Officers Call – Page 126 – Public Intelligence Blog

COMMENTS:

1. This is one of more internally contradictory pieces I can remember reading;

2. Mark Bowden certainly knows a thing or three about perpetuating compromise of classified information since he's done bunch of it;

3. Bowden harkens back to old saying, “.. there are good secrets, there are bad secrets, and there are non-secrets …”, but people at working level don't have luxury of playing that game. If something is classified, it's classified and there are only two lawful options: get it declassified through established process or protect it;

4. Impact of Bradley Manning is broad and deep. Manning impacts me throughout every working day. Despite clearances, less information is available to me. Like every Federal employee, I now have fewer tools to work with. Formerly routine procedures are now either totally proscribed or so laden with requirements for pre-approval, two-person control, and so forth that cost vastly exceeds benefit. I am under automated surveillance as I perform my official duties. And we have not yet seen impacts of Snowden, which will surely come;

5. Thus, I strongly DISAGREE with Bowden that Bradley's 35-year sentence was excessive but forced to strongly AGREE that it will likely be reduced.

TheAtlantic.com, August 23, 2013

What Snowden And Manning Don't Understand About Secrecy

Government often finds bad reasons to keep information hidden, but the recent indiscriminate leaks are foolish.

By Mark Bowden

As an old reporter who has from time to time outed classified information, I have watched the cases of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden with professional interest.

What troubles me about them is not that they broke the oaths they swore when they took their classified government jobs, the thing that makes them liable to prosecution. Government finds all kinds of dubious reasons to keep secrets, sometimes nefarious reasons, and conscience can force one to break a promise. My problem is with the indiscriminate nature of their leaks.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Conflicted About Ethics, Secrecy, & the Public Interest”

2013/08/20

Winslow Wheeler: Don Vandergriff’s “The Path to Victory: America’s Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs,” second edition

Officers Call

Major Don Vandergriff (USA, ret.) has released the second–expanded and updated–edition of his critical analysis of the Army's officer corps, The Path to Victory: America's Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs.

The book explains why and how the Army's leadership has simultaneously designed itself for bureaucratic success and leadership failure in battle. It is important reading, I believe, for any who want to understand of one of the most important problems that decays America's armed forces from within–and from the top.

The new second edition has a forward by Col. Douglas Macgregor (USA, ret.). It reads in part:

Addressing the first edition in 2006, one of the reviews at Amazon.com provides some useful comments, especially in retrospective:

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Don Vandergriff's “The Path to Victory: America's Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs,” second edition”

2013/08/20

SchwartzReport: War and Hate

01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call

Endless war is the basis for the abrogation of our civil liberties, the suspension our legal guarantees, and the assault on journalism. It is the cancer that is destroying our democracy, and our passivity is what makes it possible.

Legal War?
WILLIAM BOARDMAN – Nation of Change

We are in the endless war because of the stupidity of American foreign policy beginning with the Reagan Administration, which was notably inept. And, thanks to Dick Cheney and the Neocons, we have transformed what was once a deep affection for Americans in the Arab world, which I experienced in the two years I lived in Egypt in the 70s, into! a deep and abiding hatred which will endure for generations.

They Hate Us, They Really Hate Us
MARC LYNCH, Associate Professor of Political science and International Affairs at George Washington University – Foreign Policy

2013/08/18

Jean Lievens: Leadership in a Networked World — Doing the Right Thing Instead of Doing the Wrong things Right

Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Officers Call

What type of leadership will be required to succeed in this new business world, created by the Networked Society? This society will see new market spaces, where cross-industry companies will compete. Because of its openness, its technology based on mobility, cloud and performing networks, because of globalization, free trade and capital movement; the Networked Society will transform and reshape businesses and industries.

Will the Networked Society require a new type of leadership?

Sami Dob

EXTRACT:

Thousands of books have been written about leadership and leaders, and many theories have been developed in the fields of management and psychology. To mention one, Austrian-born American management consultant, educator, and author Peter Drucker stated that “management does things right; leadership does the right things.”

This post is an extrapolation of a previous post by my colleague Peter Linder, who discussed what type of talents will be required in the Networked Society. He mentioned the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) talents. In this post, I will discuss the type of leadership that will be needed in the Networked Society.

Read full post with many links.

2013/08/152013/08/15

Kevin Barrett: US “death squad envoy” arrives in Egypt – and the slaughter begins — Department of State Militarized AND Marginalized

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Officers Call

US “death squad envoy” arrives in Egypt – and the slaughter begins

My new Press TV article, published Monday, is looking prophetic – or as we Muslims prefer to say “precognitive.”

When the US sends a “death squad ambassador” to Egypt, you can figure that the big slaughter is about to begin. As of today, it has begun. Just as I predicted, the mass slaughter of Morsi/democracy supporters was triggered by false-flag terror.

Yahoo News reports: “Live (Egyptian) television footage on several channels appeared to show hooded Brotherhood (sic) gunmen brandishing what appeared to be small automatic rifles and firing them in the direction of soldiers.”

In fact, the “hooded gunmen” – like those who set off the Sunni-Shia violence in Iraq in Iraq and Syria – are professional killers working for the Empire and its current Egyptian stooge, el-Sisi. The purpose: To demonize Islam, destroy democracy, and perpetrate a genocide in Egypt.

-KB

Is the US government targeting Egypt for destabilization – and eventual destruction?

The recent appointment of death squad organizer Robert Ford as US Ambassador to Egypt suggests as much.

Ford’s appointment sends a clear message: US policymakers want to destroy Egypt in the same way they have destroyed Iraq and Syria – by using death squads and false-flag terror to incite civil war.

Continue reading “Kevin Barrett: US “death squad envoy” arrives in Egypt – and the slaughter begins — Department of State Militarized AND Marginalized”

2013/08/152013/08/15

Former CIA Spy Jose Rodriguez’s Truly Sociopathic ’60 Minutes’ Interview

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, 11 Society, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Media, Officers Call

Former CIA Spy Jose Rodriguez’s Truly Sociopathic ’60 Minutes’ Interview

By: Kevin Gosztola

dissenter.firedoglake.com, Monday April 30, 2012

Former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Counterterrorism Center and its former Deputy Director of Operations Jose Rodriguez appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes” to flaunt his new book Hard Measures, which details how he came to be in charge of CIA torture against terror suspects at “black site” prisons, why he believes torture was effective and why it should not be vilified.

The segment with Lesley Stahl has the same title as Rodriguez’s book. The title sounds like the name of a film starring an action movie star like Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal, which makes it appropriate because each answer from Rodriguez is dripping with bravado. From Rodriguez’s first answer to the last, one cannot help but realize he believes it is somehow unmanly to be concerned that torture of terror suspects violates the rule of law. He appears in his sleek white Camaro rolling down the highway to the CIA. And he says at one point, “We needed to get everyone in government to put their big boy pants on and give us the authorities we needed.”

Of course, like most establishment media interviews, the torture is not called torture. It is called “harsh techniques.” Or the official term Cheney coined for it—“enhanced interrogation techniques.”

*Here are both parts of the interview: Part 1 / Part 2

The first words in the segment are, “After the attacks of 9/11…” That phrase is all one needs to hear to know that this is going to be a tireless exercise in explaining away acts that historically have been considered war crimes when carried out.

Read full post with quotes and links.

2013/08/13

F. William Engdahl: The Stark Reality Behind Obama’s Russian ‘Statesmanship’

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 06 Genocide, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Officers Call

The Stark Reality Behind Obama’s Russian ‘Statesmanship’

By F. William Engdahl

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant, author and lecturer. He is author of the best-selling book on oil and geopolitics, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. It has been published as well in French, German, Chinese, Russian, Czech, Korean, Turkish, Croatian, Slovenian and Arabic. In 2010 he published Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century, and in 2011, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, completing his trilogy on the power of oil, food and money control.

With a diplomatic attitude more reminiscent of a spoiled brat grabbing his toys and leaving the room, US President Obama has resorted to diplomatic snubs and childish criticisms of Russian behavior as if the Russian leaders were small children.

In a press conference Obama described the Russian President as having a “slouch…looking like that bored schoolboy in the back of the classroom.” Yet behind the childish form of the latest White House refusal to meet President Putin before the G-20 St. Petersburg Summit is a grim reality:

Washington is rapidly losing its way to impose its will in the world on multiple fronts and the Putin snub is an impotent reflection of that loss of power. The real issues in US-Russian relations go far deeper.

Read rest of long detailed article — strongly recommended.