Military – Page 243 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/07/05

Chuck Spinney: Why US War Machine Goes On…and On…

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Sounds Off....

Important note to readers: This differs from the published version. I made one really dumb error (bold below) and corrected a few typos and added some hotlinks to aid referencing. I apologize for my inexcusable mistake. Chuck Spinney

July 5, 2011

Perpetual Motion

Why the War Machine Keeps on Running

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch

http://www.counterpunch.org/spinney07052011.html

Villefranche, France.

The United States has always meddled in other people's affairs. For those readers who think this statement is an exaggeration, I urge them to peruse the chronology of interventions compiled by the Congressional Research Service. This historical predilection for meddling, however, grew enormously in depth and breadth during the Cold War, and to make matters worse, it is now clear that it exploded after the end of the Cold War.

Full story with correction below the line.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Why US War Machine Goes On…and On…”

2011/07/05

Michael Ostrolenk: Across the USA Call to End Militarism

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Americans from Across the Political Spectrum Call for End to U.S. Militarism

Posted on July 5, 2011 by comehomeamerica

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, July 5th 2011

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
Kevin B. Zeese
KBZeese at Gmail.com, 518-543-6920

Americans from Across the Political Spectrum Call for End to U.S. Militarism

Washington, DC: Putting aside political differences on other issues, Americans from across the political spectrum have sent a letter to the president and congress urging an end to U.S. militarism. The letter, spearheaded by Come Home America, cites a combination of events that present a “historic opportunity to redirect U.S. foreign policy down the pathways of peace, liberty, justice, respect for community, obedience to the rule of law and fiscal responsibility.” The full letter with all signers can be seen at www.ComeHomeAmerica.US.

Read full release…

2011/07/04

Pakistan Plays & Attacks US with US Money….

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Intelligence (government), IO Impotency, Military

India is the source, but this passes the smell test.

Ex-militant bares Pak army lies, gameplan

CARLOTTA GALL

Indian Express, 5 July 2011

Pakistan’s military continues to nurture a broad range of militant groups as part of a three-decade strategy of using proxies against its neighbours and US forces in Afghanistan, a prominent former militant commander said.

Full article….

Phi Beta Iota: The details are compelling. What this really means is that the CIA and the Department of Defense are either incredibly ignorant of Pakistani plans and intentions, or remarkably cavalier and corrupt. What appears clear is that this is a sucking chest wound in US “intelligence” and national “defense” going back thirty years and multiple generations of so-called leaders who have no real grasp of reality in Pakistan.

2011/07/012011/07/01

Defense Cuts Coming–Small, Hard, & Unethical

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Media, Military, Officers Call

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Following below are several headlines about the prospects for the Defense Budget. As an overarching summary, what you need to know is that, at the working level, the fiscal decrements are already impacting heavily. We simply do not have the resources to do the routine work necessary to steward the force and plan for the future. The division I work in is currently operating at less than 60 percent of the people we need and we are supposedly one of the elite places. Money for necessary travel has dried up for all but Generals and SES's and our capability to conduct necessary planning conferences has been formally terminated. So, at most optimistic and charitable characterization, the future looks dodgy.

Next US Defense Chief Will Not Gut Military: Pentagon

Pentagon Costs Are Rising Fast, CBO Warns (Health Care)

Defense Cuts Appear Likely As Pressure Grows To Pass A Debt Deal

The Peril Of Deep Defense Cuts (Donald Rumsfeld)

Phi Beta Iota: Defense cuts will be at least 30% over the next ten years, and hopefully as much as 50%. What we have now is a circle of outright lies among all pertinent executive and legislative officials. An ethical Secretary of Defense would be identifying contracts, starting with most of what DARPA and the services are doing in the way of futures, and present a list to Congress of needed cuts irrespective of contract law, the US now being in a state of war and the exingencies of the situation mandating a legislative override of contract law. Salami slicing is the idiot's path to temporary relief. The entire US government is bloated and broken, not just the Department of Defense. This is not a system that can be repaired in the absence of intelligence and integrity. It needs to be replaced–or not even replaced, just routed around and starved to death.

Dr. Russell Ackoff on IC and DoD + Design RECAP

Campaign for Liberty: Steele on IC and DoD

2011/07/012011/07/01

Angst from Afghanistan: A Grunt’s Statement

10 Security, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

From a brave but frustrated front-line infantry leader. Shades of SLA Marshall!

as the Army stands down from conflict life will get very dull……

Yeah I am dreading that and honestly I LOVE the Army. It's always the politics. Just like the article I read on MSNBC talking about the new strategy is to do “surgical strikes”. One of my favorite quotes ever is “Bombing from a B-52 is very effective. The bombs always hit the ground.” I just think it is funny when you blow up a mud hut in some shit hole country people think it makes a difference. It doesn't and at the end of a week the mud hut is back and it's back to whatever it was doing before it
was destroyed. Bombardment denies enemy the terrain only as long as stuff is exploding. Once the explosions stop anybody can walk through there. That is why nothing has ever beat the infantryman. It's why the Infantry has been around since the dawn of armies.

People are complaining about the cost of the wars and here again it's Politics. Congressman and Senators
and the general public forcing equipment training and standards onto the military that is may not necessarily need or want. We have cooks in the army we don't need the KBR chow-halls. I have two good legs and feet I
don't need a truck most of the time. I definitely don't want these MRAP's that I am being FORCED to use. Give me a soft skin Humvee a mission, beans and bullets and look see what I can do. Body armor, armored vehicles and these chu's while yes they are nice they aren't necessary. Somewhere though somebody thought it should be the rule and not the exception and here we are trillions of dollars later and for what. I don't really blame
army leadership as much as politics. I don't mean politicians either although they are the cause of a lot of this pain. Family and friends back home, bystanders and people who think their opinion should matter are
complaining that people are dying in Humvee's and we need something better. Hence the MRAP. People wanna know why the military doesn't have body armor and hell cops do. Cops don't carry near the gear and ride
around on motorcycles or in cars. Take away some of my crap and let me walk, I won't get blown up as much cause I am not walking on a road, I will be able to think clearer because I am not so miserable and let me
kill the bad guys so I feel there is a purpose. To the victor goes the spoils, but since when is the spoils of war rebuilding the losers country then leaving it???

Phi Beta Iota: DefDog refers to Review (Guest): The Soldier’s Load and the Mobility of a Nation. The USA does not have light infantry. As MajGen Bob Scales has observed, we spend 1% of the budget on the 4% of the force that takes 80% of the casualties.

Review (Guest): On Infantry

Review: Phantom Soldier–The Enemy’s Answer to U.S. Firepower

Review: War is a Racket–The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier

2011/07/01

Open Source Insurgency = System Disruption

09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of Peace, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence

Thursday, 30 June 2011

WAR NERD: How the IRA used Systems Disruption

I've enjoyed The War Nerd for years. Great, colorful writing. The author of the column, “Gary Brecher,” was never on the same page as me when it came to warfare. However, that's changed.

He now thinks, and makes an excellent case for global guerrilla thinking. In short: that blood and guts warfare is counter productive and that systems disruption (hiting network systempunkts/nodes to generate high ROI‘s and publicity) is a potential path to long term victory for guerrillas. In short: in the modern context, if you keep the blood/guts to a min, and keep the cost ratio massively in your favor while staying alive, you will eventually win.

To demonstrate this, he has a great article on how the IRA eventually adopted systems disruption:

“In 1994, they took the idea of non-lethal warfare a notch up by doing one of the most revolutionary things any guerrilla army has ever done: IRA mortar teams dropped shells on the runways at Heathrow Airport, totally stopping air traffic… but the shells weren’t even designed to explode. Intentional duds. That’s amazing; I’ve never heard of anything like that. It shows how far they’d come by that stage, away from the simple Al Qaeda maximum-blood crap I bought into in that earlier article. In contemporary urban guerrilla warfare, at least in Western Europe, killing civvies is counterproductive. What you want to do, what the IRA had mastered by the 1990s, was messing with the incredibly fragile and expensive networks that keep a huge city going. Interrupt them and you cost the enemy billions of dollars, and they don’t even have any gory corpses to shake in your faces. Fucking brilliant, and I was too dumb to see it!

Continue reading “Open Source Insurgency = System Disruption”

2011/06/302011/06/30

Obama Honors Gates for Civility

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military

Obama made it clear today….civility is the Washington D.C. substitute for integrity. Go along with with military-industrial complex and you get the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Speak truth to power, and you lose your job. Land of the free and home of the brave? Not in Washington, D.C.

Phi Beta Iota: These are smart people. To tell the lies they do, to behave as they do, is not out of ignorance. It is the elevation of personal greed and political ideology over integrity. The Republicans are just as guilty–one bird, two wings, same stink.

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