This effort destroys any trust that may have been left…..days are numbered (to aid in an election also)…..
New security for U.S. troops in Afghanistan
By Lolita C. Baldor and Pauline Jelinek
Associated Press, 28 March 2012
WASHINGTON — U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan have assigned “guardian angels” — troops that watch over their comrades even as they sleep — and have ordered a series of other increased security measures to protect troops against possible attacks by rogue Afghans.
The added protections are part of a directive issued in recent weeks by Marine Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, to guard against insider threats, according to a senior military official. And they come in the wake of a spike in attacks on U.S. and coalition forces by Afghans, including the point-blank shooting deaths of two U.S. advisers in Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior.
Some of the changes have been subtle, others not so much.
Sayed Ishaq Gillami (should be Gillani): Sayed Ishaq Gailani (born 1954) represents Paktika in the Wolesi Jirga, Afghanistan's lower house of parliament.[1] He is the founder and chairman of the National Solidarity Movement of Afghanistan and currently serves on the Wolesi Jirga's International Relations committee. While still an influential member of the Gailani family, he has claimed leadership of the family and adopted the title Pir. However, most of his family recognizes his uncle, Ahmad Gailani, as the leader of the family and the Qadiriyya Sufi order. (Pir is a title for a Sufi master equally used in the nath tradition. The title is often translated into English as “saint” and could be interpreted as
“Elder”. In Sufism a Pir's role is to guide and instruct his disciples on the Sufi path.) This means his credentials are impeccable (outside the discord within the family over the title Pir) and nobody in Afghanistan would accuse him of falsehood.
General Sher Mohammed Karimi: (from the article – of the Afghan Army) He is not just from the Afghan Army, he is in fact Chief of Staff. I know the man personally and he bears no ill-will toward the US. I would put much stock in what he says. These two individuals, although not understood by our leadership, represent two of the most unbiased people in Afghanistan. This alone lends great credence to their stories. For ISAF/NATO and this Administration to be 180 degrees out will only serve to see a significant increase in attacks on ISAF/NATO personnel, all because of their position and not related to anything the ISAF/NATO personnel did.
Among the last known images of Osama bin Laden is a video seized at his compound the night he was killed, which shows the al-Qaeda leader hunched before a television screen studying a video of himself. It’s testimony to bin Laden’s obsession with the media side of his war against the United States.
This modern face of bin Laden’s jihad comes through clearly in a 21-page letter from his media adviser, a U.S.-born jihadist named Adam Gadahn. The letter is undated, but it appears to have been written after November 2010, in the last six months of bin Laden’s life.
Gadahn wrote much as if he were a media planner corresponding with a client. He included suggestions about the timing of video appearances after the 2010 U.S. midterm elections and use of high-definition video, and made snarky evaluations of major U.S. networks.
As I wrote last week, Gadahn hated Fox News (“falls into the abyss”); he liked MSNBC but complained about the firing of Keith Olbermann; he had mixed feelings about CNN (better in Arabic than in English) and made flattering comments about CBS and ABC. Basically, he wanted to play them all off to al-Qaeda’s best advantage. He also mentioned print journalists, most prominently Robert Fisk of The Independent of Britain. He cites three Americans (“Brian Russ,” “Simon Hirsh” and “Jerry Van Dyke”), though it’s uncertain whom he meant.
The media guidance was among the documents taken from bin Laden’s compound the night of May 2. It was made available to me, along with a small sample of other documents in the cache, by a senior Obama administration official.
Gadahn’s memo shows an organization struggling to stay on the media offensive despite devastating U.S. attacks. It’s partly aspirational, with dreams of jihad, but there’s a core of sharp self-criticism that makes clear Gadahn, like his boss, understood that al-Qaeda was losing its war.
Gadahn even worried that al-Qaeda’s reversals in Iraq and elsewhere represented “punishment by God on us because of our sins and injustices.” Like bin Laden, he was deeply upset that al-Qaeda’s affiliates had killed so many Muslims and listed 13 operations that showed “the tragedy of tolerating the spilling of [Muslim] blood.”
Gadahn is an intriguing figure whose life story would seem far-fetched if sketched by a Hollywood screenwriter. He was born Adam Pearlman in 1978, grandson of a California doctor who had served on the board of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League. Gadahn converted to Islam when he was 17, migrated to Pakistan at 20 and then disappeared in March 2001 into al-Qaeda’s world. In 2006, he was indicted by the United States for treason.
Phi Beta Iota: This gets sillier and sillier – including the built-in throw-away lines to explain what is probably typically ignorant US “covert operations” fiction. Most likely possibility at this point: young Adam was recruited early as a Mossad sleeper agent in the USA, and sent toward jihad generally. However, if Al Qaeda was in any way a fully-funded CIA/Safari Club operation as some claim (hybrid opportunist cross-over is more likely) then Adam could have been one of the few truly deep case officers developed or a joint Mossad/CIA puppy. We tend to doubt this “evidence.” Ignatius has zero credibility with us. At this point, anything he claims to accept is in our judgment false flag across the board and an illegal covert action / propaganda operations against the U.S. public. Ignatius is not ignorant — he is polished, professional, and deeply read. This is an ethics issue.
On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered “global intelligence” company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.
Phi Beta Iota: Devoid of a strategic analytic model, devoid of the concept of “true costs,” and devoid of any self-understanding in relation to corruption at all levels across all boundaries. A wonderful collection of essays all of which avert their eyes from the naked Emperor.
Phi Beta Iota: US Government is not ready to acknowledge that legalized crime by the US banking and finance “industry” is vastly more harmful than street-level quasi-organized crime — nor does the US Government acknowledge that its regulations have created a System D / off the books economy that is routing around the US Government — ignoring it.
Petraeus says that the treasure trove of data connected appliances and devices will be able to gather on a “person of interest” will make it much easier to see what potential terrorists and others are doing inside home and to intercept communications. He also noted that connected household devices with the potential to be turned in the spy tools “change our notions of secrecy.” While the CIA has numerous regulations and laws preventing it from spying on American citizens, it’s apparently a much grayer area when it comes to collecting geolocation data that many devices
broadcast.
Earlier this month, Petraeus mused about the emergence of an “Internet of Things” — that is, wired devices — at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. “‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,” Petraeus enthused, “particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft.”
CIA director David Petraeus (seen here playing Wii golf) is really excited about the idea behind the Internet of things. The thing is most excited about isn’t his refrigerator being able to order milk, but the effect that connected appliances and devices will have on “clandestine tradecraft.” In other words, he’s excited about being able to use these devices to spy on people.
Phi Beta Iota: Patraeus was “musing” at an In-Q-Tel conference, so he can reasonably be forgiven for being taken out of context. However, this is just one more stronger signal that the $80 billion a year US Intelligence Community, within which CIA provides armed drones, foreign liaison hand-outs, and very little else, is money wasted. Clandestine tradecraft is about humans. All-source analysis is about integrating a strategic analytic model with history and forecasting to deliver decision-support. It is not about technology except in so far as it supports human cognition. It's a pity the Director of the CIA has not learned that. Technology is not a substitute for thinking, and administration is not a substitute for leadership.
New report released by the Institute for Economics & Peace analyses the macroeconomic effects of US government spending on wars and the military since World War II.
The report studies five periods – World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the Afghanistan/Iraq wars – exposing the effect of war financing on debt, consumption, investment, jobs, taxes, government deficits, and inflation.
The findings of the report show devastating trends for US tax, debt and deficit debates.
The U.S. has paid for its wars either through debt [World War II, Cold War, Afghanistan/Iraq], taxation [Korean War] or inflation [Vietnam]. In each case, taxpayers have been burdened, and private sector consumption and investment have been constrained as a result.
Report highlights
The report shows the following economic indicators experiencing negative effects either during or after the conflicts:
Public debt and levels of taxation increased during most conflicts
Consumption as a percent of GDP decreased during most conflicts
Investment as a percent of GDP decreased during most conflicts
Inflation increased during or as a direct consequence of these conflicts
The higher levels of government spending associated with war tends to generate some positive economic benefits in the short-term, specifically through increases in economic growth occurring during conflict spending booms. However, negative unintended consequences occur either concurrently with the war or develop as residual effects afterwards thereby harming the economy over the longer term.
Phi Beta Iota: There appears to be a continued reluctance to address the real causes of our terrible situation: corruption across the board. No amount of intellectual posturing, whether in a book or in a conference, is a substitute for full transparency and the truth — the whole truth. The lack of integrity across all eight tribes — academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, and non-government/non-profit — is the ROOT CAUSE of our collapse.
