Military – Page 315 – Public Intelligence Blog

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TURN IN THESE CIA FUGITIVES : They’ll get 5-8 Years

By Carolyn Keuhn

NOV.4, 2009: Italy convicted 23 CIA rendition perps. All could be imprisoned if they leave the US.

An Italian judge on November 4, 2009, convicted 23 CIA agents and two Italian agents over their role in the 2003 kidnapping of a Muslim cleric. Milan judge Oscar Magi sentenced former Milan CIA station chief Bob Seldon Lady (on left in PHOTO with Luciano Pironi) to 8 years and 22 other agents (PHOTOS) to 5 years in prison for their role in the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. Also convicted was Air Force Colonel Joseph Romano (COLOR PHOTO), who was responsible for the CIA kidnapping team’s flight to Egypt from a U.S. air base in Italy.

CONTACT: Interpol, the international police agency, by email or at this FAX number in Switzerland: +33 4 72 44 71 63. (Refer to the warrant number given in the Robert Lady photo caption.) Or contact your local or national police.

The US is shielding the perps, whose names and PHOTOS are shown [at original source].

Continue reading “Journal: IndyMedia Wanted Poster on CIA Renditioners–Significant for Two Reasons”

2009/11/132009/11/13

Worth a Look: Key Leader Engagement

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 10 Security, Analysis, DoD, Key Players, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence, Worth A Look

Phi Beta Iota: Blessed commons sense from a Captain and intelligence professional in the U.S. Army. When we first entered Iraq we were told to avoid the immams and tribal chiefs, and this wasted at least four years of key leader engagement. Neither the secret world nor the military “Human Terrain Team” program have gotten a grip on cultural intelligence or a coherent holistic matrix for strategic, operational, and tactical exploitation of political-legal, socio-economic, ideo-cultural, techno-demographic, and natural-geographic Essential Elements of Information (EEI). We still have not integrated provincial team civil reporting with military tactical reporting, and still have both hugh gaps and costly overlaps. This monograph, this captain, are the tip of the spear not just in leadership engagement, but in reconcilation–there is a reason why “truth” is included “Truth & Reconciliation Commission.” BRAVO ZULU.

2009/11/132009/11/13

Worth a Look: Military Ethics in Tough Times

Ethics, Military, Worth A Look

Phi Beta Iota: Ethics equals effectiveness. This is the core message of this brillaint monograph by three authors deeply steeped in both ethics and the profession of arms. Put in other words, the truth at any cost and integrity above all else.

2009/11/132009/11/13

Journal: Versailles on the Potomac Implodes…Again

03 Economy, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Media, Military

Chuck Spinney sends….

The Afghan debacle is becoming a case study of how political debate in Versailles drips in a naturally self-organizing way to protect the dysfunctional status quo.

As I indicated yesterday and in September, the fundamental flaw that set the stage for the current policy making fiasco was the unexamined analytical hole in General McChrystal's escalation strategy — namely, its dependence of the rapid expansion of the corrupt and ineffective Afghan national security forces. McChrystal did not analyze this corruption/ineffectiveness issue, but that crucial omission was ignored the hoorah accompanying the immediate leaking of report by his allies buried somewhere in the Versailles apparat.

Continue reading “Journal: Versailles on the Potomac Implodes…Again”

2009/11/11

Journal: What Can Obama Learn from Gorbachev?

06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

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Chuck Spinney: a tribute to Gorbachev and and perhaps an example for Barack Obama?????

Day That Shook the World

by Eric Margolis Lew Rockwell.com November 10, 2009

In 1975, physicist Andrei Sakharov and a group of fellow Soviet academicians warned the Kremlin leadership that unless the nation’s ruinous defense spending was slashed and funds refocused on modernizing the nation’s decrepit, obsolete industrial base and its wretched state agriculture, the Soviet Union would collapse by 1990.

Their grim warning was prescient. Twenty years ago this week – 9 November, 1989 – boisterous German crowds forced open the hated Berlin Wall, Communist East Germany collapsed in black farce, and the once mighty Soviet Empire began to crumble.

This was one of modern history’s most dramatic and dangerous moments. No one knew if the dying Soviet Union would expire peacefully, or ignite World War III.

In November, 1989, the vast empire built by Stalin that stretched from East Berlin to Vladivostok was on its last legs. The USSR had 50,000 battle tanks and 30,000 nuclear warheads, but could not feed its people. Military spending consumed 20% of the economy. As I saw for myself while traveling around the Soviet Union in the late 1980’s, conditions were often primitive, even third world outside the big cities.

2009/11/092009/11/09

Journal: Body Count in Afghanistan

08 Wild Cards, Ethics, Government, Military

Full Story Online

Afghanistan’s Sham Army

Nov 9, 2009

By Chris Hedges

Success in Afghanistan is measured in Washington by the ability to create an indigenous army that will battle the Taliban, provide security and stability for Afghan civilians and remain loyal to the puppet government of Hamid Karzai. A similar task eluded the Red Army, although the Soviets spent a decade attempting to pacify the country. It eluded the British a century earlier. And the United States, too, will fail.

American military advisers who work with the Afghan National Army, or ANA, speak of poorly trained and unmotivated Afghan soldiers who have little stomach for military discipline and even less for fighting. They describe many ANA units as being filled with brigands who terrorize local populations, exacting payments and engaging in intimidation, rape and theft. They contend that the ANA is riddled with Taliban sympathizers. And when there are combined American and Afghan operations against the Taliban insurgents, ANA soldiers are fickle and unreliable combatants, the U.S. advisers say.

Continue reading “Journal: Body Count in Afghanistan”

2009/11/092009/11/09

Journal: Lessons of Viet-Nam

05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Newsweek November 16, 2009 Cover Story

The Surprising Lessons Of Vietnam

Unraveling the mysteries of Vietnam may prevent us from repeating its mistakes

By Evan Thomas and John Barry

Stanley Karnow is the author of Vietnam: A History, generally regarded as the standard popular account of the Vietnam War. This past summer, Karnow, 84, picked up the phone to hear the voice of an old friend, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. The two men had first met when Holbrooke was a young Foreign Service officer in Vietnam in the mid-1960s and Karnow was a reporter covering the war. Holbrooke, who is now the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was calling from Kabul. The two friends chatted for a while, then Holbrooke said, “Let me pass you to General McChrystal.” Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, came on the line. His question was simple but pregnant: “Is there anything we learned in Vietnam that we can apply to Afghanistan?” Karnow's reply was just as simple: “The main thing I learned is that we never should have been there in the first place.” [Emphasis added]

Continue reading “Journal: Lessons of Viet-Nam”