Here is what I believe is a correct assessment concerning the creation of the national security state in which we live today. Absurd amounts of money have been spent, and civil liberties abridged to an unprecedented degree, on the basis of a threat consisting of little gangs. It is transparently disproportionate, there has to be something underneath that.! I believe it results from a long-term strategic assessment of what is going to happen with climate change. Since 1991 I have been following and publishing stories on this trend. It's very clear, on the basis of the scientific research in the open literature, that it is going to cause massive disruption, and social disorder. I am sure there are lots of other studies that are classified that say the same thing, perhaps in greater detail, and with a security perspective not usually found in open research literature
– Downsize, transition, and then sustain a smaller, but ready and capable Total Army that provides Joint and Combined forces with expeditionary and enduring landpower for the range of military operations and features unique competencies such as operational leadership, mobility, command and control, and theater logistics at all echelons.
Raymond T. Odierno
Phi Beta Iota: To downsize effectively you have to have ethical evidence-based decision-support immediately applicable to strategy, policy, acquisitions, and operations. This does not exist. NGIC once upon a time had Tim Hendrickson and GRAND VIEW but they never made the leap to holistic analytics and true cost economics. Army flags — including the very best of them — simply do not know what they need to know to demand of the intelligence “professionals” what the latter have no clue how to produce. We have not seen a single useful strategic, policy, or acquisition document come out of DIA in the past twenty years…nor CIA. All these people are still in the cut and paste fluff mode that Col Mike Pheneger, USA (SOF) blew the whistle on in 1988. Nothing has changed in substance — just more people, more money, more (retarded) technology, and much less useful thinking.
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[ENABLERS; EXPEDITIONARY; UNIFIED ACTION PARTNERS (UAPs)] – Support the Joint Force with critical enablers such as aviation, intelligence, engineers, logistics, medical, signal, and special operations, both while enroute to, and operating within, expeditionary environments alongside Unified Action Partners.
Phi Beta Iota: The Marine Corps led the way with Planning and Programming Factors for Expeditionary Operations in the Third World, and then lost its integrity and started chasing money instead of producing ethical evidence-based decision-support relevant to what General Al Gray wanted in the first place, compelling support for honest light-footprint low-cost acquisition (something the other four services need but refuse) along with strategic and operational support to what he called “peaceful preventive measures.” The Navy has imploded — as many Admirals as ships, and the whole lot of them are not worth anything in terms of rapid precision response, this leaves the Marine Corps both 4-6 days away from anywhere, and totally exposed (e.g. no Naval Gunfire, rotten CAP) once they get there. Army cannot do what it wants to do without an honest long-haul Air Force and a complete make-over of close air support (to include transfer of CAS to the Army) as well as reconnecting to reality at the geospatial, cyber, and cultural levels.
If stocks, bonds and real estate all decline going forward, where are pension funds going to earn their 7+% annual yields?If we look at the foundations of retirement–Social Security, stocks, bonds and real estate–it seems we may have reached Peak Retirement. Let's start the discussion by noting that the primary Federal retirement programs–Social Security and Medicare–are “pay as you go,” meaning the checks sent out to beneficiaries this year are funded by payroll tax revenues collected this year from workers.
As Mish and I (as well as others) have tirelessly pointed out, the “trust funds” for these programs are phantoms of imagination. When these programs run deficits, the government raises the money to fund the deficit the same way it funds all its deficit spending–by selling Treasury bonds.
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These programs were founded on a demographic illusion, i.e. that the number of retirees (beneficiaries) would magically remain a small percentage of the workforce paying payroll taxes. Alas, the number of beneficiaries is rising fast while the number of full-time workers is stagnating.
Full-time employment and the number of Social Security beneficiaries: the ratio of full-time workers to beneficiaries is already 2-to-1, and set to decline. Below 2-to-1, either payroll taxes will have to icnrease or benefits will have to be trimmed, or some of both.
Most of America can’t imagine the evening news could look and sound any other way.
That’s how solid the long-term brainwashing is.
The elite anchors, from Douglas Edwards and John Daly, in the early days of television, all the way to Brian Williams and Scott Pelley, have set the style. They define the genre.
The elite anchor is not a person filled with passion or curiosity. Therefore, the audience doesn’t have to be passionate or filled with curiosity, either.
The anchor is not a demanding voice on the air; therefore, the audience doesn’t have to be demanding.
The anchor isn’t hell-bent on uncovering the truth. For this he substitutes a false dignity. Therefore, the audience can surrender its need to wrestle with the truth and replace that with a false dignity of its own.
The anchor takes propriety to an extreme: it’s unmannerly to look below the surface of things. Therefore, the audience adopts those manners.
The National Security Agency's $2 billion mega spy center is going up in flames.
Technical glitches have sparked fiery explosions within the NSA's newest and largest data storage facility in Utah, destroying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and delaying the facility's opening by one year.
And no one seems to know how to fix it.
For a country that prides itself on being a technology leader, not knowing the electrical capacity requirements for a system as large as this is inexcusable.
Within the last 13 months, at least 10 electric surges have each cost about $100,000 in damages, according to documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal. Experts agree that the system, which requires about 64 megawatts of electricity—that's about a $1 million a month energy bill–isn't able to run all of its computers and servers while keeping them cool, which is likely triggering the meltdowns.
The contractor that designed the flawed system—Pennsylvania-based Klingstubbins–said in a statement that it has “uncovered the issue” and is working on “implementing a permanent fix.”
But that's not the case, according to the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE), which is in charge of overseeing the data center's construction. ACE disagreed with the contractor and said the meltdowns are “not yet sufficiently understood.”
A report by ACE in the Wall Street Journal said the government has incomplete information about the design of the electrical system that could pose new problems if settings need to change on circuit breakers. The report also said regular quality controls in design and construction were bypassed in an effort to “fast track” the project.
The attached article is a very important and informative essay. Patrick Cockurn describes how the media echo chamber warps the Orientation* of the public, as well as that of a government, to unfolding events in the so-called global war on terror that triggered by 9-11 and the continuously metastasizing instabilities the GWOT is unleashing. I regard Cockburn** to be one of the very finest if not THE finest observer now operating in the Middle East. I urge readers to study his analysis very closely … almost every sentence contains a nugget of wisdom. Then think about how this kind of reporting is messing with your mind — e.g., a good place to start is to work through the Orientation-related ramifications of his reference to “embedding.”
Chuck Spinney
Alexandria, VA
* Explanatory note for new readers: The American strategist Colonel John R. Boyd explained why Orientation is the most crucial yet most vulnerable part of any decision maker's Observation – Orientation – Decision – Action (OODA) Loop. The OODA loop lies at the heart of his influential strategic theories about the elemental nature of any form of conflict — i.e., the interaction of opposing MINDs. Readers unfamiliar with Boyd or his synthesis of the OODA Loop can find brief introduction in my essays Genghis John and Incestuous Amplification and the Madness of King George. More comprehensive but accessible and accurate descriptions can be found in the books by Robert Coram and James Fallows, and Chet Richards. For those readers who are interested in heavy intellectually lifting, I recommend Franz Ozinga‘s analysis of Boyd's strategic thought or even better, they could study Boyd's original presentations, which can be downloaded from this Archive.
** Truth in advertizing: I am proud to call Patrick Cockburn a friend.
The four wars fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria over the past 12 years have all involved overt or covert foreign intervention in deeply divided countries. In each case the involvement of the West exacerbated existing differences and pushed hostile parties towards civil war. In each country, all or part of the opposition have been hard-core jihadi fighters. Whatever the real issues at stake, the interventions have been presented as primarily humanitarian, in support of popular forces against dictators and police states. Despite apparent military successes, in none of these cases have the local opposition and their backers succeeded in consolidating power and establishing stable states.
More than most armed struggles, the conflicts have been propaganda wars in which newspaper, television and radio journalists played a central role. In all wars there is a difference between reported news and what really happened, but during these four campaigns the outside world has been left with misconceptions even about the identity of the victors and the defeated.
Since 9/11, two consecutive U.S. administrations have labored mightily to help Afghanistan create a state inhospitable to terrorist organizations with transnational aspirations and capabilities. The goal has been clear enough, but its attainment has proved vexing. Officials have struggled to define the necessary attributes of a stable post-Taliban Afghan state and to agree on the best means for achieving them. This is not surprising. The U.S. intervention required improvisation in a distant, mountainous land with de jure, but not de facto, sovereignty; a traumatized and divided population; and staggering political, economic, and social problems. Achieving even minimal strategic objectives in such a context was never going to be quick, easy, or cheap.
Eikenberry, Obama, and General Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan, March 2010. (Pete Souza / White House)
Of the various strategies that the United States has employed in Afghanistan over the past dozen years, the 2009 troop surge was by far the most ambitious and expensive. Counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine was at the heart of the Afghan surge. Rediscovered by the U.S. military during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, counterinsurgency was updated and codified in 2006 in Field Manual 3-24, jointly published by the U.S. Army and the Marines. The revised doctrine placed high confidence in the infallibility of military leadership at all levels of engagement (from privates to generals) with the indigenous population throughout the conflict zone. Military doctrine provides guidelines that inform how armed forces contribute to campaigns, operations, and battles. Contingent on context, military doctrine is meant to be suggestive, not prescriptive.
Broadly stated, modern COIN doctrine stresses the need to protect civilian populations, eliminate insurgent leaders and infrastructure, and help establish a legitimate and accountable host-nation government able to deliver essential human services. Field Manual 3-24 also makes clear the extensive length and expense of COIN campaigns: “Insurgencies are protracted by nature. Thus, COIN operations always demand considerable expenditures of time and resources.”
The apparent validation of this doctrine during the 2007 troop surge in Iraq increased its standing. When the Obama administration conducted a comprehensive Afghanistan strategy review in 2009, some military leaders, reinforced by some civilian analysts in influential think tanks, confidently pointed to Field Manual 3-24 as the authoritative playbook for success. When the president ordered the deployment of an additional 30,000 troops into Afghanistan at the end of that year, the military was successful in ensuring that the major tenets of COIN doctrine were also incorporated into the revised operational plan. The stated aim was to secure the Afghan people by employing the method of “clear, hold, and build” — in other words, push the insurgents out, keep them out, and use the resulting space and time to establish a legitimate government, build capable security forces, and improve the Afghan economy. With persistent outside efforts, advocates of the COIN doctrine asserted, the capacity of the Afghan government would steadily grow, the levels of U.S. and international assistance would decline, and the insurgency would eventually be defeated.
Blindly following COIN doctrine led the U.S. military to fixate on defeating the insurgency while giving short shrift to Afghan politics.
Here is what I believe is a correct assessment concerning the creation of the national security state in which we live today. Absurd amounts of money have been spent, and civil liberties abridged to an unprecedented degree, on the basis of a threat consisting of little gangs. It is transparently disproportionate, there has to be something underneath that.! I believe it results from a long-term strategic assessment of what is going to happen with climate change. Since 1991 I have been following and publishing stories on this trend. It's very clear, on the basis of the scientific research in the open literature, that it is going to cause massive disruption, and social disorder. I am sure there are lots of other studies that are classified that say the same thing, perhaps in greater detail, and with a security perspective not usually found in open research literature 
