April 2011 – Page 7 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/04/272011/04/27

Right-Sizing the US Military–Doug Macgregor

10 Security, 11 Society, Intelligence (government), Key Players, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Peace Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy, Threats

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

Although there are important elements I disagree with — in some cases strenuously — US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor (Ret.) has written an important piece on the fundamental changes and massive budget reductions that are needed to improve America's ability to survive into the future.

Macgregor gets the three essentials right, I believe:

1) the threat America faces is now massively reduced; its future character may very well not be what conventional wisdom expects, and Americans need to fundamentally change how we interact with the rest of the world,

2) before any changes are effected in the size, character and funding of our armed forces, a comprehensive audit must be successfully and immediately completed to understand how we spend our money, and funding should be withheld unless and until that is done, and

3) massive changes are needed in our armed forces and their leadership, organization, staffing, weapons, and more.

Macgregor's two part article, “Lean Mean Fighting Machine” and “A Radical Plan for Cutting the Defense Budget and Reconfiguring the Military.” Both are published by Foreign Policy; I believe they merit your thorough reading and consideration.

Phi Beta Iota: The US Marine Corps understood all this in 1989, and sought to change the defense paradigm from worst case to most likely in 1992; then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and his subordinates were not at all interested. Right-sizing defense–and the whole of government–is not that difficult, provided that one has absolute integrity rooted in real-world truthful intelligence. That cannot be said of the US Government today.

2009 Perhaps We Should Have Shouted: A Twenty-Year Restrospective

2008 Rebalancing the Instruments of National Power–Army Strategy Conference of 2008 Notes, Summary, & Article

2008 U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century

2001 Threats, Strategy, and Force Structure: An Alternative Paradigm for National Security

2000 Presidential Leadership and National Security Policy Making

1998 JFQ The Asymmetric Threat: Listening to the Debate

1995 GIQ 13/2 Creating a Smart Nation: Strategy, Policy, Intelligence, and Information

1993 On Defense & Intelligence–The Grand Vision

1992 MCU Thinking About Revolution

1992 E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, & intelligence (An Alternative Paradigm)

Reference: 1992 USMC C4I Campaign Plan

1991 MCG Intelligence Support for Expeditionary Planners

2011/04/27

Contributing Editor: Winslow Wheeler

Authors & Editors

Winslow Wheeler is the Director of the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information in Washington, DC. He has authored two books: The Wastrels of Defense (US Naval Institute Press) about Congress and national security, and Military Reform (Greenwood Publishers) on the serious, fundamental problems that currently face America’s defenses. He released a new anthology (America’s Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress) after the presidential elections to help guide the new president out of the national security mess that Republicans and Democrats have jointly created in Washington.

From 1971 to 2002, Wheeler worked on national security issues for members of the U.S. Senate and for the US Government Accountability Office (GAO). In the Senate, Wheeler advised Jacob K. Javits (R. NY), Nancy L. Kassebaum (R, KS), David Pryor (D, AR), and Pete V. Domenici (R, NM). He was the first, and according to Senate records the last, Senate staffer to work simultaneously on the personal staffs of a Republican and a Democrat (Pryor and Kassebaum).

In the Senate staff, Wheeler was heavily involved in legislating the War Powers Act, Pentagon reform legislation, arms control and foreign policy, and oversight of the defense budget and weapons programs.

At GAO, he directed comprehensive studies on the 1991 Gulf War air campaign, the US strategic nuclear triad, and Pentagon weapons testing. Each of these studies found prevailing conventional wisdom about weapons to be badly misinformed.

In 2002 when he worked on the Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee, Wheeler authored an essay, under the pseudonym “Spartacus,” addressing Congress' reaction to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (“Mr. Smith Is Dead: No One Stands in the Way as Congress Lards Post-September 11 Defense Bills with Pork”). When senators criticized in the essay attempted to have Wheeler fired, he resigned his position.

Wheeler joined the Center for Defense Information immediately after leaving Capitol Hill.

2011/04/27

Bolivia: Drilling Down on Nature, Evo, Truth

03 Environmental Degradation, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government

Round I: UK Guardian on Bolivia–and Rights for Nature

Round II: Bolivia: Switch and Bait on Protecting Nature

Round III: Jim Hickman lives in Bolivia…

John

Most of your articles and information are very reliable and appreciated for what they are. This time, however, it is a mix of good research (Chellis's article) and a bit of exaggeration (your friend of a friend memo.) Chellis's article was published several months ago after she did a very thorough job of discovering the facts and assembling the story in an
engaging way. She definitely understands the political dynamics here in Bolivia, especially the role of racial identity in the process. I am glad you have circulated it. It is important that the Evo fans around the world
understand that, like Obama, his promises and his actions are far removed from each other.

Continue reading “Bolivia: Drilling Down on Nature, Evo, Truth”

2011/04/272011/04/27

CIA Given To Petraeus, DoD Given to Panetta

Corruption, Government, Military

CIA director Leon Panetta is to take over at the Pentagon and Gen. David Petraeus is to be nominated to head the CIA, NBC News confirmed Wednesday.

Sources: Petraeus to be nominated to head CIA

Agency director Panetta expected to become Defense Secretary, replacing Robert Gates

Phi Beta Iota: This is worse than business as usual, this is a dramatic step backwards. CIA is clearly irrelevant, an off-stage holding area for a failed General. In today's context, the best candidate for Defense, Senator Chuck Hagel, has evidently had second thoughts about the viability of the Obama Administration. Defense is about to be raped by the clerks as a bill-payer, rather than right-sized by serious people mindful of Senator Sam Nunn's wisdom:

I am constantly being asked for a bottom-line defense number. I don't know of any logicial way to arrive at such a figure without analyzing the threat; without determining what changes in our strategy should be made in light of the changes in the threat; and then determining what force structure and weapons programs we need to carry out this revised strategy.

This Administration–like others before it–lacks intelligence; lacks a holistic global and domestic strategy; and lacks the integrity necessary to fulfill its Constitutional responsibilities to the public.

2011/04/272011/04/27

Indonesia’s Urban Open Farmville

01 Agriculture, 01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 04 Indonesia, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

Global News Blog

Indonesia's real-life Farmville

Rising food prices are galvanizing Jakarta's urban farming movement.

By Sara Schonhardt, Correspondent / April 22, 2011

Jakarta, Indonesia

• A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.

Jakarta’s urban gardening scene got started with a simple tweet: “Who wants to start urban farming?” After that first Twitter message in November 2010, the group known as Jakarta Berkebun secured a plot in the city’s north and harvested a crop of morning glories (a common ingredient in many dishes here).

jakarta garden — Click on Image to Enlarge

Jakarta lacks green space, but unused land abounds. Jakarta Berkebun aims to transform empty lots that often fill with rubbish into training grounds for urban youths to learn about growing food. For Milly Ratudian, an architect who leads the group, urban farming is a a response to skyrocketing food prices despite the nation’s abundant fertile crop land.

Read full article….

2011/04/26

Graphic: Global Warming Perceptions

Citizen-Centered, Earth Orientation, Threats, True Cost

Source

2011/04/26

Worth a Look: The Azimuth Project

Worth A Look

Welcome to the Azimuth Project!

The Azimuth Project is an international collaboration to create a focal point for scientists and engineers interested in saving the planet. Our goal is to make clearly presented, accurate information on the relevant issues easy to find, and to help people work together on our common problems.

Saving the planet

“Saving the planet” may sound pompous. But the very health of the planet is in peril because of the actions of humankind. Whether it is global warming, mass extinction, peak oil, or other problems, we need to be prepared on many fronts for an uncertain future.

Our goal is not to replace or compete with existing sources of information, but to provide a bird’s-eye view of the information that already exists. We want to make it easy for any scientist or engineer to understand the whole problem and understand specialist literature in many subjects outside their particular domain of expertise.

Tip of the Hat to Curtis Faith for the lead, and to project founder John Baez.