The United States has spent $4 billion more on intelligence than any other previous year.

What exactly does that amount of money get you?

The majority of the money supports electronic eavesdropping, wiretapping and the vast, high-speed data-mining operations of the National Security Agency, which has headquarters at Fort Meade. The budget also funds satellite photo reconnaissance and collection and analysis by agents of the CIA, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Treasury Department and others.

The budget appropriations, which were highly classified until 2007, do not include funds for tactical, or localized, military intelligence collection and analysis done by the armed forces and the Pentagon. Disclosure of the overall budget appropriation number was required by Congress in 2007 at the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission.

I guess that doesn’t include the brave men and women in uniform monitoring Twitter for terrorist activity.

….if you even want to call it a satellite.

As noted a few days ago, Iran reported it had successfully launched its first domestically made satellite.  Apparently, they were using the term satellite loosely and, in fact, it was more like launching a massive paper weight into the sky.

Now U.S. officials report that the word “successful” is being used just as loosely:

Iran’s attempt to launch a dummy satellite into orbit earlier this week was a “dramatic failure” that fell far short of the country’s assertions of success, Reuters quoted a US official as saying on Tuesday.

“The attempted launch failed,” the official said. “The vehicle failed shortly after liftoff and in no way reached its intended position. It could be characterized as a dramatic failure.“

It isn’t just a failure, it’s a dramatic failure!

Kinda like this guy?

The Tehran Times announced that Iran successfully launched its first domestically produced satellite into orbit yesterday.   Initially, the Iranians forgot to mention one small, little, tiny detail….  it’s a DUMMY satellite:

Iran corrected earlier reports it made Sunday and said that it had launched a dummy satellite into orbit.

At first, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported that the Iranian-made communications satellite Omeid was launched but a later report said the satellite was a dummy.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad read the countdown to the launch on Iranian TV.

The urgency of the story just went from Iran successfully launching a spy satellite into space to Iran successfully launching a big rock.

Way to go.

Israeli expert Iftah Shrir’s analysis of the situation:

Iftah Shrir, who heads the Military Balance project at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) claims Iran is still far from its goal of launching a real communications satellite into space. “This was a step towards the launching of an Iranian military satellite, but the road is still long,” he said.

“Prestige-wise a two-kilogram satellite waving an Iranian flag in space would be enough, but capability-wise, even if the satellite is launched, it will be a tiny research satellite without any real ability.” He added that Iran launched a Russian satellite into space in 2005, but it disappeared without a trace.

That’s one small step for Iran, one giant leap for paper weights.