The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Wikipedia Biography with Many Links
The Macgregor Briefings: An Information Age Vision for the U.S. Army
NOTE 1: HTML versions work, PPT do not
NOTE 2: Cyber/IO is the enabler of all that he envisions.
Warrior's Rage: The Great Tank Battle of 73 Easting (2009)
Transformation Under Fire: Revolutionizing How America Fights (2004)
Breaking the Phalanx: A New Design for Landpower in the 21st Century (1997)
1 January 2011
Haiti: One Year Later (TheNonProfitTimes)
Haitians live in a make-shift camp close to the airport. Port au Prince Haiti was rocked by a massive earthquake, Tuesday January 12, devastating the city and leaving thousands dead. Photo Marco Dormino
31 December 2010
Continue reading “Haiti Rolling Update from 20100120…CLOSED”
Phi Beta Iota: When did it go out of style for warriors to speak the truth and only the truth? Lies kill our own and dishonor our Republic. It is time for integrity to come back into being. Advanced Cyber/Information Operations (IO) are about truth & trust. No amount of courage at the tactical level can overcome a dishonest, unaffordable, intellectually-bankrupt strategy.
Deluding ourselves from one failure to another
By COLONEL DOUGLAS MACGREGOR
American forces invaded Afghanistan more than nine years ago, and we still don't know whom we're fighting. It's hard to know who did the better job of playing us for fools a few weeks ago – the Afghan who passed himself off as the “moderate” Taliban leader, who was rewarded with American cash for his performance, or Hamid Karzai.
. . . . . . .
With the lion's share of Iraq‘s southern oil fields in Chinese hands and the Kurdish nationalists determined to control the country's largest oil reserves, more fighting in Iraq is inevitable. This sort of thing would almost be funny, in an insane sort of way, if such military leadership did not result in the pointless loss of American lives, undermine American strategic interests and erode the security and prosperity of the American people – the things the nation's four-stars are sworn to defend.
. . . . . . .
When the budget ax falls, many inconvenient facts will come to light, unmasking the great deception that America confronted a serious military threat in the aftermath of Sept. 11, a deception promoted and fostered by politicians and ambitious generals who sought to gain from it. It will horrify and discourage Americans to learn we've bankrupted ourselves in a fight that always was analogous to clubbing baby seals. From 2001 onward, we never confronted armies, air forces or capable air defenses. Bottom line: There was no existential military threat to the United States or its NATO allies emanating from Afghanistan or the Middle East. There is none today.
Read the entire righteous piece….
For the time being, no one will say these things. It's easier to go, in Winston Churchill's words, “from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm” and nurture the money flow to Washington.
Retired Col. Douglas Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran, is executive vice president of Burke-Macgregor Group. His newest book, Warrior's Rage, was published by Naval Institute Press. See also his earlier books, Breaking the Phalanx and Transformation Under Fire.
Why Can’t Europe Avoid Another Crisis? Why Can’t the U.S.?
By Simon Johnson (bio), Baseline Scenario, 30 December 2010
Our leading bankers looted the state, plunged the world into deep recession, and cost us 8 million jobs. And now many of them stand by with sharpened knives and enhanced bonuses – also most willing to suggest how the salaries and jobs of others can be further cut. Think about the morality of that one.
Will no one think hard about what this means for our budget and our political system until it is too late?
At Peter Thiel’s invitation-only “Breakthrough Philanthropy” event in San Francisco on December 7, which brought together Silicon Valley’s top entrepreneurs with eight of the most visionary non-profits, Patri Friedman, grandson of legendary economist Milton Friedman, presented one of the most radical, imaginative concepts I’ve heard in some time. Here’s the text of his four-minute talk (video below — other Breakthrough Philanthropy speaker videos here). — A. Angelica
Every year, our phones get smarter, our cars safer, and our medical treatments more advanced. We all benefit from startups and established companies competing through constant innovation. So why is it that in one of the most advanced countries in the world, we’re still using the legal technology … of 1787? I mean, if you drove a car from 1787, it would be a horse!
See rest of article and if desired view video….
Phi Beta Iota: There is a germ of a good idea here, that of creating viable alternatives for governance and sustenance as a model for others–the spike theory of change. It is however also remarkably utopian given the fact that between Bush Junior and Obama we have gone from 25 to 175 failed states and rising. Imagine Waterworld Somalian style. Ralph Peter nailed it long ago when he pointed out that the only path to wine, women, and wealth for the bulk of the population in failed states was at the point of a gun. Utopians simply do not get the reality that we live in a Whole System and until we can create a World that Works for All, these lovely ideas are nothing more than liberal speculative fancies. This web site and everyone associated with it are in the aggregate commited to restoring America the Beautiful, a Republic with liberty and justice for all. Seasteading–and geodesic domes–are great ideas that will only be beneficial if we can create a prosperous world at peace.
The Weekly Standard, DEC 29, 2010
In fact, the more we learn about what the plotters were up to, as well as the efforts to stop them, the more troubling the DNI’s ignorance becomes.
Three facts, in particular, have emerged that make this lapse inexcusable.
First, the State Department says the plotters had the U.S. embassy in London in their sites. On Monday, a Foggy Bottom spokesman confirmed that the embassy was on the plotters’ “targeting list.”
Second, according to the Guardian (UK), the alleged would-be terrorists were arrested “after several months of surveillance and monitoring by police and MI5 officers.”
Third, the UK press has reported that the plotters were, at the very least, inspired by the notorious al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki. … Awlaki is currently one of the most wanted terrorists in the world.
Phi Beta Iota: The DNI has been sand-bagged by three people and himself. Neither John Brennan (kitchen DNI at the White House), Leon Panetta (cheerleader for the CIA), or Michael E. Leiter (lawyer fronting the National Counterterrorism Center) appear to have any direct interest in seeing Jim Clapper succeed. Unfortunately, Jim Clapper has also sand-bagged himself by accepting “business as usual” and contenting himself with improvements on the margins–doing the wrong things righter. There is not a single piece of the US secret world that is working the way it should, in part because the entire mess lacks the legitimacy derived from relevance, and in part because the one thing Jim Clapper could have done on his own authority–the creation of an Open Source Center and an embedded Multinational Decision Support Centre–he has not done. Since the obvious needs to be spelled out, here are the two reasons why the OSC/MDSC are essential: 1) to begin providing the 96% of the decision-support not now provided to everyone including the President but explicitly not provided by classified to anyone below the President including policy, acquisition, and operations action officers; and b) to create the baseline for evaluating the Return on Investment (RoI) for the mis-begotten pieces of the secret world that are not, by any stretch of the imagination, worth the $90 billion a year they are costing us now. If there were one person among the seniors actually capable of making a difference, it should have been Jim Clapper. Happy New Year…
See Also:
Decision-support (intelligence) is the ultimate objective of information processes. One must carefully distinguish between data which is raw text, signal, or image; information which is collated data of generic interest; and intelligence which is information tailored to support a specific decision…
Robert David Steele Vivas On Intelligence (AFCEA, 2000)
As noted in an earlier Journal entry (Assessment of the Position of Director of National Intelligence December 27 2010), the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is an unclaimed orphan among the senior U.S. intelligence managers while the Office of DNI (ODNI) is an unwelcome member of the so-called Intelligence Community (IC). The current DNI, General James Clapper (USAF ret.) is a good man in a bad job. He conspicuously does not have the ear of his most important constituent, the President of the U.S. (POTUS) or the support of the President’s most important intelligence advisor John Brennan. So how can the DNI carve out a niche for himself and his office that will enable him to build a Washington D.C. based constituency that may even include the POTUS ?
Even a cursory examination of the principal agencies of the IC, will reveal that none of them are producing strategic intelligence. CIA maintains that its intelligence analysts (most less than five years in service) are too pressed by the need to develop current intelligence to engage in the in depth analysis and research required to produce strategic intelligence. State INR the only other intelligence center really capable of producing strategic intelligence tells much the same story. The once widely influential National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), primary vehicles for strategic intelligence, are no longer highly regarded guides to policy formulation.
Yet according to one of the most important thinkers on intelligence analysis, Sherman Kent, strategic intelligence provides, “the knowledge which our highly placed civilians and military men must have to guard the national welfare” (emphasis added). Put another way, strategic intelligence can be described as accurate and comprehensive information that is needed by decision makers to formulate policies or take actions to protect our national interests.
Continue reading “Building a Constituency for the Director of National Intelligence”
TruthDig Posted on Dec 28, 2010
By Robert Scheer
Two years into the Obama presidency and the economic data is still looking grim. Don’t be fooled by the gyrations of the stock market, where optimism is mostly a reflection of the ability of financial corporations—thanks to massive government largesse—to survive the mess they created. The basics are dismal: Unemployment is unacceptably high, the December consumer confidence index is down and housing prices have fallen for four months in a row. The number of Americans living in poverty has never been higher, and a majority in a Washington Post poll said they were worried about making their next mortgage or rent payment.
In a parallel universe lives Peter Orszag, President Barack Obama’s former budget director and key adviser, who even faster than his mentor, Robert Rubin, has passed through that revolving platinum door linking the White House with Wall Street. The goal is to use your government position to advance the interests of your future employer, and Orszag and Rubin’s actions in the government and then at Citigroup provide stunning examples of the synergy between big government and high finance.
