The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Academics in Foxholes The Life and Death of the Human Terrain System Christopher Sims, Foreign Affairs, 4 February 2016 The U.S. government’s controversial effort to harness the social sciences in support of its counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, in an initiative known as the Human Terrain System, was one of the most ambitious and …
The US Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS) and the Quest to Commandeer Culture A flurry of policy pieces written over the last several weeks have called for a new improved version of HTS, reflecting a deep longing by military-linked strategists to reboot the program. American military and intelligence agencies have a long history of seeking …
The Program from Hell Authored by John Stanton This is a story of ongoing alleged fraud, waste, abuse; a murder, KIA’s, WIA’s, cover ups, a hostage taking, and incompetence at the highest levels of the US Army’s TRADOC G-2. It is Mash meets Catch-22 (the movies)… The United States Army Human Terrain System has been …
When Eggheads Go to War EXTRACT: The Human Terrain System had been sold to the Army as a means of providing cultural knowledge to battlefield commanders. But as I watched the trainees interview residents near the Kansas-Missouri border, it became clear that whatever information they would be providing did not stem from any special knowledge …
Continue reading “Penguin: Human Terrain System — A Critical View”
Did Gen. David Petraeus just call the Human Terrain System worthless? With a few choice sentences to the Wall Street Journal, the top commander in Afghanistan highlighted the disconnect between what the Army’s social science program is supposed to be doing — and what’s actually happening in the field. “We have never had the granular …
Continue reading “Journal: General Petraeus–Human Terrain Team NOT”
Phi Beta Iota: The Human Terrain Team (HTT) is a mutant created as a program management turf and self-aggrandizement endeavor. It lacks the special skills or defined mission relevance of an Interrogator-Translator Team (ITT) or a Civil Affairs roving liaison element. See the Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy.
Phi Beta Iota: Although we assume there must be some isolated success stories, we have not heard any. The Human Terrain Team (HTT) is nothing more than Civil Affairs done properly, and from all accounts, from the most vicious to direct observation, HTT is a badly managed, badly conceptualized, badly staffed program that is a …
Continue reading “Handbook: Human Terrain Team Handbook (10/2008)”
