article claims is the Best Fighter Aircraft in the World.  It hasn’t even been operationally deployed yet.  When it is deployed, it will supposedly be able to carry a nuclear weapon “stealthily”, though we haven’t used a nuke since 19450809.  It should, at least, be somewhat good at attacking ground targets.  No one knows what the cost will be.  It should have 20% greater range than the F-22 Raptor.  How they would do in one-on-one combat against each other is unknown, but if F-35s can defeat F-22s, it looks like the entire $79 Billion was wasted.  If, on the other hand, the F-22s can beat the F-35s, then it’s hard to see how the F-35 can be the Best Fighter Aircraft in the World.

        What’s distressing about the article is that such incoherent nonsense gets published in a supposedly serious forum.  At the beginning of the piece, the authors said:

While there’s no scientific way to compare these weapons, we took what we saw in service, what we’ve read, and what we’ve heard from troops to rank the most effective.

These weapons are trusted by the U.S. military to defeat the enemy and save lives.

        So, we’re saving lives and defeating the enemy with a plane we don’t use, and another we haven’t deployed yet.  That’s rather like writing about how effective the B-29 and B-52 were when the 8th Air Force used them over Germany in 1944.

        I find this stupidity scary.

        I’ve seen some dishonest reporting in my time.  I’d gotten to the point that I thought I’d seen it all.  today, I encountered something that really shocked me.

       
        To illustrate, I’m going to reprint excerpts from two different news stories about the House hearings held yesterday on the Benghazi attack  I’ll call them Story One and Story Two  Read please, and think about them before going on with the post  Note that these are excerpts  I’ll tell you where to find the full stories later.

        Story One:

State Dept: Security adequate in Benghazi

        State Department officials said Wednesday that security levels at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, were adequate for the threat level on the anniversary of 9/11 but that the compound was overrun by an “unprecedented attack” by dozens of heavily armed extremists.

        The officials testified before an election-season congressional hearing on accusations of security failures at the consulate that led or contributed to the deaths of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans.  The officials said the number of U.S. and local security guards at the compound was consistent with what had been requested by the post.

        Lamb noted that there were five diplomatic security agents at the consulate at the time of the attack, along with additional Libyan guards and a rapid response team at a nearby annex.

        Eric Nordstrom, the former regional security officer in Libya, said he had requested more security but that request was blocked by a department policy to “normalize operations and reduce security resources.”  Under questioning, though, he said he had sought mainly to prevent any reduction in staff, rather than have a big increase.

        “I’m confident that the committee will conclude that Department of State, Diplomatic Security Service and Mission Libya officers conducted themselves professionally and with careful attention to managing people and budgets in a way that reflects the gravity of their task,” Nordstrom said.

        Lamb rejected allegations from Republican lawmakers, supported by Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, former head of a 16-member U.S. military team that helped protect the embassy in Tripoli, that an extension of Wood’s mission could have made a difference during the attack.

        “It would not have made any difference in Benghazi,” Lamb said, pointing out that Wood’s team was based in Tripoli and spent nearly all of its time there.

        Wood, a member of the Utah National Guard who left Libya in August, told the committee that the security in Benghazi “was a struggle and remained a struggle throughout my time there.”

        In testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, he said that U.S. security was so weak that in April, only one diplomatic security agent was stationed in Benghazi.

        However, Lamb and Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy stressed that the regional security officer’s requests for personnel had been met.

        “The Department of State regularly assesses risk and allocation of resources for security, a process which involves the considered judgments of experienced professionals on the ground and in Washington, using the best information available,” said Kennedy, a four-decade veteran of the foreign service.

        “The assault that occurred on the evening of Sept. 11, however, was an unprecedented attack by dozens of heavily armed men,” he said.

        Now, here’s Story Two:

REPUBLICANS HAMMER STATE WITNESSES ON LIBYA ATTACK

        A top State official acknowledged she had declined to approve more U.S. security as violence in Benghazi spiked, saying the department wanted to train Libyans to protect the consulate.

        “I made the best decisions I could with the information I had,” said Charlene R. Lamb, a deputy assistant secretary for diplomatic security.

        Lamb, the official in charge of protecting U.S. embassies and consulates, told the committee, “We had the correct number of assets in Benghazi at the time of 9/11.”

        Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., asked Lamb if she turned down requests for more security in Benghazi.

        “Yes sir, I said personally I would not support it,” she replied.  “We were training local Libyans and army men” to provide security, a policy in force at U.S. diplomatic facilities around the world.

        Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., retorted there was “as much as 30 percent turnover in the people you were training.”

        Eric Nordstrom, who was the top security official in Libya earlier this year, testified he was criticized for seeking more security.  “There was no plan and it was hoped it would get better,” he said.

        Nordstrom told the committee that conversations he had with people in Washington led him to believe that it was “abundantly clear we were not going to get resources until the aftermath of an incident.  How thin does the ice have to get before someone falls through?”

        He said he was so exasperated at one point he told a colleague that “for me the Taliban is on the inside of the building.”

        Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, who headed a 16-member military force in Libya, disputed State Department officials who said the special operations troops were replaced by people with the same skill sets.

        The skills of his troops were “way above the skill level of local (forces) armed with a pistol,” Wood said, adding he was he was frustrated that pleas for more security were not met.

        “We were fighting a losing battle, we weren’t even allowed to keep what we had,” he testified.

        Nordstrom acknowledged in response to a question from Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, that while the State Department was refusing more security, his and others’ pay was increased because he was serving in such a dangerous area.

        [Under Secretary] Kennedy, a four-decade veteran of the Foreign Service, said the department uses the best information from people on the ground at diplomatic posts around the world as well as experts in Washington in assessing risk and allocating security resources.

        “The assault that occurred on the evening of Sept. 11, however, was an unprecedented attack by dozens of heavily armed men,” he said.

        I think any mentally normal person, reading these pieces, would find Story One much easier on the State Dept. than Story Two. I think they’d also acknowledge that there is a great difference between the account of Nordstrom’s opinion in Story One, and Story Two.

        So, what would you think, if I told you that these have been presented as the same story?

        No, I’m not hallucinating  I came across a link to Story One on Twitter, and clicked it around 4:30 PM today  I decided to copy it, but later I noticed a gap in the text of my copy, so I entered the URL into my browser, and up came Story Two  Both stories were supposedly written by Larry Margasak and Matthew Lee of the Associated Press  Both had the same URL  It’s only the texts that are different.

        Let me point out that they aren’t quite as different as I made them seem by excerpting  The first story tries to whitewash the Obama administration and the Clinton State Dept., and later gets around to suggesting that the whole issue is just a partisan political football  The second story brings up partisan politics much earlier, and harps on it more  It throws the State Dept. under the bus  But both stories repeat the White House claim that the ‘it was a protest over a video that got hijacked by extremists’ was based on the best information evidence available at the time, and both stories are disguised editorials seeking to defend The Once and get him reelected.