Panel V – State Sponsored Crime and Non-State Actors: Gangs, Guns, and Graft
Chair: Dr. Stephen Blank, SSI, U.S. Army War College
Panelists: Edward Lucas, The Economist; Karen Saunders, Forum Foundation for Analytic Excellence; Douglas Farah, International Assessment and Strategy Center
See Also:“Many Dangers, Little Money: Strategic Choices During the Interwar Years” The first panel of the 2013 Army War College Strategy Conference- Panelists – Dr. Conrad Crane, U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center; Dr. Robert Citino, University of North Texas; Dr. Michael Neiberg, U.S. Army War College; Dr. Tami Biddle, U.S. Army War College
I believe that historians will look back on the era that began with Reagan, and reached its peak during the administration of the second Bush, and his evil wizard, Cheney, and mark that as the beginning of the decline of America. We traded prosperity, and greatness, for the tainted pottage of elective war, and the privatization of our social order to the be! nefit of the few and to the cost of the many. Here is an example of what I mean.
Phi Beta Iota: It is much, much worse than this, especially when considering the human cost of all nations. It has long been established that peace and prosperity can be had for one third of what we spend on war — the key difference is that war is profitable for banks in unethically extraordinary ways, while peace and prosperity are profitable for the 99% in relatively mundane ways. The only good news is that Generation Truth is rising, and will use open information and open deliberation to put the relics of the Industrial Era away.
Someone smarter than me wrote this in an email. Scary stuff, seems to be right on target.
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The freight train bearing down on us is the Millennials – 80 million strong, 15% unemployment, that's 6 million 18 to 34 males who are fucked. How many have hardcore urban combat experience from Iraq or open country insurgency skills from AfPak?
Oklahoma City & D.C. Sniper came from 38 days of ground combat during Desert Storm. Now we get TBI guys who've done three tours and get screwed out of benefits with a PDO discharge because the VA doesn't want to deal? Ticking bomb, size XXXXL, and it's all around us.
So when does it flip from an edgy theory into a “holy shit how do we stop THAT?” Can't say for sure, but it'll be like trying to un-tornado a house once it gets moving …
Phi Beta Iota: The truth at any cost lowers all other costs.
Since the defense budget roll out on Wednesday, April 10, Pentagon budget geeks all over Washington have been popping Ibuprofen trying to unscramble the mess that DOD and OMB have made out of the 2013 and 2014 defense budgets. My take on this dysfunction is explained below.
By the way, I don't blame Secretary Hagel for this junking of budget ethics and smarts; he's too new to the job, but his time for using that as an excuse is fast running out.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, unveil the Pentagon's 2014 budget request Wednesday.
Budgets are important documents: they are the ultimate expression of policy by a President or Congress.
Budgets are also a useful revelation of the character and competence of those who put them together.
President Obama's budget presentation for the Department of Defense and national security-related activities outside of the Defense Department is useless for understanding what he and Congress have enacted for the current 2013 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
The budget material for 2014 also shows there is no new thinking in the Obama Administration for putting U.S. national security spending on a constructive path. Given the dysfunctional Congress that's getting the new budget, we should expect the worst: delay, chaos and decisions to increase, not control, costs.
Some $4 billion is being cut from the National Intelligence Program this year as a result of sequestration, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the House Intelligence Committee at a hearing today. He said that the consequences will be severe. Acquisition programs will be “wounded,” ongoing programs will have to be curtailed, and the ensuing degradation of intelligence capabilities will be “insidious” with unforeseeable effects, he said.
Meanwhile, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence disclosed yesterday that the FY 2014 budget request for the National Intelligence Program (NIP) is $48.2 billion. However, this figure excludes the pending funding request for Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), so it cannot be directly compared to previous budget allocations, such as the $53.9 billion that was appropriated in FY 2012, or the $52.6 billion that was requested for FY 2013. A summary of the FY 2014 budget request is here.
The Secretary of Defense also disclosed the FY 2014 budget request for the Military Intelligence Program (MIP) yesterday, which was $14.6 billion. It also did not include the funding request for Overseas Contingency Operations. This is a slight decline from the $14.7 billion base request for the MIP last year. (An additional $4.5 billion was known to have been requested for OCO in the past fiscal year.)
Total intelligence spending (NIP plus MIP) peaked in Fiscal Year 2010, and has been on a downward slope since then. Intelligence budget disclosures from the last several years are tabulated here.
The NIP intelligence budget request was publicly disclosed for the first time in February 2011, in response to a requirement enacted by Congress in the FY 2010 intelligence authorization act. The MIP intelligence budget request was disclosed for the first time in February 2012, even though there was no specific statutory requirement to do so.
Phi Beta Iota: With Special Operations now playing a greater intelligence role, one could argue that both the black and the green budgets should be considered together to get a true total of US Government secret and covert operations — and of course that is only what is on the books, not all the stuff funded by Saudi Arabia, indirectly via Israel, and other third party players. The “priorities” in the highlights are vapor — and reaffirm that the US IC is not at all interested in actually producing decision support for Whole of Government planning, programming, budgeting, and execution (PPBS/E).
David S. Kris and J. Douglas Wilson’s second edition of National Security Investigations & Prosecutions is a necessary read, or at least necessary to have in your library, for just about anyone who practices, teaches, or writes about national security law. Kris and Wilson offer what appears to be the country’s sole comprehensive treatise on the law and procedures governing national security investigations. There are at least three audiences who benefit from this work: (1) practicing attorneys in the DOJ and elsewhere in government, who can use the treatise as an operating manual of sorts; (2) law professors, who can use the treatise as a course textbook or to design curricula in national security law courses; and (3) policymakers and legislators, who can use the treatise to explore contemporary issues such as whether the government overreaches in national security investigations and prosecutions, or whether the statutory guidance provided by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and Classified Information Protection Act (CIPA) is sufficient to protect civil liberties and criminal defendants’ rights. It is a testament to Kris and Wilson’s expertise and knowledge that they have assembled a work that will simultaneously appeal and provide significant value to all three audiences.
The treatise consists of thirty three chapters that are organized in two volumes.
Phi Beta Iota: This book has been previously published in 2007, this appears to be a substantially enlarged and updated replacement. It is not yet listed on Amazon.
I completely support this. The last place where power still resides with ordinary people lies in the vote. Everything else in our government may increasingly be a charade of retained form underneath of which lies corrupted substance. But the vote still matters because it determines who gets to play. Any compromise in the already tattered social safety net, should result in all those who voted fo! r the compromise being cast out of office.
The moment of truth has arrived. According to press reports, President Obama has openly embraced cutting Social Security and veterans benefits by imposing the “chained CPI” cut on cost of living increases, which is like signing in blood the idea that the federal government's priorities should be owned by the 1% rather than by the 99%. The war in Afghanistan will continue, the boondoggle F-35 “Bankrupter” fighter plane will continue, the $83 billion annual taxpayer subsidy to the “too big to fail” banks will continue, but the earned benefits of America's working families, including disabled veterans and their survivors, will be cut if President Obama has his way.
The only thing that can stop President Obama from cutting Social Security now is Congress. Therefore, the only thing that can stop President Obama from cutting Social Security now is public pressure on Congress to stand up to Obama and say no. The pressure that has been exerted so far was not sufficient to stop President Obama from doing this. Therefore, public pressure against Social Security cuts must significantly escalate.
