Figure 1 places Mr. Panetta’s claim into the context of past defense budgets. I have aggregated these budgets into the four year totals corresponding to each presidential term since Harry Truman’s second term began 64 years ago in 1949 (FY1950). Bear in mind, the effects of inflation have been removed and these four-year totals are presented in trillions of FY13 constant dollars.
We are reminded that much of this is precisely what the US Marine Corps tried to tell the Secretary of Defense in 1992. The Services — and OSD — are once again 20 years behind the planning and programming curve. Understandably absent from this document are all matters of mobility, communications, intelligence, and air support. The plain fact is that this document is devoid of value absent a Secretary of Defense able to demand and insert coherence across the whole. A huge part of the problem is that DoD does not have access to constructive coherent intelligence (decision-support) that is relevant to multi-service and multi-national strategy, policy, acquisition, and whole of government as well as eight tribe M4IS2 operations.
If General Patraeus appears to commit suicide anytime soon, it will not have been suicide and the White House and the Department of Justice and the FBI will cover up the murder. Since the dual chain of command got away with the murder of JFK, the impunity with which they are willing to murder American citizens has steadily expanded. We are at a cross-roads. The final Obama term will either begin the restoration of the rule of law (very unlikely) or deliver the multiple precipitants for sparking a revolution in the USA,
Phi Beta Iota: The back chatter on the above post has been extraordinary. There appears to be a growing anger within the Special Operations community with respect to their being lied to, abused, and put in danger for political advantage — one is reminded of both Jim Webb's book, Friendly Fire, and the murder of Col James Sabow, USMC in the early 1990's. The trail of murders and uninvestigated suicides associated with the military-industrial-intelligence-terror complex is now easily over 200 in number just in the past 12 years, but evidently no one in the Inspector General, Law Enforcement, of Judiciary oversight world cares to take on the challenge.
If Patraeus is “suicided,” the irony and justice in relation to Petraeus' covering up the murder of Col Ted Westhusing, USA (RIP), is noted.
An honest President would demand that a task force itemize and investigate as a whole all of the “suicides” among all military officers in the past twelve years. The results are certain to be frightening. We do not expect such an investigation to occur, because the lack of integrity in the US Government has peaked at what we hope is a final high before public intelligence in the public interest begins to push back to good effect toward 2014 and 2016. We pray that a non-violent public majority can restore the rule of law in the USA. The elite and their security state servants are out of control, but from the bottom up, JSOG appears to be reconnecting with its integrity and that should scare the shit of Brennan and a handful of others.
This is UNOFFICIAL at this time, it has NOT been validated as an official document. The depiction of most Army contractors as small to mid-size businesses with moderate to severe risk of bankruptcy if sequester cuts take place, is a useful point for investigators. What is missing is a global “picture” of what different kinds of cuts mean in terms of mission effectiveness and response times. Absent forward basing, most CONUS-based responses packages will take up to nine days to deliver.
The president has a clandestine network targeting a ‘kill list' justified by secret laws. How is that different than a death squad?
The film Dirty Wars, which premiered at Sundance, can be viewed, as Amy Goodman sees it, as an important narrative of excesses in the global “war on terror”. It is also a record of something scary for those of us at home – and uncovers the biggest story, I would say, in our nation's contemporary history.
Though they wisely refrain from drawing inferences, Scahill and Rowley have uncovered the facts of a new unaccountable power in America and the world that has the potential to shape domestic and international events in an unprecedented way. The film tracks the Joint Special Operations Command (JSoc), a network of highly-trained, completely unaccountable US assassins, armed with ever-expanding “kill lists”. It was JSoc that ran the operation behind the Navy Seal team six that killed bin Laden.
Scahill and Rowley track this new model of US warfare that strikes at civilians and insurgents alike – in 70 countries. They interview former JSoc assassins, who are shell-shocked at how the “kill lists” they are given keep expanding, even as they eliminate more and more people.
Press TV's documentary program “Untold Truths” is a revealing documentary film about the life and experiences of former White House Middle East policy adviser, Gwenyth Todd, who has escaped to Australia to keep safe from FBI prosecution.
Phi Beta Iota: RIVETING. From Larry Franklin to Admiral Cosgrove. Traitors working for Israel and handled by AIPAC. Includes murder on the street of the Turkish billionaire paying her bills in exile, ruled a “suicide.” This entire video-tape consists of one US citizen talking. We pray she is heard. The arrogance and impunity of those who are behind this exceeds that of all other dictators combined (40 of them!). We pray that one day the USA gets an honest counterintelligence service that can flush traitors out of the Pentagon and keep it focused on legitimate US interests and US needs.
