Military – Page 163 – Public Intelligence Blog

Pentagon gets to work planning for severe cuts

Wants to be ready if sequestration occurs

Defense officials have begun “serious planning” for automatic spending cuts that could force the Pentagon to lay off hundreds of thousands of civilian workers as it reduces its budget by $500 billion over the next 10 years.

“We are doing some serious planning for sequestration,” Pentagon press secretary George Little told reporters Tuesday. “We need to be ready, and we’re working through those numbers right now.”

Known as sequestration, the across-the-board, automatic reductions are set to begin March 1, unless Congress reaches a deal on taxes and spending. Under sequestration, about $1 trillion is to be trimmed from the federal budget, with the Pentagon accounting for about half of that amount.

As many as 800,000 civilian employees in the Pentagon eventually could be laid off, defense officials say.

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2013/01/082013/01/08

Mini-Me: Kerry-Hagel as Obama Attempt to Change Direction Away from War and Toward Domestic Reconstruction

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Huh?

A view of what's really behind Hagel nomination fight

From CNN's “Early Start”

January 8, 2013

EXTRACT:

CNN: Peter wrote what I think is (one of the) most … interesting and compelling articles about the Hagel nomination, explaining it perhaps better than anyone I've seen, including the president.

The first paragraph of the piece, you write, it may prove the most consequential foreign policy appointment of his presidency because the struggle over Hagel is a struggle over whether Obama can change the terms of the foreign policy debate. Explain that for me.

Peter Beinart: I think so far, the debate about military action in Iran has been conducted by and large in Washington, as if Iraq and Afghanistan didn't happen.

As if we haven't learned anything from the disaster (of) these two wars over the last 10 years. I think the real struggle between Hagel and his foes is he wants to bring some of the lessons in to the Iran debate that we learned about (Iraq) and Afghanistan.

He talks very compellingly about the fact wars once launched can't be fully controlled. He is very cognizant of the enormous financial cost that these wars have imposed on the United States, and I think the heart of the hostility is the fear that his recognition about what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq will make taking us to war in Iran harder.

Hagel vows to fight ‘distortions'

[Note: An Open Source Agency (OSA) controlled by Kerry-Hagel would go a very long way toward fighting the information pathologies that abound in Washington.]

CNN: You suggest there are no consequences for the Iraq War in terms of those who supported or imposed it.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Kerry-Hagel as Obama Attempt to Change Direction Away from War and Toward Domestic Reconstruction”

2013/01/082013/01/08

Mini-Me: John Brennan, Drones, Killing Children + Drone Meta-RECAP

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military

Huh?

John Brennan vs. a Sixteen-Year-Old

Medea Benjamin

Huffington Post, 01/08/2013

In October 2011, 16-year-old Tariq Aziz attended a gathering in Islamabad where he was taught how to use a video camera so he could document the drones that were constantly circling over his Pakistani village, terrorizing and killing his family and neighbors. Two days later, when Aziz was driving with his 12-year-old cousin to a village near his home in Waziristan to pick up his aunt, his car was struck by a Hellfire missile. With the push of a button by a pilot at a US base thousands of miles away, both boys were instantly vaporized — only a few chunks of flesh remained.

Afterwards, the US government refused to acknowledge the boys' deaths or explain why they were targeted. Why should they? This is a covert program where no one is held accountable for their actions.

The main architect of this drone policy that has killed hundreds, if not thousands, of innocents, including 176 children in Pakistan alone, is President Obama's counterterrorism chief and his pick for the next director of the CIA: John Brennan.

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Continue reading “Mini-Me: John Brennan, Drones, Killing Children + Drone Meta-RECAP”

2013/01/082013/01/08

Winslow Wheeler: Will Chuck Hagel Stand Up to Drone Lobby?

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence

Everyone has an opinion and the speculation is almost entirely based on what former Senator Hagel has said, rather than his actions–or lack of them–which speak a lot louder. Take an acutely political career that seems to have valued words above everything and match it with Pentagon myths about defense systems, and you get a somewhat different picture of what to expect from Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. It is not at all encouraging. This commentary about the all embracing mythology of drones and Chuck Hagel was published at Foreign Policy last evening.

Foreign Policy

THE SPENDAGON

Will Chuck Hagel Stand Up to the Drone Lobby?

Or will he be yet another victim of Pentagon operators?

WINSLOW WHEELER | JANUARY 7, 2013

U.S. Central Command has released some interesting numbers on the performance of modern air systems in Afghanistan; the data do not auger well for our defenses in the next decade, nor for the suitability of the man who appears likely to be the next secretary of defense, former Senator Chuck Hagel — his admirable iconoclasm toward some national security dogmas notwithstanding.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Will Chuck Hagel Stand Up to Drone Lobby?”

2013/01/072013/01/07

Chuck Spinney: The Real Challenges Facing the Next Secretary of Defense, Robert Steele Comments

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Military

No Guts, No Glory

The Real Challenges Facing the Next Secretary of Defense

FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY,
This essay appeared in Counterpunch (12 Dec 2012) and Time's Battleland (3 Jan 2013)

EXTRACT:

The problem is not just a strategic one of extracting our forces with dignity; nor is it a political one of fingering who is to blame, although there is plenty of blame to go around. It stems from deep institutional roots that reveal a need for reform in our military bureaucracies and particularly our leadership selection policies.

That is because the next Secretary of Defense must deal with the consequences of a strategic oversight that was made by and approved at the highest professional levels of the American military establishment — a plan which it then imposed on its weak and insecure political leaders. This suggests a question: Will the new defense secretary succumb to business as usual by sweeping the dysfunctional institutional causes of the Afghan debacle under the rug or have the courage and wisdom to use this sorry affair as a reason to clean out the Pentagon’s Augean Stables?

. . . . . . . . .

A far more significant challenge will be posed by the need to sort out the programmatic chaos in the Pentagon’s hugely bloated defense budget, which, while not unrelated to the Afghan debacle, is caused primarily by out-of-control institutional prerogatives and bureaucratic game playing. Notwithstanding its bloat, the current defense budget plan cannot modernize the military’s weapons inventories on a timely basis; nor can it insure our shrinking, aging equipment will be maintained in a state of combat readiness, while providing sufficient funds for training troops. Most importantly, the Pentagon’s accounting systems are a shambles. The Pentagon’s budget and program planning books can not even pass the most basic constitutional requirements for accountability, much less provide the management information needed to fix the aforementioned modernization, force structure, and readiness problems.

As I explained here and here, these dysfunctional problems are connected and have deep behavioral roots. Fixing these problems will require harmonizing and reining in the disparate factions making up the dysfunctional political-economy of the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex — a heretofore intractable problem President Eisenhower first warned America about in his farewell address in January 1961 (note: the reference to Congress was included in the first draft of his speech but subsequently dropped).

What I find depressing is that not one of these pressing issues has been the subject of speculations about the choice of a new defense secretary. Au contraire, the press has been obsessed with the lobbying concerns of the discredited neocons on the right who helped to create Afghan and Iraqi messes, proponents of continuing American empire in the middle (who are now promoting our intervention in Syria and the budget busting pivot to the Pacific), and gender balancers on the left.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: The Real Challenges Facing the Next Secretary of Defense, Robert Steele Comments”

2013/01/072013/01/07

David Isenberg: Iran – Nuclear Dog That Cannot Bark

05 Iran, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Media, Military

Iran: the Nuclear Dog that can’t Bark

By David Isenberg

LobeLog Foreign Policy, 7 January 2012

Apart from death and taxes, one other thing has also appeared inevitable, at least for the past two decades: Iran will acquire a nuclear weapons capability.

Yet, despite all the near frantic demands for sanctions, clandestine action, sabotage, and outright military strikes to prevent Iran’s presumed inexorable march towards that capability, one thing keeps getting overlooked: Iran has not managed to develop a nuclear weapon.

How is that possible? As states go, Iran has a reasonably well-developed scientific and industrial infrastructure, an educated workforce capable of working with advanced technologies, and lots of money. If Pakistan, starting from a much lower level, could develop nuclear weapons, why hasn’t Iran?

That overlooked question was the subject of an important but largely ignored past article, “Botching the Bomb: Why Nuclear Weapons Programs Often Fail on Their Own — and Why Iran’s Might, Too” in Foreign Affairs journal.

In the May/June 2012 issue, Jacques E. C. Hymans, an International Relations Associate Professor at the University of Southern California and author of the book Achieving Nuclear Ambitions: Scientists, Politicians, and Proliferation (from which his article was adapted) wrote:

Berto Jongman: Informed Comment on US Drone Strikes

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, Corruption, Government, Military, Officers Call

Being read in Europe and Asia.

The Secret History of US Drone Strikes in 2012 (Woods et al.)

Chris Woods, Jack Serle and Alice K. Ross write at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism:

EXTRACTS

PAKISTAN

Drone strikes in Pakistan are now at their lowest level in five years, as Islamabad protests almost every attack. The CIA also appears to have abandoned ‘signature strikes’ on suspected militants fitting certain patterns of behaviour – at least for the present. Almost all attacks in recent months have been against named al Qaeda and other militant leaders.

As drone strikes fell in Pakistan they rose steeply in Yemen, as US forces aided a major military campaign to oust al Qaeda and other Islamists from southern cities. A parallel CIA targeted killing programme killed numerous alleged militants, many of them named individuals. Yet US officials took more than three months to confirm that American planes or drones had killed 12 civilians.

. . . . . . . .

One reason for a decline in Pakistani strikes may have been growing hostility. Some 74% of polled citizens said they viewed the US as an enemy, and uniquely Pakistan bucked a global trend to register as the only nation favouring Mitt Romney for president. In contrast, the American public appears to staunchly support covert drones – in one poll 83% of respondents were in favour of the strikes.

The British High Court was called on in April to look into US covert drone strikes and possible British co-operation, which some lawyers in the UK insist is illegal. Days before the end of the year the High Court declined to investigate. After years of inactivity, US and Pakistani courts also began to consider legal questions surrounding the campaign.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Informed Comment on US Drone Strikes”