Military – Page 166 – Public Intelligence Blog

Herewith is a stunning series of reports by Gareth Porter, one of the very best investigative journalists in America. Not only does he show how King David created the myth of his success and became naked in the process, he puts the failures of the surges in Iraq and Afghanistan into a definitive perspective. But perhaps most importantly, at least to my thinking, Gareth also expose the emptiness of real lesson learned by the US military from its failure in Vietnam … namely how protect the institution from criticism by manipulating and controlling the narrative of failing wars and a breakdown of leadership by capturing the thinking and imagination of the press. This manipulation was evident in the uncritical coverage of the First Gulf War, but the superficial appearance of success in those wars masked the rot embedded (pun intended) in the “lesson learned.” Thanks to Gareth, it is now clear to anyone who makes an effort to study this report.

Chuck Spinney

All 4 Parts: How Petraeus Created the Myth of His Success

By Gareth Porter

Truthout, Tuesday, 27 November 2012 17:43

Part 1: How the Myth Began – Petraeus in Mosul

Part 2: How Petraeus Quietly Stoked the Fires of Sectarian War Without Getting Burned

Part 3: Petraeus Rising: Managing the “War of Perceptions” in Iraq

Part 4 True Believer: Petraeus and the Mythology of Afghanistan

Final paragraph:

The Petraeus Legacy: Conscious and Unconscious Falsehoods

David Petraeus always demonstrated political agility in his management of the “war of perceptions” in Iraq and Iran, gravitating to story lines that would create an image of success even though the larger picture still looked uncertain, if not unfavorable.

But in Afghanistan, the Petraeus strategy did have the same effect as it had in Iraq. He was never able to show that the Taliban insurgency had been brought under control. As Lt. Col. Danny Davis, who returned from his second tour in Afghanistan in late 2011 after having traveled more than 9,000 miles around the country, reported in an 84-page assessment, the level of Taliban attacks in 2011 was still at or above the 2009 levels that had prompted US officials to fear that the war was being lost.

Davis charged that Petraeus' March 2011 report to Congress was “misleading, significantly skewed or completely inaccurate.” Davis presented a classified version of his report to a bipartisan group of Senators and House members that cited dozens of classified documents in support of his charge. And in a telling reflection of Petraeus' failure of to make a credible case, The New York Times covered Davis' critique in a front page story in January 2012. The only question about his attack on Petraeus' claims was whether Petraeus was knowingly lying or saying what he chose to believe.

The record of Petraeus' command in Afghanistan – especially the case of the Taliban impostor – suggests that his public posture on the progress of his command combined claims he knew were untrue with some that he actually believed were true. His need to maintain the image he had so artfully created had led him to believe increasingly his own myth.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: The Patraeus Myth & the Pentagon's Big Lie”

2012/12/212012/12/21

David Isenberg: Trillions Later, No Lessons Learned on Reconstruction Economics

Government, Ineptitude, Military

The Ghost of Contracting Past

Huffington Post,21 December 2012

A report was released earlier this week by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary assessments that offers some useful observations on how well the United States has learned to effectively utilize PMSC. Sadly, it appears the U.S. has not yet absorbed the lessons it has learned at dear cost during the past decade, meaning it has used its contracting weapon badly.

They found that:

only a meager body of research exists on how U.S. resources in the form of wartime contracts can be used most effectively to rebuild a war-torn economy. Consequently, if the United States embarks on another attempt at nation building, it may again be found ill prepared without a more concerted research effort into the economic reconstruction aspects of warfare, often referred to as expeditionary economics. Despite the U.S. military's long history of engaging in reconstruction, expeditionary economics remains relatively less understood than other aspects of war.

Put more simply, after thousands of American lives lost and at least a couple of trillion dollars, we deserve more at this point than a Dummies Guide to Contingency Contracting.

In their report “Contracting Under Fire: Lessons Learned in Wartime Contracting and Expeditionary Economics,” senior fellow Todd Harrison and research assistant John Meyers assess the U.S. Expeditionary Economics effort employing four case studies: Iraq's State-Owned Enterprises, Local-First Programs, the National Solidarity Program and Commander's Emergency Response Programs.

Read full article.

2012/12/212012/12/21

NIGHTWATCH: From 1979 to 2012 – No Improvement in DoD Response to Ambassadors and Embassies in Extremis + EE21 RECAP

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Military

Ambassador Dubbs was killed in Afghanistan in 1979, not 1988. Thus there has been no improvement in US crisis management responses for rescuing a US ambassador in trouble between 1979 and 2012.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: From 1979 to 2012 – No Improvement in DoD Response to Ambassadors and Embassies in Extremis + EE21 RECAP”

2012/12/202012/12/20

GI Wilson: A Tale for the Day — US Government (the Titanic), National Security Spending (the Iceberg), and Why We Are Our Own Worst Enemy

Corruption, Ethics, Government, Military

The ultimate 21st Century cage match: Titanic Government vs. the National Security Iceberg

Fabius Maximus, 20 December 2012

Summary: Today GI Wilson writes about the great game of the 21st century — the US government vs. our 4GW foes. Once called “low intensity war”, our foes have taught us the ability of sustained 4GW produces only a series of expensive defeats for foreign armies (no matter how powerful). A slow bleeding, until we either adapt or give up.

The recent article, “7 Absurd Ways the Military Wastes Taxpayer Dollars” by Laura Gottesdiene at Salon shines a bright light on military waste and the smarmy behavior of general officers. This smarmy behavior is just the tip of a national security iceberg. The personal foibles of these general officers are symptoms of a much deeper problem. In the wake of 9-11 we are witnessing the costly ineffectiveness our Titanic government bureaucracies. Today, a report by the Independent Accountability Review Board on Benghazi slammed senior level leadership and management laying bare national security miscalculations and incompetence. (Chicago Tribune)

What our national security apparatchiks are missing is that we live in a world where we are seeing sub-national “bad actors” use 4th generation warfare (4GW), which embodies low-tech tactics, techniques procedures (TTPs) together with insurrection, sabotage, espionage, and terrorism, to subvert nation-states. In effect, 4GW has emerged to challenge the established international system. While 4GW is not new, as some critics would have you believe, 4GW has emerged over several decades as the dominant style of warfare in the first part of the 21st Century.

The United States Government (USG) has not adapted to this change. Driven by conventional mentality and bureaucratic inertia, the Military Industrial Congressional Complex (MICC) and the US military has responded to the 4th generation warfare (4GW) threats with a conventional techno strategy of fielding high cost acquisition programs that created the MICC in the first place during the Cold War. The acquisition-programmatic approach to strategy led to a welter of highly complex programs and associated complex organizational relationships that force-fits the fighting man into a technological strait-jacket.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: No holds the US Government accountable for high crimes and misdemeanors — including being terribly irresponsible about everything that the government is supposed to be doing in the public interest. There is absolutely no question about the urgency of cutting the Pentagon budget in half (as well as reducing by at least 50% the number of flag officers and senior executives), but at the same time, we need intelligence with integrity in order to create a 450-ship Navy, a long-haul Air Force, and an air-liftable Army that would allow us, over ten years, to close most of our military bases overseas and bring our troops — and their purchasing power — home. One initiative we have put forward is that of the Open Source Agency (OSA). Another that we have alluded to but never been explicit about has to do with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Imagine the President establishing the OSA as a Whole of Government decision-support capabilities (with Congressional jurisdictions getting the same Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) that their Executive agencies are receiving) AND appointing a kick-ass Deputy Director for Management of OMB, with the authority to slash and burn up to 15% a year of any agencies budget, with an additional 10% subject to Presidential concurrence on the specifics. Now THAT is transformational.

2012/12/20

NIGHTWATCH: Benghazi – The Official Cover-Up

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military

Special NightWatch Comment: The most important finding of the Accountability Review Board (ARB) on the Benghazi tragedy is that al Qaida is alive and well and living in Benghazi. The rest is pretty much well known, with a few exceptions.

As harsh as the words of the ARB Report seem about high level failures in the State Department, no one is held accountable. The Board found that mistakes were made. The report is essentially a white wash. Three people at State resigned today, but that is not the same as facing legal proceedings for civil or criminal negligence in wrongful death. The Board gave everyone a pass.

A few things that are confusing in the Benghazi report.

1.The Board found that the ambassador was responsible for mission security and he should have pushed harder for improvements. The implication is the ambassador ultimately was responsible his own death. Hmm….The ambassador made at least three pleas for improved security, including the last on the day of his demise. Other parts of the report make clear that no amount of pushing to improve security would have made a difference with senior State Department leadership.

2.The Board found that mistakes were made. The use of passive voice means the Board refused to find anyone, except the dead ambassador, to blame for the mistakes. The message is that things went wrong; people were murdered, but it was no one's fault. This is the core of the whitewash. This viewpoint evades questions of causality, incompetence, negligence and blame.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: Benghazi – The Official Cover-Up”

2012/12/192012/12/19

Owl: Tribunal in Malaysia Convicts George Bush and Five Others (in Absentia) as War Criminals

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military

More on US war criminals as convicted by a tribunal in Malaysia.

Crime Watch: American Presidents and their Advisors are War Criminals

Especially this part:

“Most Americans, their minds focused at the moment on the tragic slaughter of 20 young children aged 5-10, along with five teachers and a school principal in Connecticut by a heavily-armed psychotic 21-year-old, are blissfully unaware that their last president, George W. Bush, along with five key members of his administration, were convicted in absentia of war crimes earlier this month at a tribunal in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

They are unaware because the US corporate media have ignored the story, just as that same corporate media have failed to note that the crimes of which Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and five White House lawyers, were convicted all could apply equally well to current President Barack Obama and his administration.

Continue reading “Owl: Tribunal in Malaysia Convicts George Bush and Five Others (in Absentia) as War Criminals”

2012/12/182012/12/18

Sepp Hasslberger: MSV Explorer Amphibious Vehicle Powered by Free Energy

IO Technologies, Military

MSV Explorer amphibious vehicle powered by free energy technology poised to be first to general market

British inventor and CEO, Chris Garner, has come up with the MSV Explorer, an amphibious vehicle that not only treks on land and through water, but is powered by an exotic free energy method he calls “self-sustaining” that will enable the vehicle to travel indefinitely without stopping for fuel. Coming next month.

(by Sterling D. Allan
Pure Energy Systems News
(With a lot of exclusive material)

British inventor and CEO, Chris Garner, has come up with the MSV Explorer, an amphibious vehicle that not only treks on land and through water, but is powered by an exotic free energy method he calls a “super high-performance, electro mechanical gyro generator system.”

The revolutionary system will not only propel their MSV Explorer craft, but is poised to revolutionize energy in general, as this will apply not just to propulsion and travel (namely, go as far as you want without ever stopping for fuel) but to energy generators (ditto). Anything that can move a vehicle can also provide prime mover power for a genset, making electricity, either for a home, business, vehicle, or utility.

The company, MSVEX, is presently running in-house tests, which they expect to be completed in about a week. After that, they will be doing third-party testing to validate the technology, probably at the University of Plymouth (UK), or another university, depending on available facilities.

Due to the sexy appearance of the craft, the story has been picked up all over the mainstream press, who can't help but call the energy source “perpetual motion”, rather than just saying that the technology harnesses a new force of nature not yet fully understood. The Daily Mail, for example, says: “Mr. Garner claims to have found a solution to the age-old puzzle of perpetual motion and is now poised to go public with his scientific breakthrough.” (Link)

Garner prefers to describe it as “self-sustaining energy”.

Third-Party Test Results of Self-Sustaining Power” Coming Soon

Phi Beta Iota: This would be a great SEAL “picket-line pod” (PLP), a whole series of which could be dropped off from an amphibious landing craft. It could also be used for sustainable short- and mid-term ocean surface surveillance, to include remotely piloted stealth versions.

Category: Military

Chuck Spinney: The Patraeus Myth & the Pentagon’s Big Lie