Long in the making, Vanity Fair is today releasing, on-line, it's article on the F-35 — to appear in a future issue. The article focuses on the atrocious management of the F-35–from the very start from all parties, including the absence of oversight by DOD of either Lockheed-Martin or the military services, especially the Marine Corps.

Note the Marines' refusal to respond to the question of the appropriateness of their declaration of a pre-mature IOC, and note as well the glib and fact free assurance of a viable program future by JPO head Lt. Gen. Bogdan, who seems to assume, for example, a smooth path for the program's budget — in an era when sequestration levels of spending are the new fact of life.

Note also some important insights about the Helmet Mounted Display, which may never be completely fixed and may never be viable even if it is.

Find author Adam Ciralsky's revealing tour through F-35 mis-management in a seven part Vanity Fair article at

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2013/09/joint-strike-fighter-lockheed-martin.

2013/09/16

Chuck Spinney: Bill Polk Primer on Syria & Chemical Weapons

03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Extraterrestial Intelligence, Government, Military, Officers Call, Strategy

My friend Bill Polk, a well-known historian with extensive experience in the Middle East and Central Asia and author of many books on these areas, has written a backgrounder on how to make sense out of the Syrian chemical weapons issue. He has given me permission to distribute it. Herewith is his most interesting primer on the Syrian chemical weapons issue.

Chuck Spinney

Reflections on the Syrian Chemical Weapons Issue and Beyond

William R. Polk

September 15, 2013

1.The Variety of Weapons and Their characteristics
2 A Short History of Chemical Weapons
3 The Russian Intervention
4 Why the Syrians Have Accepted the Russian Proposal
5. The Prospects for Ridding The Area of Weapons of Mass Destruction
6 The Possibility of Ending the Civil War
7 Who Are the Insurgents and What do they Want?
8 Predictable Results of a Collapse of the Syrian State

Full essay below the line.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Bill Polk Primer on Syria & Chemical Weapons”

2013/09/162013/09/16

Marcus Aurelius: George Will on Bay of Pigs — the Unfinished Battle

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War

The Bay of Pigs’ unfinished battle

By George F. Will, Published: September 13

At 4 a.m. on Jan. 1, 1959, an hour when there were never commercial flights from Havana, David Atlee Phillips was lounging in a lawn chair there, sipping champagne after a New Year’s Eve party, when a commercial aircraft flew low over his house. He surmised that dictator Fulgencio Batista was fleeing because Fidel Castro was arriving. He was right. Soon he, and many others, would be spectacularly wrong about Cuba.

According to Jim Rasenberger’s history of the Bay of Pigs invasion, “The Brilliant Disaster,” Phillips was “a handsome 37-year-old former stage actor” who “had been something of a dilettante before joining the CIA.” There, however, he was an expert. And in April 1960, he assured Richard Bissell, the CIA’s invasion mastermind, that within six months radio propaganda would produce “the proper psychological climate” for the invasion to trigger a mass Cuban uprising against Castro.

The invasion brigade had only about 1,400 members but began its members’ serial numbers at 2,500 to trick Castro into thinking it was larger. Castro’s 32,000-man army was supplemented by 200,000 to 300,000 militia members. U.S. intelligence was ignorant of everything from Castro’s capabilities to Cuba’s geography to Cubans’ psychology.

Fifty-two years and many misadventures later, the invasion still fascinates as, in historian Theodore Draper’s description, “one of those rare events in history — a perfect failure.” It had a perverse fecundity.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: George Will on Bay of Pigs — the Unfinished Battle”

2013/09/152013/09/15

Eagle: Cantaloupe vs. al-Qaeda: What’s More Dangerous? (Hint: In 2011, 17 Americans Killed by Terrorists, 33 Killed by a SINGLE Cantelope)

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Law Enforcement, Military

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

One of the most important revelations from the international drama over Edward Snowden's NSA leaks in May is the exposure of a nearly lunatic disproportion in threat assessment and spending by the US government. This disproportion has been spawned by a fear-based politics of terror that mandates unlimited money and media attention for even the most tendentious terrorism threats, while lethal domestic risks such as contaminated food from our industrialized agribusiness system are all but ignored. A comparison of federal spending on food safety intelligence versus antiterrorism intelligence brings the irrationality of the threat assessment process into stark relief.

In 2011, the year of Osama bin Laden's death, the State Department reported that 17 Americans were killed in all terrorist incidents worldwide. The same year, a single outbreak of listeriosis from tainted cantaloupe killed 33 people in the United States. Foodborne pathogens also sickened 48.7 million, hospitalized 127,839 and caused a total of 3,037 deaths. This is a typical year, not an aberration.

Continue reading “Eagle: Cantaloupe vs. al-Qaeda: What's More Dangerous? (Hint: In 2011, 17 Americans Killed by Terrorists, 33 Killed by a SINGLE Cantelope)”

2013/09/13

Steven Aftergood: POLICY RESPONSE TO INTELLIGENCE REVELATIONS LAGS

Ethics, Government

POLICY RESPONSE TO INTELLIGENCE REVELATIONS LAGS

The end of the government's fiscal year 2013 is just weeks away, but an intelligence authorization bill for fiscal year 2014 is nowhere in sight. In past years, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees typically reported intelligence bills in late spring or early summer for House-Senate conference and floor action later in the year. But this year, nothing.

On its homepage, the Senate Intelligence Committee website cites the Committee's report on the fiscal year 2012 intelligence bill under the heading “recent action.” But that report was issued in August 2011. (The Committee website also offers a current compilation of YouTube videos that appear to reflect the use of chemical weapons in Syria.)

Though 2013 has become the most momentous year for intelligence policy in a generation, the Senate Intelligence Committee has not held any public hearings since a March threat briefing, and none at all on surveillance policy. Americans seeking insight into the meaning of current intelligence controversies must look elsewhere.

Continue reading “Steven Aftergood: POLICY RESPONSE TO INTELLIGENCE REVELATIONS LAGS”

2013/09/132013/09/13

Open Mind: CIA PSYOP Against US Public – Labeling Truth-Seekers as “Conspiracy Theorists?”

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of War, Peace Intelligence

CIA Responsible For Labeling Honest Research Into Finding the Truth As “Conspiracy Theories”

Boy does this article by Foster Gamble fit on this blogsite. For more than 40 years anyone attempting to find out the truth about anything that the “controllers” wanted to keep secret, was labeled a “conspiracy theorist”. Of course, then, propaganda was used to discredit any “conspiracy theorist” so no one would take them seriously. Now, the CIA admits what many have known for a long time. There is also a good little video near the bottom of this article where Foster and Kimberly offer suggestions about how to talk to others about “conspiracy theories”.Tom

News Flash — CIA Invents “CONSPIRACY THEORY” Wed, 11 Sep 2013 By Foster Gamble

It is a little-known though well-documented fact that the origin of the campaign to ridicule research into conspiracies was initiated by the CIA in 1967 to undermine the credibility of those who questioned the official claims of the Warren Commission regarding the so-called facts of the Kennedy assassination. Given the challenge we and others feel when speaking out about conspiracies, I think Lance deHaven-Smith is right when, in his new book Conspiracy Theory, he suggests “the CIA’s [covert and illegal] campaign to popularize the term ‘conspiracy theory’ and make conspiracy belief a target of ridicule and hostility must be credited…with being one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time…”

Of course not all proclaimed conspiracies are true. There are competent conspiracy analysts and incompetent ones, just as there are skilled and shoddy reporters, historians or practitioners of any discipline.

Continue reading “Open Mind: CIA PSYOP Against US Public – Labeling Truth-Seekers as “Conspiracy Theorists?””

2013/09/12

4th Media: From Bush to Obama – The Use and Misuse of Intelligence in Going to War

Corruption, Ethics, Government, Ineptitude, Peace Intelligence

From Bush to Obama: The Use and Misuse of Intelligence in Going to War

In what NPR called “perhaps President Obama’s last best chance” to make his case for launching a war against Syria, the president tellingly didn’t make a single effort to present hard, compelling evidence to prove that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad had been behind the alleged Sarin Aug. 21 attack on residents of a suburb of Damascus.

Not one piece of evidence.

Instead, he continued the talking point of the past week, focussing on the admitted horror of seeing young children “writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor.”

Given that two thirds of Americans, according to polls, do not want the US to unilaterally attack Syria, and really do not want yet another war in the Middle East, it is truly amazing that the president didn’t try to make the case, at least, that Assad was the guilty party.

He simply stated, as was done in the two-page propaganda article posted on the White House website, that “We know the Assad regime was responsible” for the gas attack.

Read full article.

Category: Government

Winslow Wheeler: Adam Ciralsky Seven Part Vanity Fair Article on F-35 Mis-Management