Commentary
07/02/2014
03/28/2014
02/03/2014
01/20/2014
08/20/2013
Two Must-Read Commentaries on the Egyptian Conflict, U.S. Assistance
To many other conservatives (and liberals as well), the Obama administration's refusal to cut off foreign aid to Egypt initially was surprising if not insulting. How dare the president and his many Democratic and Republican supporters on this issue fail to take immediate action! Despite deposed Egyptian President Morsi's shortcomings, he was democratically elected, wasn't he? No wonder the Egyptians are rebelling.
Rather than reiterate the well-reasoned positions that conservative writers Andrew C. McCarthy and Thomas Sowell have taken on the situation, U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor urges readers to deeply explore the very convincing and eye-opening commentaries from these men.
Things are not what they seem in Egypt. Those who support the "democratically elected" Morsi do not share the American concept of democracy and freedom. Islamist radicals are attempting to retake the government, and it very well may be in U.S. national interests to steer far clear of this turmoil.
While congressional and White House debate over foreign aid in general and U.S. assistance to Egypt specifically is necessary (is there really a debate at the moment?), let's not be naive about what is happening in Egypt.
See Andrew McCarthy's "Egypt’s One Chance for Democracy-- Only capable armed forces can check the violent proclivities of Islamic supremacism" as well as "Reality versus mirages in Egypt -- Thomas Sowell drubs conservatives wanting to cut off aid to military force."
While readers are at it, also consider the following Monitor articles as critical and reliable resources in the debate over foreign aid to the region:
Have U.S. 'Investments' in Mideast Paid Off?
Feds Plan to Give Egypt Armed-to-the-Teeth Ships
Obama Wants Egyptian Students to Get More from College
U.S. Modernization of Egyptian Air Force Continues as Planned (by Steve Peacock for Patriot Update)
-- S.P.
Andrew C. McCarthy
08/09/2013
07/23/2013
Steve Peacock Interview with Talk-Show Host Peter Boyles
Steve Peacock from his home office speaking with Denver radio talk-show host Peter Boyles.
Today I was tracked down by Denver radio talk-show host Peter Boyles (710KNUS), who took note of my reporting primarily via WND on the issues of drones -- unmanned aerial systems -- and other forms of electronic surveillance. We spoke for nearly 20 minutes about some of the following articles, while Mr. Boyles also allowed me to briefly pitch my website U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor and talk about my background as a Capitol Hill reporter covering the final years of the Clinton Administration through the start of the George W. Bush Administration.
Many thanks to Mr. Boyles for this amazing opportunity. He expressed a strong desire to have me return as a guest on his show, to which I am very much looking forward. -- S.P.
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Obama deploying drones around U.S. -- Contracts show units to be used to enforce regulations (WND; July 21, 2013)
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Media Ignored Big Picture of NSA Surveillance, Focused on Jobs (Patriot Update; June 27, 2013
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Drone training anyone? Army ramping up plans -- Subjects include 'search for targets, ' record details for analysis (WND; June 28, 2013)
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Feds recruit private sector to expand drone use -- Seek traffic control experts to launch more spy planes over U.S. airspace (WND; July 8, 2012)
05/04/2013
U.S. Prepares for Casualties in Africa
The extrication of U.S. Special Forces injured in African military
ventures soon will provide contractors with an additional revenue
stream, now that the Obama administration plans to keep such vendors on
stand-by, 24/7, for cross-continent airborne mobilization.
While the Pentagon’s reliance on private vendors to support international military operations is nothing new, plans to station such providers specific to such a large swath of Africa does deviate from prior procurement actions.
The Trans-Sahara Short Take-Off and Landing Airlift Support initiative will rely on outside assistance in the event that soldiers of U.S. Special Operations Command-Africa sustain traumatic medical emergencies, thereby requiring urgent transportation out of hostile zones.
Indeed, SOCOM-Africa places such urgency on its anticipated use of such Casualty Evacuation, or CASEVAC, services that, at a minimum, contractors must be capable of launching an airborne response with only a three hour notice.
The selected vendor likewise must possess the ability to be placed on heightened response and “be airborne within one hour of notification,” according a revised Performance Work Statement released April 16 that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located via routine database research.
Despite this urgency, the vendor securing that contract largely will engage in cargo- and personnel airlift activities, plus a limited number of air-drop missions.
The “most likely” locations for such operations are Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia, according to the U.S. Transportation Command solicitation.
Kenya, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, and Uganda also fall within the Primary Operating Area, or POA, of this endeavor, the USTRANSCOM document says.
SOCOM-Africa will enable this expedited response-capability by stationing the contractor in Burkina Faso, a landlocked West African nation, it says.
A search of prior Tactical Combat Casualty Care and CASEVAC solicitations available via the FedBizOpps system shows that USSOCOM and other Department of Defense units typically and primarily seek only training and equipment.
Rather than soliciting continent-wide provision of emergency medical and flight assistance, those contracting actions generally have sought assistance to enable combatant commands to provide themselves with such medical assistance.
One USSOCOM contracting action representative of the government’s acquisition of CASEVAC “kits” and trauma-management training, for example, described a critical need for Special Operations combat forces to obtain new techniques and technology in support of “ongoing operations worldwide.”
Another Special Ops solicitation from late last year revealed a $40 million, two-year contract extension awarded to Tribalco, LLC, a Bethesda, Maryland-based maker of CASEVAC and other “soldier-survival” equipment.
USTRANSCOM did not disclose an estimated cost of the Africa-centric CASEVAC procurement.
In other U.S. military procurement actions specific to Africa:
- The Defense Logistics Agency on April 12 issued a request for bids to provide the U.S. Air Force with 547,500 gallons of No. 2 diesel fuel “for ongoing deliveries to Niamey Airport, Niger, (Africa).”
- The U.S. Naval Facilities Engineering Command, or NAVFAC, announced it intends to spend up to $25 million for power plant upgrades at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti (CLDJ), Africa; however, despite acknowledging in an earlier document the estimated cost of the Caterpillar generators, a partly redacted no-bid Justification & Approval document blacked out the final award amount. It offered no explanation for the redaction .
- NAVFAC additionally began soliciting bids to build a cold-storage food warehouse and a separate galley to store P-218 anti-malarial drug reserves, representing another potential $25 million contracting endeavor at CLDJ.
- NAVFAC on April 12 revealed that it awarded a $33 million contract to Kellogg, Brown and Root to “perform base operating services at CLDJ and occasionally other locations within Africa.” Despite announcing the KBR contract this month, the Navy unit actually awarded it in December, the document shows.
This article originally appeared via WND April 28. Under prior agreement, rights have reverted back to the author, Steve Peacock.
04/01/2013
CNN Rips Off U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor Story on Biden's Plush Parisian Jaunt
Over a month ago U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor broke the story on U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's pricey trip to Paris, during which time taxpayers shelled out $585,000 and $322,000, respectively, for hotel rooms, limos, and other vehicles. VPOTUS Biden and his staff spent those taxpayer funds during his one-day Parisian journey to meet French President Francois Hollande.
CNN this past week reported on the trip -- using the same documents that the Monitor had discovered via painstaking database research -- and tooted its own horn on international TV as if that were its own discovery.
CNN's Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer talked about this "amazing, amazing discovery" (of theirs) and how shocked they were to have found these rare documents. Blitzer asked CNN White House Correspondent Brianna Keilar about her unparalleled reporting skills in uncovering this rarity, and they both speculated that the government perhaps did not mean to upload the documents to the federal database.
From the broadcast:
“We’re getting an extremely, extremely rare glimpse at how much it costs when Vice President Joe Biden goes traveling,” Blitzer proclaimed. “Brianna we’ve covered a lot of presidential and vice presidential trips, but this is pretty amazing.”
“It kind of makes you wonder if this information was put out accidentally,” Keilar later says. “I did a search myself of the past 365 days where obviously the president and vice president have gone on other foreign trips and I could find no contracts in addition for any of those visits.”
Couldn't find any contracts, eh?
I went back into FedBizOpps to see if the White House or State Department has sanitized the site of any traces of such documents (similar to what was done to the controversial USAID/Kenya Strategic Communications Plan 2012-2013 I had reported on).
I figured that maybe she may have missed, for example, the documents I previously found specific to President Obama's and Biden's million-dollar stay in Colombia (the scandalous one when Secret Service agents were caught hanging out with hookers). In that instance I was smarter about my research, and had uploaded those contracting documents to the Monitor website rather than linking from my page to the government site (which I had done, not so coincidentally, to prevent other media from stealing my story!)
A quick search today of FedBizOpps reveals that Keilar was less than forthcoming about her supposed "research." The Colombia documents are indeed still publicly available. Here they are:
1) Acquisition of vehicle rental in support of Presidential and VIP travel.
2) Acquisition of hotel accommodation in support of presidential and VIP travel.
I would link to additional, existing procurement data, but I have other more productive things to do instead -- such as performing some good old-fashioned reporting without ripping off some professional blogger-journalist and claiming it's my own work. -- Steve Peacock
Not Farewell, But See You Elsewhere; U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor to be Archived
While my creation of U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has been a fruitful venture -- both product-wise and profit-wise -- I believe it is time to shift my energies toward other initiatives.
My reporting here immediately had been noticed by WND.com, and since then I have increasingly devoted greater efforts selling original articles to that organization than writing new ones for the Monitor. Indeed, I would like to draw your attention to my WND author page, where the bulk of my recent and future reporting can and will be found.
The Monitor certainly has proved to be a positive experience in digital, independent reporting, as had been its predecessor site, The Peacock Report (which is archived here).
From its inception three years ago, the Monitor has produced hundreds of research-based articles ahead of the competition, at times beating even major media organizations; indeed, news giant CNN -- specifically White House Correspondent Brianna Keilar via CNN's Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer -- blatantly stole information from this site (see "CNN Rips Off U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor Story on Biden's Plush Parisian Jaunt.")
I must have been doing something right, eh?
Likewise, my articles have been linked to by sources such as Drudge Report, which sparked nearly 90,000 page views in several days in response to "Kenya Sees Spike in Obama Administration-Funded Projects."
Cryptome.org likewise drove thousands of visitors here by linking to my numerous articles on matters specific to national security and U.S.-funded foreign operations.
Similary, bestselling author Andrew McCarthy used (and credited) Monitor material in a piece he wrote for National Review online.
There have been many other notable successes and forms of recognition by outside sources, but it's time I get down to business with other creative ventures (besides, I still have to bag about a ton of leaves in my backyard that I did not get to last autumn).
Most importantly, I need to finish writing Play Dead, Roll Over, my book-length memoir-in-progress. For a taste of the creative nonfiction work, check out an excerpt via Gravel: A Literary Journal and Crime Factory #15. If you are interested in these and other literary (and largely non-political) pursuits, follow me on Twitter via @sgpeacock.
While I will continue to make the Monitor publicly accessible, for now -- if not permanently -- I will cease posting new articles here.
Stay in touch. Like I said, I expect to continue contributing to WND, so check out my author page for updates.
For those interested in my political writing and in conservative/libertarian issues in general, please follow me on Twitter via @tradeaidmonitor.
In addition to my various writing pursuits, I am likewise pursuing voice-over, acting, and emcee/ring announcer opportunities. I have started to update my YouTube page for that reason, though admittedly it is a work-in-progress.
Best wishes, and thank you all for your support and interest. -- Steve Peacock