The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Think, we must.
Jaime Enoch Ortega, The Daily Journalist
Despite the odds, Donald Trump will beat Hillary Clinton in November
Dave Hodges, The Common Sense Show
The Clinton Campaign Is In Real Trouble
A true national poll, 1000 homes across all demographics in all 50 states finds Trump favored by 67%.
But What If….
Continue reading “Yoda: Trump Will Win, Clinton Will Lose? But What If…”
McChrystal report unwittingly slays counterinsurgency doctrine
September 25, 2009
Robert Haddock
This summer the U.S. government has faced a deteriorating crisis in Afghanistan. Such crises tend to force policymakers to face up to the facile assumptions they have previously made. Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s report to his civilian masters on the faltering counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan has caused President Barack Obama and his advisers to face up to their basic assumptions about U.S. objectives and strategies for perhaps the first time. Obama and his team seem very likely to conclude from this long overdue examination of first principles that it will be impractical for the U.S. to successfully implement a counterinsurgency campaign plan in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s assessment has unwittingly tossed the U.S. military’s counterinsurgency field manual into the shredder. McChrystal’s report is brutally honest about the troubles in Afghanistan.
Click on title above for complete article, below for Phi Beta Iota comment and links to three “fix” pieces.
Continue reading “Journal: Integrity, Afghanistan, & The White House”
What Next In Afghanistan? The Five People Obama Is Asking
Click on photo for full story. Grades and comments are those of Phi Beta Iota.
Vice President Joe Biden. C+. Scale back, Drones and Special Forces on high-value targets.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. F. Delusional on Taliban as lovers of Al Qaeda, listening to slick Australian on spending our way into hearts and minds.
National Security Adviser James Jones. D. Good man that does not know what he does not know, drops from a C to a D because his job is outreach and ensuring the President hears from a diversity of views, that is not happening.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen. C+. A strategic savant trapped between a rock and a hard-place, his integrity fights his loyalty every day. A for the rest of the world, D for not calling AF for what it is: a blunder of epic proportions.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates. B-. Found his integrity in pushing the troop demand into the public eye after first being a loyalist. Learned from Viet-Nam that Ho was a nationalist after all, Taliban is more of the same. A lame duck while Obama decides between Chuck Hagel and John Hamre.
Administration Over-All: D. Empire as Usual, Bureaucracy as Usual, Sacrificing our Troops to Buy Time, Not Listening to Serious Experts, Not Able to Think a Strategic Thought, Not Able to Plan, Program, and Execute a Whole of Government Anything.
With a tip of the hat to Jock Gill, former Communications specialist for President Bill Clinton, we point to a short ably illustrated post entitled
Continue reading “Journal: One Good Idea, One Bad National Policy Process”
Sometimes reality and fantasy collide in extraordinary ways. Below are four headlines and teaser editorial comments, click on the headlines to read the details, but the details do not really matter, here is the lunacy all together in one pot.
Continue reading “Journal: Ralph Peters, Hillary Clinton, & the U.S. Navy”
Over-all, this book is a fast read and if you like Hillary, you will love the book, if you hate her sight unseen you will not like the book. What disappointed me most was that it is not the kind of analytical “what went wrong, what did I learn, what would I do if I were president” read that I was hoping for. Although she lightly dissects the failure of her health care reform initiative and the terribly unjust impeachment of Bill Clinton, I walk away from this booking thinking “great personality, but no architecture for the future.”
