Communities of Practice – Page 1372 – Public Intelligence Blog

2009/12/132009/12/13

Officers Call: A Conversation About Iraq II

02 China, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 10 Security, Analysis, Ethics, IO Sense-Making, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Sir,

There's nothing inherently wrong with the analysis of Al Qaeda (I just glanced at it, if you wish I can read in detail today). The PROBLEM lies not so much in how we analyze support to terrorism (state, crime, other) but rather in the way we analyze (or rather do NOT analyze) EVERYTHING.

Here's what I have thrown together for you, in six pages with links.

Summary of Contents (OC Iraq II)

Why We Missed the Threat
Terrorism is Threat Number Nine Out of Ten
Terrorism is a Tactic, Al Qaeda an Interest Group
Without Legitimacy Forget About Stabilization
Rebalancing the Instruments of National Power
Three Things Secret Intelligence Cannot Do
Advise & Assist Transition to Exit Menu
- Strategic Communications
- Inter-Agency Professionals
- Regional Concordat
- Faith Brigades
- Redirect Funds Toward Waging Peace
- Contain Israel
- Make Nice with China

Officers Call on Iraq I

Semper Fidelis, Robert

2009/12/112009/12/11

Journal: College Musings on Ron Paul and Economy

03 Economy, 11 Society, Communities of Practice, Ethics

Full Story Online

The Ron Paul Revolution Continues

Lauren Kawam Issue date: 12/10/09 Section: News

He calls himself the “The ‘Real' hope for America – not hype,” according to his MySpace page, and if the number of friends he has on there is any indication – nearly 200,000 – Ron Paul isn't fading into the dust, at least not with the technologically savvy generations.

. . . . . . .

“The very good thing that has happened here in the last two years is that government's credibility is crashing,” Paul said. “There's been way too much trust in the government. That has been our moral hazard over many, many centuries. Trust in the government that it's here to help you, it's here to protect you … they're going to scare everybody to death to try to argue the reason why you have to have big government, and you really don't. What we need is more faith, more confidence and a better understanding of what individual liberty is all about.”

Continue reading “Journal: College Musings on Ron Paul and Economy”

2009/12/092009/12/16

Reference: General McCaffrey’s Trip Report on AF

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Military, Peace Intelligence, Policy, Strategy

After Action Report–General Barry McCaffrey, USA (Ret)

Visit to Kuwait and Afghanistan 10-18 Nov 09

11 pages

Extracted points

01 Phenomenally useful report with too much cheerleading. This is a 10-year regional war, State Department and AID are pulling out for next several years (too dangerous), costing us roughly half per day what we paid for all of WW II per day. Allies not really showing up and being effective, less the British.

02 Talked to Generals, Ambassadors, and Ministers–no Captions, no village chiefs. Nothing in her on intelligence, glosses over the C4I and protocol issues (see Journal: Beyond Weber to Epoch B Leadership).

03 Achilles' heels are multiple: 90% of the logistics come through Karachi, Pakistan and then overland. Without fire support and aviation this war is lost. Taliban now up to battalion-sized operations and believe they have high moral ground and time on their side. 100% US movement by air. (See Review: Firepower In Limited War; aviation sounds like a repeat of Viet-Nam; only thing keeping logistics open are the same decision made by NVA in Viet-Nam and by Iran-Syria in Iraq: better to let the Americans bleed themselves to death than cut their main supply line.

Continue reading “Reference: General McCaffrey's Trip Report on AF”

2009/12/092009/12/09

Journal: US Begins Regional War on Pashtun

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

Chuck Spinney sends:
In my opinion, this is an extremely important piece of writing and needs to be read very carefully. The author of this article built an international reputation for excellence during his reporting on the Iraq War, and now he is positioning himself to do the same on Afghanistan. Conflating al Qaeda with the Taliban will mutate the so-called war on terror into an Anti-Pashtun (AF-Pak) War, with unknowable ramifications that could very well make the lunacy of Mad King George's aggression in Iraq look miniscule in comparison.

Full Story Online

A Wider and Unnecessary War: The March of Folly

By PATRICK COCKBURN December 7, 2009

By treating Pashtun villagers as if they were all Taliban, and Taliban as being the equivalent of al-Qa’ida, Mr Obama is increasing, not reducing, the threat of terrorist attack on the US or Britain. He is providing the battleground bin Laden hoped for and, like President Bush before him, has jumped willingly into the al-Qa’ida trap.

. . . . . .

One of the most foolish and misleading claims by US and British generals is that fighting a guerrilla war can be successfully combined with dispensing aid and building bridges and roads. But, as one commentator puts it, such a mixture of Wyatt Earp and Mother Theresa is not feasible. Soldiers are trained to get what they want by force and that is generally what they do. Afghans whose families have just been killed by a bomb will not be conciliated by a fine new drainage system.

Other minefields face incoming American and British forces. The Afghan government is in many respects a criminal racket.

2009/12/092009/12/17

Journal: Running Interference On Interference

08 Wild Cards, Military, Mobile

Running Interference On Interference

December 9, 2009: The U.S. Army, which operates thousands of UAVs (over 90 percent of them the five pound Raven, which gives each company commander his own recon aircraft), has found more and more of them suffering from electronic interference. This problem is expected to get worse, especially as the army introduces dozens of Sky Warriors (a cousin to the air force Predator) over the next year or so. The larger UAVs have a lot more going on inside them, and a lot more electronic commands coming to the aircraft. The air force has noted an increase in electronic interference in its growing fleet of Predators and Reapers. Some air force officers believe the enemy is trying to electronically jam the command signals, or electronics on board the UAVs. But electronics experts believe it's just the greater number electronic signals in the air, even in rural Afghanistan. Nevertheless, better encryption is being used for the control signals going to and from U.S. UAVs.

Phi Beta Iota: Tip of the hat to Strategy Page. Over 30 years ago it was known that Soviet emission standards were ten times tougher than ours. Today we not only do not have emission standards to speak of, but we use open commercial communicaitons satellites and we do not worry about having all our Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems online. The U.S. Government appears to be completely oblivious to basic realities.

2009/12/08

Journal: Dumb Crowd Sourcing–Good Start

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats

Pyramid scheme lets audience vote for climate solutions

A worldwide audience will decide the planet's fate in game-show format during the Copenhagen climate summit by suggesting and voting on climate solutions and how they will be funded.

Phi Beta Iota: This is exactly the right idea in the wrong venue with the wrong frame of reference. We love it, it is a good start. What they should be doing is creating a Global Range of Need Table that spans all ten high level threats to humanity, across all twelve core policy areas, with preference given to the eight major humanities. See Strategic Analytic Model and also Earth Intelligence Network. Below is the two-pager circulating in United Nations and BRIC circles.

UN World Brain Institute and Global Game Talking Points (2 pages)

2009/12/082009/12/08

Journal: Google to Planet–You Don’t Need Privacy

09 Justice, 10 Security, Commerce, Government, Law Enforcement

Eric Schmidt CEO Google

Google CEO: Secrets Are for Filthy People

Eric Schmidt suggests you alter your scandalous behavior before you complain about his company invading your privacy. That's what the Google CEO told Maria Bartiromo during CNBC's big Google special last night, an extraordinary pronouncement for such a secretive guy.

Google chief: Only miscreants worry about net privacy

“If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place,” Schmidt tells CNBC, sparking howls of incredulity from the likes of Gawker.

Sue Google for Cheating You on AdSense

Everything went according to plan until 11:00 A.M. on December 9, 2008. With a single click, a faceless Google employee decided that Think Computer Corporation's membership in the AdSense program “posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers,” and the account was disabled with no warning.

Full Story Online The Ron Paul Revolution Continues

Full Story Online

The Ron Paul Revolution Continues