September 2011 – Public Intelligence Blog

Those ‘Coining the Blood of War' Should Sacrifice Too

Dallas Darling

WN.com, 30 September 2011

In 1919, immediately after World War One but still during the United States' military occupations of Russia and China, Hiram Johnson, the former reform governor of California who served in the Senate, spoke for many who feared American involvement in the Great War might continue to generate obscene profits for armaments makers. To ensure that corporate interests and their futuristic manufactured wars did not reap unfair gains from the war taxes imposed on citizens, Johnson proposed that the government make the defense industry contribute toward the expenses of war.

Mini-Me: Assassination – Made in America – At What Cost? Impeachable Treason.

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call

The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality

Without a shred of due process, far from any battlefield, President Obama succeeds in killing Anwar al-Awlaki

Glenn Greenwald

Salon, 30 September 2011

The US Assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki and the Blurring of Bright Lines

E. D. Kain

Forbes, 30 September 2011

The Obama administration has demonstrated once again, as it did in Libya and as it’s done in a variety of surveillance cases, that its view of executive power in the arena of national security is hardly any less expansive than Dick Cheney’s was. The fact that this was predictable makes it no less alarming.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Assassination – Made in America – At What Cost? Impeachable Treason.”

2011/09/302011/10/01

Review: We Meant Well – How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Budget Process & Politics, Civil Affairs, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Diplomacy, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Humanitarian Assistance, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Iraq, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Security (Including Immigration), Stabilization & Reconstruction

Peter Van Buren

5.0 out of 5 stars Six Stars & Beyond–Open Heart Surgury on a Corrupt Ignorant Government,September 29, 2011

FINAL REVIEW

The author himself begins the book with a reference to Dispatches (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics) followed by Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition, to which I would add A Rumor of War. This is a great book, an important book, and I salute the Department of State people with integrity that approved it for publication, while scorning the seventh floor craven autocrats that have bullied the author for telling the truth. This book is the real deal, and I have multiple notes along the lines of gifted writing, humble *and* erudite, quiet humor, ample factual detail, gonzo-gifted prose, an eye for compelling detail, *absorbing,* a catalog of absurdities and how not to occupy a country.

Late in my notes I write “Reality so rich it stuns. A time capsule, priceless deep insights into occupation at its worst.”

And also write down an alternative subtitle: “The Zen of Government Idiocy Squared.”

This is a book, from a single vantage point, of the specifics of “pervasive waste and inefficiency, mistaken judments, flawed policies, and structural weakness.” Speaking of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT), the author says “We were the ones who famously helped past together feathers year after year, hoping for a duck.”

Continue reading “Review: We Meant Well – How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People”

2011/09/302011/09/30

Review (Guest): Fixing the Facts – National Security and the Politics of Intelligence

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Censorship & Denial of Access, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Government), Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Leadership, Military & Pentagon Power, Politics, Priorities, Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Joshua Rovner

5.0 out of 5 stars It Takes Two: Strategic Intelligence and National Security Policy, September 30, 2011

By Retired Reader (New Mexico) – See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

In the U.S., the relationship between strategic intelligence and the formulation of national security policies has been to say the least complex and often confusing. This book provides what has long been needed, an objective and scholarly review of this relationship.

Rovner provides an excellent theoretical background to guide his examination of specific case histories that he has chosen to illustrate the relationships between strategic intelligence and policy. Ideally intelligence analysts should be able to operate without interference to produce strategic intelligence reports that are honest, objective, and supported by the best information available. Again ideally policy makers should be free to challenge such reports. Finally both analysts and policymakers should be able to hold rational discussions over differences in interpretation and conclusions in which the supporting evidence is considered objectively. Unfortunately this ideal is often thwarted by what Rovner calls “the pathologies of intelligence-policy relations.” He has identified three such `pathologies':

Continue reading “Review (Guest): Fixing the Facts – National Security and the Politics of Intelligence”

2011/09/302011/10/17

Mini-Me: Google “Buries” OccupyWallStreet Report

Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency

AmpedStatus Report

Google Censors Our #OccupyWallStreet Report

Over the past few years, we have had a few cases were Google decided to censor a report of ours from their search results. We documented one case publicly here. We usually don’t make a big deal about it online because people tend to just dismiss us as “crazy” when we do. However, this latest case is blocking our new report on the #OccupyWallStreet movement and we would like to bring it to the attention of the many supporters within the movement. The post is entitled, “A Report from the Frontlines: The Long Road to #OccupyWallStreet and the Origins of the 99% Movement.” After we published it late yesterday afternoon, when we checked Google and typed in the full headline, it was featured at the top of their search results . However, as of this morning, Google has removed our post from their results.

Graphic: Google Evil Equated to China

Corruption, ICT-IT

Source

2011/09/30

Winslow Wheeler: Elitist Corruption on the Defense Budget

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

Just as the leaders of US national security thinking led America into the war in Iraq based on the false premise of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and reckless, but politically powerful, rhetoric, Washington's elite are now circling the wagons around the defense budget. They are using the same disingenuous tactics and the same kind of rhetorical gibberish. While they have successfully intimidated the rest of the political system, they are also making huge fools of themselves.

I express my views on this and some defense budget facts you have not heard from these people in a commentary. Titled “The Stench of Elitism in Defense Spending,” it is available at the Politics page of the Huffington Post. Under the better mannered title “Elites Are Wrong,” an edit is also available at AOL Defense.

Full text below the line.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Elitist Corruption on the Defense Budget”

Month: September 2011

DefDog: Those ‘Coining the Blood of War’ Should Sacrifice Too