Corruption – Page 777 – Public Intelligence Blog

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

Robert Gates has been called the best secretary of defense in recent memory. On the other hand, he has a reputation with some as a slick career bureaucrat with a knack for avoiding blame but pocketing credit. Both are true.

“Best in recent memory?” It would have been hard for Gates to have been a bigger tower of ego, bluster and incompetence than Donald Rumsfeld, more of a non-entity than William Cohen, or a more fervent technology huckster than William Perry. Nonetheless, with a very small number of worthwhile decisions that he had the smarts to make stick, Gates has won himself the swooning accolades of the vast majority of the media, most (but not all) think tank Pooh-Bahs from the left, right and center, and just about every politician in the country.

Why would I be negative about a respected personality who did, indeed, exercise some very long overdue discipline on the recalcitrant military services? They had, for example, busied themselves running around Donald Rumsfeld and his predecessors to keep alive sacred – but outrageously expensive and under-performing – hardware programs like the F-22 (lately priced at over $400 million per copy). They also had tried to stiff much needed reforms to improve wounded veterans care at dysfunctional facilities like Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Gates fired the malefactors and stuffed the porkers in Congress when they tried to resuscitate the F-22. Those actions alone earn him the “best in recent memory” accolade.

The negativity comes – at least to me – when I realize the authority Gates achieved for himself with those actions and a few well-worded policy journal articles and speeches. Then, I compare that power to what he accomplished, or just tried to accomplish. Having won for himself recently unprecedented power as secretary of defense, what did he use his power to do?

Here is my list of important things that Robert Gates didn't fix and didn't even try to fix.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: What Gates Did NOT Do…”

2011/06/15

David Brooks Doth Protest–Not Nearly Enough!

07 Other Atrocities, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Pundit Under Protest

By DAVID BROOKS

New York Times, June 13, 2011

I’ll be writing a lot about the presidential election over the next 16 months, but at the outset I would just like to remark that I’m opining on this whole campaign under protest. I’m registering a protest because for someone of my Hamiltonian/National Greatness perspective, the two parties contesting this election are unusually pathetic. Their programs are unusually unimaginative. Their policies are unusually incommensurate to the problem at hand.

The election is happening during a downturn in the economic cycle, but the core issue is the accumulation of deeper structural problems that this recession has exposed — unsustainable levels of debt, an inability to generate middle-class incomes, a dysfunctional political system, the steady growth of special-interest sinecures and the gradual loss of national vitality.

The number of business start-ups per capita has been falling steadily for the past three decades. Workers’ share of national income has been declining since 1983. Male wages have been stagnant for about 40 years. The American working class — those without a college degree — is being decimated, economically and socially. In 1960, for example, 83 percent of those in the working class were married. Now only 48 percent are.

Read complete article–devastating, but not nearly enough so…..

2011/06/15

FROM LIBYA – NATO Bombs Al Fateh University

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, IO Sense-Making, Military, Peace Intelligence

Video

Al Fateh University (Arabic: جامعة الفاتح) is the largest and most important institute of higher education in Libya, providing undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate levels of study. It is located in the capital Tripoli. The university was founded as an independent university in 1973 as the University of Tripoli when the University of Libya was divided up. It is home to more than 45,000 students with a faculty of more than 2,500. TUITION IS FREE.

On June 14, NATO bombed this civilian university, damaging the library and disrupting the end term preparations for final exams. Several buildings suffered serious structural damage, and much of the library's stock was ruined. Students and university staff pitched in to do a major cleanup of black dust and smoke damage. If it weren't for a last-minute scheduling change, two of the damaged buildings would have been packed with students, and hundreds, if not thousands, would have been killed. Fortunately, no one was killed.

For description of the bombing itself, see http://www.facebook.com/notes/cynthia-mckinney/from-cynthia-mckinney-more-nato-humanitarian-intervention-the-bombing-of-al-fate/10150200734711139

ALSO – just so you understand (for those outside the US, or those inside living in protected environments), this is an example of how the US authorities act on our streets, from Miami, 30 May 2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-r7pz3UXrs&feature=channel_video_title

2011/06/132011/06/13

US Billions in Cash Stolen in Early Days of Iraq II

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence

US: $6.6bn in Iraq aid ‘may have been stolen'

By David Usborne, US Editor

Tuesday, 14 June 2011

Years after American auditors said they had lost track of vast sums of reconstruction cash for Iraq in the wake of the ousting of Saddam Hussein they are now admitting for the first time that much of it was almost certainly stolen.

In a revelation that is stirring anger both on Capitol Hill and among Iraqi officials in Baghdad, the office that was created by the Bush administration to monitor efforts to get Iraq on its feet after the 2003 invasion is saying that $6.6bn (£4bn), all delivered in cash, cannot be accounted for.

Just how much of the missing money was pocketed either by US contractors or Iraqis is not clear, nor is it likely that a full picture of what happened will ever be painted. Even so, Stuart Bowen, who runs the monitoring office, says that the errant billions may represent the “largest theft of funds in national history”.

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: This is old news and it was much more. By one account, Paul Bremer was unable to account for over $10 billion in shipped cash (12 airplanes, $2 billion each, rough estimate $24 billion. That is completely apart from the fact that we paid tens of millions to US contractors when local engineers who built the originals were asking for hundreds of thousands.

2011/06/13

DOT&E Documents and Tony Capaccio Story

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Military, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Standards, Technologies

There are a set of documents at the DOT&E website which offer DOT&E insights into the reason for why about 40 programs have experienced delays — and costs. These documents relate to a Tony Capaccio story in today's Bloomberg News (below).

The document titled “Updated DOT&E Input on Program Delays” (at the DOT&E link shown above) identifies various specific reasons for the problems programs experience — different from most of the explanations from contractors and other system advocates in and out of the Pentagon. (Eg. for the F-35: Fly rates per month lowered to more realistic projections (from 12 max for all variants and venues to 10 max for CTOL/CV flight sciences, 9 max for STOVL flight sciences, 8 max for all mission systems); increased planning factors for re-fly and regression (up 15% for flight science, 10% for mission systems); more time required for software development and incremental builds.”)

Beyond the F-35, the various systems described in the analysis are typically more obscure programs (eg. AIM-9X 8.212 Software Upgrade) but there are also a few better known ones, such as LCS, which is described in “fly before buy,” Congress and the Navy want to rush ahead of testing to buy 4 LCS in the 2012 HASC DOD Authorization bill for $1.8 billion in production costs.

Availability of complete mission packages will be delayed until at least 2015.

Instead of withholding production of untested systems with clear and obvious development problems, Congress and the Pentagon are intent on business as usual. The LCS is a good example: instead of “fly before buy,” Congress and the Navy want to rush ahead of testing to buy 4 LCS in the 2012 HASC DOD Authorization bill for $1.8 billion in production costs.

Some will think the DOT&E analysis and documents to be obscure and too “in the weeds” to pay much attention to. Instead, they offer a major part of the explanation for why hardware costs and delays are so out of control, and they offer a stunning view into how little is being done about that.

BloombergNews.com, June 13, 2011

Weapons Testers Found Not to Blame for Procurement Delay

2011/06/13

NO DIFFERENCE: Obama’s White Half Is Bush III

Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Law Enforcement, Policies, Threats

Headline Revelations

Glenn Greenwald

Salon, 13 June 2011

Dan Gillmor observes that the two top New York Times headlines this morning “sum up the Obama administration”:

EXTRACT: As Yale Professor Jack Balkin recently put it to Jane Mayer about the Obama presidency: “We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state.” This state, as much as anything, is devoted to gathering as much intrusive data as possible about as many citizens as possible without a shred of oversight or suspicion of wrongdoing: exactly that which has proven to create inevitable abuse and exactly that which the Fourth Amendment sought to bar.

SECOND EXTRACT: The article also notes that one possible threat to Obama's plan would be a Romney candidacy, as Wall Street would love to back one of their own, and Romney — who amassed a fortune by saddling companies with debt and then firing huge numbers of their employees — is the very essence of what Wall Street loves.

Read full review….

2011/06/132011/06/13

Whistle-Blowers of 1777 & Congressional Intent

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Autonomous Internet, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Impotency, Law Enforcement, Officers Call

The Whistle-Blowers of 1777

Stephen M. Kohn

New York Times, 12 June 2011

The tension between protecting true national security secrets and ensuring the public’s “right to know” about abuses of authority is not new. Indeed, the nation’s founders faced this very issue.

. . . . . . .

Later that month, without any recorded dissent, Congress enacted America’s first whistle-blower-protection law: “That it is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States, as well as all other inhabitants thereof, to give the earliest information to Congress or any other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds or misdemeanors committed by any officers or persons in the service of these states, which may come to their knowledge.”

. . . . . . .

Nearly two centuries later, the Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas, praising the founders’ commitment to freedom of speech, wrote: “The dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of government suppression of embarrassing information.”

Read full article…..

Phi Beta Iota: This is not about Barack Obama–he sold out, get over it. This is about a two-party tyranny that hides its prostitution to Wall Street behind secrecy–chasing down whistle-blowers benefits both these parties all those they have shaken down for kick-backs. This is about a system that is inherently corrupt, in which 63 of 65 parties–and all Independents–are shut out, disenfranchised, and cheated.