Below is a translation from As-Safir, a Lebanese newspaper, July 6, 2013, by Arabic-English translator Eric Mueller. As the translator was not present at the Group of Eight meeting, he cannot vouch for the accuracy of the report, only for the accuracy of the translation. The report by Dawud Rimal does reflect Putin's no-nonsense manner of speaking. The report from As-Safir contrasts with the US coverage.
Diplomatic sources: Putin tells G8 “You want Asad to resign. Look at the leaders you've made in the Middle East.”
The job was to find captured Viet Cong guerrillas and to interview them. Over the next few years, they came up with 61,000 pages of transcripts. Those transcripts were translated into English and summarised and analysed.
Goure took those analyses and he gave briefings to all the top military brass in the American military establishment. And every time he gave a presentation on the Vietnam Motivation and Morale Project, he said the same things:
that the Vietcong were utterly demoralised
that they were about to give up
that if pushed a little bit more, if bombed just a little bit more, they'll throw up their hands in despair and run screaming back to Hanoi
It's hard to overestimate just how seriously Goure was taken in those years. He was the only man who understood the mind of the enemy. When dignitaries came to Saigon, their first stop would be the villa in Rue Pasteur, where Goure would hold forth at cocktail parties with insights into this strange, mysterious enemy they were fighting.
He'd be picked up by helicopter and whisked to aircraft carriers off the coast of Vietnam, so he could brief the top military brass who had flown in from Washington. They used to say that Lyndon Johnson would walk around with a copy of Goure's findings in his back pocket. What Goure said formed the justification for US policy in Vietnam.
Everyone believed what Goure said, with one exception – Konrad Kellen. He read the same interviews and reached the exact opposite conclusion.
Years later, he would say that his rethinking began with one memorable interview with a senior Vietcong captain. He was asked very early in the interview if he thought the Vietcong could win the war, and he said no.
But pages later, he was asked if he thought that the US could win the war, and he said no.
The second answer profoundly changes the meaning of the first. He didn't think in terms of winning or losing at all, which is a very different proposition. An enemy who is indifferent to the outcome of a battle is the most dangerous enemy of all.
A long-running personnel dispute at the Congressional Research Service offers up conflicting visions of the proper role of the congressional support agency, which provides policy and legal analysis to Congress.
In 2009, then-CRS Director Daniel Mulhollan fired then-CRS Division Chief Col. Morris Davis, a former Guantanamo prosecutor, after Davis publicly criticized the military commission process in an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal. (“CRS Fires a Division Chief,”Secrecy News, December 4, 2009)
By engaging in public controversy (even as a private citizen), Col. Davis had deviated from CRS norms, according to Library of Congress General Counsel Elizabeth Pugh.
(Reuters) – Bolivia offered asylum on Saturday to former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, joining leftist allies Venezuela and Nicaragua in defiance of Washington, which is demanding his arrest for divulging details of secret U.S. spy programs.
EXTRACTS:
Waving Good Bye to El Imperialismo
“I want to tell … the Europeans and Americans that last night I was thinking that as a fair protest, I want to say that now in fact we are going to give asylum to that American who is being persecuted by his fellow Americans,” Morales said during a visit to the town of Chipaya.
. . . . . . .
“Who is the guilty one? A young man … who denounces war plans, or the U.S. government which launches bombs and arms the terrorist Syrian opposition against the people and legitimate President Bashar al-Assad?” Maduro asked, to applause and cheers from ranks of military officers at a parade.
“Who is the terrorist? Who is the global delinquent?”
In a roundtable discussion, a trio of former National Security Agency whistle-blowers tell USA TODAY that Edward Snowden succeeded where they failed.
When a National Security Agency contractor revealed top-secret details this month on the government's collection of Americans' phone and Internet records, one select group of intelligence veterans breathed a sigh of relief.
Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe belong to a select fraternity: the NSA officials who paved the way.
“For the first time our competence and character are being evaluated by experts and pundits while we fight.”
That was Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey speaking frankly to field-grade officers graduating June 13 from National Defense University (NDU) about what he called “this time of turmoil” when the military is “working hard to adapt to uncertainty and rapidly changing geopolitical, budgetary and cultural landscapes.”
President Obama said last week that he plans to reappoint Dempsey for another two-year term. That makes it worthwhile to take another look at this career Army officer who likes to quote Yeats, is a straight talker on tough issues – including to Congress – and enjoys singing in public, as he did Memorial Day weekend with a silly song about unicorns for hundreds of children whose fathers or mothers had died in combat.
A 1974 West Point graduate and an armored cavalry officer who commanded forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, Dempsey has a master's degree in English from Duke University. He taught English at West Point, fought in Operation Desert Storm, was a special assistant to Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Hugh Shelton, and for two years trained and advised the Saudi Arabian national guard. He did the same recently for Iraq's army and other security forces.
Four appearances during the past five weeks give some insights into Dempsey's character.
