Ineptitude – Page 65 – Public Intelligence Blog

The Afghan adventure is ending in a disaster. The outsiders are again leaving with their tails between their legs. This will be the fourth time for the Brits. For the U.S. Afghanistan is just another disaster in what what is becoming a dreary pattern of military failures at ever higher costs. Predictably, President Obama's surge in 2010 failed to stem the downward spiral, largely because its central premise: namely the plan to rapidly build up competent professional Afghan security forces was a logically flawed. Now, according to recent polls, a larger percentage of Americans oppose the war than was the case in VietNam. Yet in contrast to Vietnam, the American people are not angry — they seem to be disinterested, tired, and want to move on; one thing is clear, however, they show no sign of energizing a political desire to hold the military accountable for the Afghan or Iraq disasters.

Today, Versailles on the Potomac is far more lathered up by former defense secretary Robert Gates attempt to protect the Bush clan and to distract attention away from the Pentagon's culpability by fingering Obama for the Afghan failure. To be sure Obama deserves a great deal of blame for the debacle, particularly the consequences of his bungled decision to escalate what he said was the “good war.” Moreover, Obama can not say he was not warned about the dangers of escalating well before the fact. On the other hand, as Patrick Cockburn explains below, the roots of the Afghan mess go back to the failure to defeat the Taliban in 2002 and the toxic mix of corruption and warlordism in the regime we imposed on the Afghan people — and those are problems Obama inherited. In short, there is plenty of blame to go around, not to mention the warmongers in Congress, like John McCain and his infantile sidekick Lindsey Graham.

Cockburn' essay gives the reader an idea of the dire state of affairs in Arghanistan. He summarizes a devastating 30 December 2013 report written by Thomas Ruttig of the esteemed Afghan Analysts Network, also attached in PDF format [below the line after the article] for your convenience. I urge you to read Ruttig's report.

Chuck Spinney

JANUARY 13, 2014

Countless Dead, Poverty, Corruption – and the Taliban Rising

What We Did to Afghanistan

by PATRICK COCKBURN, Counterpunch

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Afghan Disaster…Rooted in Western Ignorance and Western Lies”

2014/01/102014/01/12

Mini-Me: Target Data Breach Rises to Up to 110 Million — White House & NSA Irresponsibility Since 1994

Commerce, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency

Huh?

Target data breach total rises to up to 110 million

The massive data breach at Target over the holiday season is potentially much worse than the retailer first reported — as many as 110 million people may have had their identity and financial information compromised, the retailer says.

Idiot Video and More Text

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Target Data Breach Rises to Up to 110 Million — White House & NSA Irresponsibility Since 1994”

2014/01/092014/01/09

Marcus Aurelius: Congress Favors Corrupt Weapons Systems Over Honorable People…Again — What Role for DIA? Plus Comments

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Military

Nonpartisan my ass!

CBO suggests tough defense spending cuts

By Patricia Kime
Staff writer

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has proposed six ways to reduce defense spending ranging from deep cuts to the military services to controversial reductions in pay and benefits.

In a presentation Tuesday before a group of retired and current government personnel and federal budget experts, CBO senior analyst Carla Tighe Murray delivered options for defense savings that would total between $10 billion and $495 billion through 2023.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Congress Favors Corrupt Weapons Systems Over Honorable People…Again — What Role for DIA? Plus Comments”

2014/01/072014/01/07

Marcus Aurelius: Arguments Mount to Terminate the US Air Force

Corruption, Ineptitude, Military

This should generate a lively debate.

SNAPSHOT: Ground the Air Force

Revising the Future of Flight

Robert Farley

Foreign Affairs, December 18, 2013

ROBERT FARLEY is an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, founder of the blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money, [1] and the author of Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force [2].

The United States needs air power, but it does not need an air force.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Arguments Mount to Terminate the US Air Force”

2014/01/022014/01/02

Marcus Aurelius: Rosy Assumptions for Shallow Strategy in Afghanistan Post-2014

Ineptitude, Military

Worth a close read.

Rosy Assumptions: U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan Post-2014

EXTRACT:

A handy rule of strategy-making is to first list the assumptions that undergird the strategy’s logic and to identify any risks that might interfere with those assumptions. And this document attempts to do just that. With violence in Afghanistan just as high as it was before the “surge” (if not higher – the Department of Defense decided to stop releasing information on enemy-initiated attacks), the American taxpayer could reasonably expect a candid re-assessment of the assumptions that have guided American strategy in the Hindu Kush in recent years. The analyst could hope for at least a partial departure from the narrative, now resembling Swiss cheese, that we are leaving Afghanistan a more stable and secure place. Both the taxpayer and the analyst in me are disappointed.

Some of the ten assumptions listed are highly problematic – dangerous even – which undermines the entire strategy.

. . . . . . .

The assumptions are followed by a “risks” section, which numbers fewer than 200 words in an 8000 word strategy document.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Rosy Assumptions for Shallow Strategy in Afghanistan Post-2014”

2013/12/302013/12/30

Stephen E. Arnold: NSA as Poster Child for the Problem of Big Data

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Military

NSA drowns under an ocean of data

Would rather drown in rising tide of pornography

All is not well in the land of US spooks despite them having access to all the data on citizens that they can eat.

William Binney, creator of some of the computer code used by the National Security Agency to snoop on Internet traffic around the world, has warned that the agency knows too much.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the NSA can't understand the data it has because it has too much to do anything useful with it.

Binny said that the NSA's addiction to data had made it dysfunctional and the agency is drowning in useless data.

He described an agency where analysts are swamped with so much information that they can't do their jobs effectively, and the enormous stockpile is an irresistible temptation for misuse.

His warning mirrors concerns shown in the Snowden documents. An internal briefing document in 2012 about foreign mobile phone location tracking by the agency said the efforts were “outpacing our ability to ingest, process and store” data.

In March, some NSA analysts asked for permission to collect less data through a program called Muscular because the “relatively small intelligence value it contains does not justify the sheer volume of collection”.

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: NSA as Poster Child for the Problem of Big Data”

2013/12/28

Marcus Aurelius: Tracking US Government Waste

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude

There is great p***ing and moaning about Federal fiscal irresponsibility. IMHO, most of it is misplaced and motivated by a desire to redirect resources from makers to takers. However, the following two articles are pretty good. Object of second article, Sen Tom Coburn's (R-OK) 2013 Wastebook is attached for your convenience. Some of the items showcased are pretty egregious. My personal favorite(?) is the ten or eleven camouflage utility uniforms within the military Services.

How a few efforts to cut federal government spending succeeded — or failed – The Washington Post

Tom Coburn's 2013 Wastebook Highlights Outrageous Federal Spending | Fox News Insider

And Congress decides to screw military retirees and fails to sustain the transit subsidy. What a 535-member battalion of ineffectives!