College students can be flunked for cut-and-paste reports, think tankers can be embarrassed, Defense News staff writers can be fired, but not, apparently, members of the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC).
Most of its so-called “updated” report, 2013 Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat, which contains contributions from the Defense Intelligence Agency Missile and Space Intelligence Center and the Office of Naval Intelligence, was largely a cut-and-paste job from its 2009 report. Some of the material is identical to the 2006 and 1998 report.
Though it was reformatted and photographs rearranged with some being enlarged or decreased, the 2013 report appears verbatim from the 2009 report. This clever reordering and reformatting with new color schemes for boxes and graphs is embarrassing since there is more impressive data on Chinese missiles on Wikipedia.
Attached herewith is an essay I just wrote for Counterpunch.
For you convenience I have also attached a very important McClatchy report on the Orwellian Insider Threat Program being promoted by the Obama Administration.
The lead co-author, Jonathan Landay, is one of the few mainstream reporters who has been onto the lunacy unleashed by 9-11 from the git go.
My intent in the essay is to place this dangerous craziness in a somewhat larger larger context of our morally and mentally bankrupt intelligence system … judge for yourself whether or not I have been successful.
At the core of the drone program is the theory of signature targeting. It is a theory based on the idea that analysts can discern “enemy combatants” from an analysis of outward indicators of patterns of behaviour.
As Esam Al-Amin explained here, Mohamad Morsi made some colossal blunders during his one year rule of Egypt, as its democratically elected president. He was elected in what most observers regard as a reasonably fair election.
But the exclusive report by Al Jazeera (also attached below) reveals that the United States — which claims to support democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere — has been actively involved in bankrolling Morsi's opposition, and in so doing has continued its long policy of subverting Islamist democratic victories when they win fair elections (Hamas in 2006) or threaten to win fair elections (Algeria 1991).
Al Jazeera reveals how stark contradictions continue to rip through the three legs of the moral triangle that is US foreign policy — i.e., the contradictions between (1) the values we profess to to the world that we uphold, (2) the values we actually hold as demonstrated by our actions abroad as well as at home (don't forget the neo-fascist, non-accountable, hidden hand the emerging American deep state exemplified by the NSA scandal) and (3) the world we have to deal with deal with (in this case epitomized by the changing conditions of the Arab Spring).
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.”
Long time financial management reporter Scot Paltrow and his colleague Kelly Carr have written a series, now beginning to appear at Reuters, on the incredible, continuing story of the Pentagon's gross incompetence in managing its own books. The first two pieces of the series follows. The first article is long, but I urge you to read every word. If you think financial management is a green eyeshade-only subject or if you think the Pentagon is making a meaningful, or even good faith, effort at fixing the problem, read on. The anecdotes and the callous DOD incompetence are truly magnetic.
In the story, the Pentagon's CFO (Comptroller Robert Hale) is quoted saying, “We’re not out to screw our own people. The military pay system is just very complex.” He should have added: “But we do sit around and let it happen. We think we have more important things to do”
Indeed, it has been happening since the early 1990s when Congress passed legislation to require DOD to fix all this–legislation that DOD purposefully circumvents.
Today, DOD asserts it has a plan to fix all this: in 2014 it will produce an “audit ready” statement of budgetary resources and by 2017 (close to three decades after the original legislative direction) it will produce an audit of assets. However, it has already been made pretty clear DOD will blow, yet again, the first deadline, and in fact neither of those all too modest goals would fix the horrendous problems that Paltrow and Carr describe below.
After decades of banal rhetoric from Capitol Hill and cynical excuses from DOD, what could possibly fix this? Perhaps these people need some incentives. I would recommend putting all of Capitol Hill and the White House on the DFAS payroll system that this fascinating Reuters series describes below.
Unaccountable: The high cost of the Pentagon's bad bookkeeping
The New York Times pointed out that the Fisa court had become a “parallel supreme court“. It catered to a mirror universe beyond the reach of Congress or normal courts, servicing a new and burgeoning realm of government and private securocrats. When asked about this world, NSA bosses merely said they could not “jeopardise American security“.
Other Pieces of the US Police State are Moving Into Place on Schedule
“Documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation from the Homeland Security Department's Customs and Border Protection indicate that the agency is close to finalizing payload standards for its drone aircraft. Among the things the CBP might want to use in its unmanned aircraft: “non-lethal weapons designed to immobilize” targets. In 2009, the agency announced that it had acquired its sixth Predator drone, stationed at an Army Airfield in Arizona.”
As pointed out by a commenter to the article, “For one thing, there are no “non-lethal weapons”. DoD long ago renamed them “less than lethal”, because of the legal liability (rubber bullets can kill, just as a hard hit baseball to the chest can stop the heart) But more significant, DHS is paving the road for internal use of armed drones, against Americans! Or did you for one minute think that these birds are glued to the border, and can only face South?”
