Military – Page 144 – Public Intelligence Blog

New York Post, April 11, 2013, Pg. 27

Perils Of A Politically Correct Pentagon

By Michael A. Walsh

One of the core functions of government is to defend the nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic — that’s part of the oath of enlistment that all service personnel take. But only a flinty, clear-eyed — and politically incorrect — assessment of all threats can enable the military can do its job.

Today, however, the brass at the Pentagon seems hell-bent on turning the world's most powerful military into an arm of the PC Police, a fresh field for “politically correct” bureaucrats on which to push their morally blind relativism.

Take the recent Defense Department briefing document that classified Catholics and Evangelical Protestants as “extremists” — the moral equivalent of al Qaeda and the Ku Klux Klan. It also lumped Christians together with free-floating “Islamophobia,” Hamas, Sunni Muslims, the Jewish Defense League and the backwoods Hutaree militia as potential threats to the Republic.

“Religious extremism is not limited to any single religion, ethnic group, or region of the world,” the briefing paper notes, which is true: The military must prepare for every eventuality, however remote, which is why we have plans for war with Canada and France, should the need arise.

But including half the country’s population on a list of potential terrorists does seem a bit extreme — especially when some 40 percent of active-duty military self-identify as evangelicals.

The Army quickly disavowed the presentation and blamed it on faulty “Internet research” by an Army Reserve figure outside the chain of command.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Politically-Correct Pentagon Gets It Half Right — On Religious Counterintelligence”

2013/04/132013/04/13

Berto Jongman: The Privatization of the US Military

Corruption, Ineptitude, Military

Contractors’ Next Payday: Commando Logistics for Africa Shadow Wars

WIRED, 12 April 2013

Here’s how serious the U.S. is about its African war on terror. The Pentagon is preparing to spend millions to create a privatized flying taxi service to fly its commandos everywhere from Libya to Congo.

That’s according to details in a recent solicitation notice for a Defense Department contract worth up to $50 million, expected to be handed over to a private contracting firm in August. Among the two main tasks contractors will be expected to carry out: medical evacuations during “high risk activities” — capable of being launched within a three-hour notice — as well as transporting equipment and commandos from Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara (or JSOTF-TS) within the borders of potentially 20 African nations. When you want to keep a U.S. military footprint small, you have to contract out a lot of logistics services.

Based at a secretive military airfield in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, the contractors will be tasked with missions across central and northern Africa, with the most likely destinations being Chad, Libya, Mali, Mauritania and other countries including Algeria, Cameroon and Nigeria. Less likely, but within the contractor’s “primary operating areas,” are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Sudan and Uganda — all suspected to be likely hiding spots for warlord Joseph Kony.

Read full article.

2013/04/132013/04/13

Berto Jongman: US Army Strategy Confernce YouTube (1:34:03) State-Sponsored Crime and Non-State Actors – Gangs, Guns, & Graft

10 Transnational Crime, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Military

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

2013/04/132013/04/13

SchwartzReport: For Price of Iraq War, Half of the US Could Be on Renewable Energy Now

05 Energy, Corruption, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

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.

For the Price of the Iraq War, U.S. Could Power Half of the Country With Renewable Energy
David Roberts – Grist

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.

2013/04/122013/04/12

Winslow Wheeler: If OMB Cannot Manage, and DoD Cannot Win Wars or Secure Peace, Who Is to Blame? Sub-Text: Obama “Team” Has No Plan B — They Cannot Even Find Plan A!

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military

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.

Obama's Useless Budget Data.and Improbable Budget Strategy

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.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: If OMB Cannot Manage, and DoD Cannot Win Wars or Secure Peace, Who Is to Blame? Sub-Text: Obama “Team” Has No Plan B — They Cannot Even Find Plan A!”

2013/04/072013/04/07

Marcus Aurelisus: Book on CIA and Special Forces Role Reversal

Government, Ineptitude, Military

Book review: ‘The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth’ By Mark Mazzetti

By Peter Bergen,

Washington Post, April 5

EXTRACT

Since the 9/11 attacks, a dramatic shift has occurred in the way the United States deploys its military and intelligence forces. In his new book, “The Way of the Knife,” Mark Mazzetti documents the militarization of the CIA and the stepped-up intelligence focus of Special Operations forces. As Mazzetti observes in his deeply reported and crisply written account, over the past decade “the CIA’s top priority was no longer gathering intelligence on foreign governments and their countries, but man hunting.” The bin Laden operation was far from the only deadly mission that Panetta presided over.

Read full review.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelisus: Book on CIA and Special Forces Role Reversal”

2013/04/052013/04/05

Gold Transformer: US Secretly Deploys B-1 Strategic Bombers, E-6 “Doomsday” Planes Near North Korea

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call

US Secretly Deploys B-1 Strategic Bombers, E-6 “Doomsday” Planes Near North Korea

First the US fanfared the placement of two F-22 Raptors in the Osan airbase of South Korea. Then it demonstratively launched a B-2 stealth bomber on a training mission over a South Korean gunnery range. Then it deployed an anti-ballistic missile defense system to Guam and positioned two guided-missile destroyers in the waters near Korea. And now, courtesy of the Aviationist, we learn that the Pentagon has escalated once more in an ongoing cat and mouse game with North Korea, of who blinks first, and dispatched several B-1 (“Bone”) Lancer strategic long-range bombers to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. What is different this time, however, is that unlike the previous very public and widely trumpeted reciprocal escalation steps, this particular deployment has been kept secret from the public (at least the broader public), “a fact that could be the sign that the U.S. is not only making symbolic moves (as the above mentioned ones), but it is preparing for the worst scenario: an attack on North Korea.”

. . . . . .

Finally, and most disturbing, is that another aircraft also in the process of deployment is none other than the E-6 Mercury “Doomsday” plane, which are among the pinnacle in US Airforce nuclear war preparedness, tasked with “providing command and control of U.S. nuclear forces should ground-based control become inoperable” and whose core functions include conveying instructions from the National Command Authority to fleet ballistic missile submarines and also to further command post capabilities and control of land-based missiles and nuclear-armed bombers.

You can read more about the military air activity recently monitored by Steve Douglass in an extremely interesting article he posted on his blog that not only summarize the contents of the messages he sent to The Aviationist, but provides some more details about the alleged overseas deployment of E-6 Mercury “doomsday” planes from Tinker AFB, Oklahoma.

Perhaps to Kim Jong-un the military escalation to nuclear war is only one big joke, but to the US it is increasingly appearing very serious. And perhaps this is precisely what the Pentagon wanted all along?