Below is an email circulating among retired military officers:
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When a company falls on difficult times, one of the things that seems to happen is they reduce their staff and workers. The remaining workers must find ways to continue to do a good job or risk that their job would be eliminated as well.
Wall street and the media normally congratulate the CEO for making this type of “tough decision”.
Our government should not be immune from similar risks.
Therefore:
Reduce the House of Representatives from the current435 members to 218members.
Reduce Senate members from 100 to 50 (one per State). Then, reduce their remaining staff by 25%.
Accomplish this over the next 8 years (two steps/two elections) and of course this would require some redistricting.
Offering new revelations about the CIA's role in shutting down military intelligence penetration of al-Qaeda, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer joins a growing list of government officials accusing former CIA director George Tenet of misleading federal investigators and sharing some degree of blame for the 9/11 attacks.
A decorated ex-clandestine operative for the Pentagon offers new revelations about the role the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) played in the shut-down of the military's notorious Able Danger program, alleged to have identified five of the 9/11 hijackers inside America more than a year before the attacks.
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer joins a growing list of government officials accusing former CIA director George Tenet of misleading federal bodies and sharing some degree of blame for the attacks. Shaffer also adds to a picture emerging of the CIA's Bin Laden unit as having actively prevented other areas of intelligence, law enforcement and defense from properly carrying out their counterterrorism functions in the run-up to September 2001.
Israeli spy was central cog in nuclear weapons proliferation alliance
It is clear that during the middle of December of last year that the Obama White House had settled on former Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to be the Secretary of Defense.
The U.S. Intelligence Community and defense establishment was told to come up with a strategy to combat the expected strong opposition to the nomination of the critical of Israel Hagel by that nation’s lobby in the United States.
The pro-Hagel circles needed a secret weapon to counteract the Israel supporters who would stress that Hagel was not supportive of the «special relationship» between the United States and Israel.
There was no better way to demonstrate that Israel was no special ally of the United States but a longtime hostile intelligence threat to America by declassifying a large part of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Damage Report arising from the intense espionage carried out by one-time U.S. Naval Intelligence spy Jonathan Jay Pollard on behalf of Israel.
The declassification of the long-classified Pollard report was made on December 16, 2012. However, the first substantial media reports on the report began around December 26.
The Jewish media, including Yeshiva World, Tablet Magazine, and Jewish Week, contended the report only showed that Pollard disclosed classified information on Arab and Soviet military capabilities, ignoring the fact that Pollard’s disclosures revealed the nature of U.S. intelligence sources and methods in obtaining such information, thereby putting U.S. civilian and military assets in extreme jeopardy.
The one major explosive revelation in the declassified report is Pollards’ involvement in a highly-classified Israeli-South African program to test a nuclear weapon in the South Atlantic/South Indian Ocean region in September 1979.
The Pollard Damage Assessment was prepared by the Director of Central Intelligence’s Foreign Denial and Deception Analysis Committee and issued on October 30, 1987.
The report reveals for the first time that Pollard began working as a U.S. naval intelligence watch officer the same month that Israel and South Africa, possibly with the financial support of Taiwan, detonated a nuclear device in the South Atlantic/South Indian Ocean near South Africa’s Prince Edward Islands.
This is the antecedent to my previous post on Gen. Mattis.
The administration’s mishandling of Marine Gen. James Mattis
Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Friday, January 18, 2013 – 9:50 AM
Word on the national security street is that General James Mattis is being given the bum's rush out of his job as commander of Central Command, and is being told to vacate his office several months earlier than planned.
General James Mattis, USMC
Why the hurry? Pentagon insiders say that he rubbed civilian officials the wrong way — not because he went all “mad dog,” which is his public image, and the view at the White House, but rather because he pushed the civilians so hard on considering the second- and third-order consequences of military action against Iran. Some of those questions apparently were uncomfortable. Like, what do you do with Iran once the nuclear issue is resolved and it remains a foe? What do you do if Iran then develops conventional capabilities that could make it hazardous for U.S. Navy ships to operate in the Persian Gulf? He kept saying, “And then what?”
Inquiry along these lines apparently was not welcomed — at least in the CENTCOM view. The White House view, apparently, is that Mattis was too hawkish, which is not something I believe, having seen him in the field over the years. I'd call him a tough-minded realist, someone who'd rather have tea with you than shoot you, but is happy to end the conversation either way.
Presidents should feel free to boot generals anytime they want, of course — that's our system, and one I applaud. But ousting Mattis at this time, and in this way, seems wrong for several reasons:
TIMING: If Mattis leaves in March, as now appears likely, that means there will be a new person running CENTCOM just as the confrontation season with Iran begins to heat up again.
Here are a few things I have heard since I posted my comments on Friday about the Obama administration pushing General Mattis out at Central Command. Thanks to all who wrote in to make this follow-up possible:
General James Mattis, USMC
A particular point of disagreement was what to do about mischief Iran is exporting to other countries. Mattis is indeed more hawkish on this than the White House was.
National Security Advisor Tom Donilon in particular was irked by Mattis's insistence on being heard. I cringe when I hear about civilians shutting down strategic discussions. That is exactly what the Bush administration did in late 2002 when generals persisted in questioning whether it was wise to invade Iraq. That led to what some might call a fiasco.
I wonder if Donilon understands that the key to making effective, sustainable national security policy is having robust, candid discussions between civilian and military leaders that bring to the surface differences and also explore assumptions. I am told that that is what Mattis was trying to do. He knows, as do all smart generals, that in our system, at the end of the discussion the civilians get to decide what to do. In a talk at Johns Hopkins SAIS in late November, Mattis said that, “We military leaders have a right and duty to be heard, to give our best military advice, but we were not elected to and we have no right to dictate.” (In the same talk, Mattis also likened Cairo today to Paris in 1789 — a very interesting thought, and one that made me wonder if 15 years from now, one Arab leader will dominate the entire region as Napoloen dominated Europe early in the 19th century.)
Insisting on being heard should be part of the duty of a senior general. That's the lesson of two great books: H.R. McMaster's Dereliction of Duty and Eliot Cohen's Supreme Command. Indeed, General Mattis cited the latter in his talk at Johns Hopkins SAIS. I suspect Donilon needs to brush up on both.
In spite of all the money being spent by Monsanto, Syngenta, and Bayer Crop Science and others to buy off governments the truth about the connection between neonicotinoids and the collapse of the bees is finally breaking through.
As time went on, however, Surov and his team ‘noticed quite a serious effect when we selected new pairs’ from the previous generation's cubs. They ‘continued to feed them as before. These pairs' growth rate was slower and reached their sexual maturity slowly.' By the third generation, the hamsters were infertile.”
. . . . . . . . . .
But infertility was almost the least of the strange pathologies observed. The GM diet hamsters developed hair growing in recessed pouches inside their mouths.
. . . . . . . . . .
Jeffrey M. Smith of the Center for Global Research, describes what happened: ‘Within just 10 days, the animals developed potentially pre-cancerous cell growth, smaller brains, livers and testicles, partially atrophied livers, and damaged immune systems. Moreover, the cause was almost certainly side effects from the process of genetic engineering itself. In other words, the GM foods on the market, which are created from the same process, might have similar affects on humans.”
ABOARD A MILITARY AIRCRAFT, Jan. 17, 2013 – The across-the-board spending cuts that would result if a “sequestration” mechanism in budget law kicks in March 1 will hollow out U.S. military forces faster than most Americans imagine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said today.
Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey said during a recent news briefing that if sequestration happens, the American military “will be less prepared in months and unprepared in a year.”
During an interview today on his return trip from NATO meetings in Brussels, the general said the cuts would quickly bring about a new type of hollow force.
ROBERT STEELE: Below is an extracted paragraph from the alleged letter, the one paragraph that makes sense:
To avert this crisis, we urge you to take immediate action to provide adequate and stable funding for readiness. We need a legislative solution that provides the time and flexibility to properly shape the best military force in the world. This means prioritizing warfighting readiness, appropriately sizing our military and civilian workforce and force structure, and reducing overhead costs. We must also be given the latitude to enact cost-saving reforms we need while eliminating the weapons and facilities we do not need.
My initial reaction is “wow!” HOWEVER, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have not met Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) basic guidance as issued when he was Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC):
I am constantly being asked for a bottom-line defense number. I don’t know of any logical way to arrive at such a figure without analyzing the threat,; without determining what changes in our strategy should be made in light of the changes in the threat; and then determining what force structure and weapons programs we need to carry out this revised strategy. Senator Sam Nunn, then Chairman, SASC Source (p. 3)
The Joint Chiefs of Staff have been dishonest and unprofessional up to this point, as have been their predecessors going all the way back to the end of World War II. They have administered to budget share driven by the Military Industrial Congressional Complex (MICC) while accepting extremely dishonest appraisals of the global threat, producing an incoherent strategy, and perpetuating an acquisition system that is so dysfunctional it could reasonably be found to be treasonous,the United States being at war at this time (whether legitimately declared or not).
Saturday, January 19, 2013 – 5:17 PM 
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