Journal: Out of Troops, Strategy, & Leadership

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Military

Phi Beta Iota: We'll figure out the troop balance, probably by getting serious about Of, By, and Through IQ forces between now and July 2010–we do that or both the Democrats and Republicans are toast in November 2010.  What merits deep reflection below is the mental health angle that ties in with the Fort Hood massacre.  And while we're on that topic, RUSH AND CRUSH is the new paradigm for surviving armed attacks.  See, Shout, Rush & Crush.  Absent a gattling gun, no one should be able to hit more than three people with this strategy, and two of those will almost certainly live.  From Virgiia Polytechnic to Fort Hood, citizens standing like sheep waiting to be murdered, is an indictment of our culture, education, and lack of leadership.

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New Afghan War Headache: Not Enough Troops Available?

David Wood, 11/6/09

Just to maintain the 16 current brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan is, let's see, three times 16 is 48 and – oops! We're already out of BCTs! And here's the White House blithely batting around numbers like 40,000 more troops. That's roughly eight BCTs, which do not exist.

Below the fold: two key paragraphs on stress, battle performance after multipe tour, and suicides.

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Journal: Chuck Spinney Sends–Viet-Nam RMK-BRJ Reprise….Wanna Fix New Orleans? Just move it to Afghanistan….

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Ethics, Military

… because, even though Obama may think he is weighing his policy “options,” the Pentagon is busily politically engineering the the flow of infrastructure funds needed to lock in the constituent support for its Long War.

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2014 or Bust: The Pentagon’s Afghan Building Boom
Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt, November 06, 2009

In our day, the American way of war, especially against lightly armed guerrillas, insurgents, and terrorists, has proved remarkably heavy. Elephantine might be the appropriate word. The Pentagon likes to talk about its “footprint” on the geopolitical landscape. In terms of the infrastructure it’s built in Iraq and Afghanistan, perhaps “crater” would be a more reasonable image.

American wars are now gargantuan undertakings. The prospective withdrawal of significant numbers/most/all American forces from Iraq, for instance, will — in terms of time and effort — make the 2003 invasion look like the vaunted “cakewalk” it was supposed to be. According to Pentagon estimates, more than 1.5 million (yes, that is “million”) pieces of U.S. equipment need to be removed from the country. Just stop and take that in for a second.

Of course, it’s a less surprising figure when you realize that the Pentagon managed to build, furnish, and supply almost 300 bases, macro to micro, in Iraq alone in the war years. And some of those bases were — and still are — the size of small American towns with tens of thousands of troops, private contractors, and others, as well as massive perimeters, multiple bus routes, full-scale PX’s, fast-food outlets, movie theaters, and the like.

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Journal: DARPA Tests Twitter

Civil Society, Government, Methods & Process, Military, Mobile, Real Time, Technologies
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DARPA to hold Internet competition

Challenge features 10 red balloons

By Doug Beizer Nov 04, 2009

A contest planned by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will challenge contestants to use the Internet to locate the 10 large red weather balloons the agency will place across the continental United States, DARPA officials announced last week.   DARPA will put the balloons in publicly accessible locations and display them for one day during daylight hours. The first participant to identify the latitude and longitude of all the balloons will receive the $40,000 cash prize. The balloons will be positioned Dec. 5, DARPA officials said Oct. 29.

Phi Beta Iota:  This is a no-brainer for Twitter–Graphics: Twitter as an Intelligence Tool

Journal: One Man – One Bullet on the Table

09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, Ethics, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence

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U.S. Needs Hit Squads, ‘Manhunting Agency’: Spec Ops Report

Noah Shachtman   November 3, 2009

CIA director Leon Panetta got into hot water with Congress, after he revealed an agency program to hunt down and kill terrorists. A recent report from the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations University argues that the CIA didn’t go far enough (.pdf). Instead, it suggests the American government should set up something like a “National Manhunting Agency” to go after jihadists, drug dealers, pirates and other enemies of the state.   . . . . . . .

Such a group wouldn’t just go after terrorists. “Human networks are behind narcotics trafficking, arms proliferation, piracy, hiding war criminals from authorities, human trafficking, or other smuggling activities,” Crawford writes. “Human networks also lie at the core of national governments, offering an increased potential to nonlethally influence state actors with precision. A robust manhunting capability would allow the United States to interdict these human networks.”

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Journal: Weak Signal on Afghanistan

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Military
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Major General Mike Flynn, director of intelligence for General Stanley McChrystal's headquarters in Kabul, warned that the number of insurgents in Afghanistan (many of whom were from other countries) was now between 19,000 and 27,000, a ten-fold increase since 2004. “I wouldn't say it's out of control right now,” Flynn explained, “but this is a California wildfire and we're having to bring in firemen from New York.”

Journal: Afghanistan–The Arithmetic of the Frontier

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Government, Military

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Afghan jezail
Afghan jezail

Boston Globe

By H.D.S. Greenway

November 3, 2009

PRESIDENT OBAMA  is doing the arithmetic of fighting in Afghanistan and figuring the odds of Pakistan pulling through. He must not only add up the numbers of soldiers he wants to hand over to his generals, but must also measure what is achievable against what his country has to spend in money and blood. General Stanley McChrystal?s requests echo those of Marshal Akhromeyev, who begged the Soviet Politburo for more soldiers for his war 20 years ago.

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Journal: Chuck Spinney Sends–Katrina & Fear

03 Environmental Degradation, 08 Wild Cards, 12 Water, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Military
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

The Detritus of Katrina and the Paralysis of Fear:
A Metaphor for Contemporary Politics

The vast Mississippi Delta in Louisiana is sinking as sea water from the Gulf of Mexico seeps in to destroy its fresh water marshlands.  The Army's Corps of Engineers says it can not protect New Orleans from the inevitable storm surges caused by hurricanes (see the Guardian report attached below).

Some may dismiss this warning as alarmist hype, and the Army's Corps of Engineers certainly does not have an enviable track record in this regard.  That said, the Corps' warning does make evident the political-economic  detritus left over from Hurricane Katrina.  Inferentially, the warning also highlights the hollowness in the scare tactics used by global warming advocates to raise money for their far more costly ambitions, not to mention the paralyzing political-economic consequences posed by the politics of fear practiced by the Pentagon.

The reality of the Delta thus becomes a metaphor for the larger emptiness that now pervades American politics.

Below the Fold: Balance of Spinney Comment, Full Article with Highlight, Books
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