Bush's cosmic blunder - allowing Russia to control U.S. access to space station

What is the worst thing about the Bush-Cheney years?

That one’s easy: “They aren't over yet.”

Switch the tense from present to past, however, and a lot of very good answers present themselves.

What was the worst thing about the Bush-Cheney years?

A) The way the Supreme Court appointed them to office in the first place by preventing the votes in Florida from being counted fairly and accurately.

B) Lack of preparedness (to put it mildly) and/or other priorities (to put it kindly) that allowed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to occur and unfold as they did.

C) Opposing an investigation into the 9/11 attacks for more than a year, then having the audacity to suggest that Henry KissingerHenry Kissinger should head up the so-called Blue Ribbon panel; Bush and Cheney both refusing to testify under oath to the 9/11 Commission, then eventually testifying together.

D) The “selective intelligence” (to put it kindly) that led the Bush administration to deceive itself, Congress and the American people about the imminent threat of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq.

E) The mismanaged war in and occupation of Iraq.

F) Preparations for and response to Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans. Ghoulish, condescending comments about fun times on Trent LottTrent Lott’s porch. Heckuva job, Brownie.

G) The Plame Affair, the subsequent lies and obfuscations. Rove, Libby, vomit, etc.

H) The Bush Economy.

I) All of the above.

Well, that was fun and mildly cathartic, but best to quit before we run through the alphabet, eh?

But wait! The Punditty Project regrets to inform you that unless President-elect Barack ObamaBarack Obama reverses course in a hurry on Bush’s space policy, the worst consequences of a very bad presidency are probably yet to come. Most readers probably didn’t even know about the following choice:

Z++) Bush’s surrender to Russia in the Space Race.

That’s right, thanks to Bush, U.S. access to the International Space Station will soon be controlled by our longtime friend and trusted ally, Russia. Beginning in 2010, when the current space shuttle fleet is taken out of service, until 2015, when the next generation of U.S. spacecraft is supposed to be ready, Russia will be in charge of U.S. access to the International Space Station. Bush may have looked into Putin’s soul and deemed him trustworthy, but Sen. John McCainJohn McCain had the best line of the entire presidential campaign during the second debate when he said, “Now, long ago, I warned about Vladimir PutinVladimir Putin. I said I looked into his eyes and saw three letters, a K, a G and a B.”

McCain went on to stress that Putin has surrounded himself with former KGB apparatchiks. If you have a short memory in regards to why this might matter, watch a few 20th-century James BondJames Bond movies. We may not call the Cold War the Cold War anymore, but anyone who thinks Ivan is all make-nice and cuddly now is either overmedicated or not paying attention.

The New York Times reported on this too-much-to-bear piece of irony on Oct. 5, 2008, in “One way up: U.S. space plan relies on Russia,” a story by John Schwartz. An excerpt:

The gap is coming: from 2010, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration shuts down the space shuttle program, to 2015, when the next generation of American spacecraft is scheduled to arrive, NASA expects to have no human flight capacity and will depend on Russia to get to the $100 billion station, buying seats on Soyuz craft as space tourists do.

Later in the Schwartz article, we learn that both Obama and McCain opposed the Bush policy of ceding this important aspect of U.S. national security to the Russians. Presumably, Obama will review and change this incredibly naive move by Bush.

The Times went on to report that NASA’s administrator, Michael D. GriffinMichael D. Griffin, sent an e-mail out to his top advisers in August, writing that “events have unfolded in a way that makes it clear how unwise it was for the U.S. to adopt a policy of deliberate dependence on another power.”

The reasoning behind the Bush policy is supposedly that the U.S. needs to give up on the aging shuttle fleet in order to develop Constellation, a program featuring the next generation of spacecraft, by 2015. But both Obama and McCain said on the campaign trail that the U.S. should strongly consider the option of continuing shuttle flights until the Constellation spacecraft are ready.

While this Bush blunder of cosmic proportions may come as shock to many readers, at least there’s still time to prevent it from being implemented. Navy astronaut Cmdr. Scott J. Kelly has made two trips to orbit. Perhaps his words from April of 2008, as quoted by the Times, best sum up how the public will feel if it ever gets to the point where the U.S. lacks the capacity to send humans into space on its own rockets: “A large part of the American public is going to be surprised,” Kelly said, adding that people would cry, “Who let that happen?”

Even more alarming are the words of Major Ioannis Koskinas, U.S. Air Force, writing in the January 2005 issue of Air & Space Power Journal:

"Potential adversaries could challenge US access to space by taking advantage of a range of offensive counterspace capabilities within their technological means. These offensive capabilities could include: denial and deception, ground station attack and sabotage, electronic attack, and direct attack on the satellites themselves."

Do we really want to get to that point? No. Tell President-elect Obama you believe it is in our national interest to maintain U.S. space independence, now and always.

Visit http://change.gov/ to let your voice be heard.

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