The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Wikipedia Biography with Many Links
The Macgregor Briefings: An Information Age Vision for the U.S. Army
NOTE 1: HTML versions work, PPT do not
NOTE 2: Cyber/IO is the enabler of all that he envisions.
Warrior's Rage: The Great Tank Battle of 73 Easting (2009)
Transformation Under Fire: Revolutionizing How America Fights (2004)
Breaking the Phalanx: A New Design for Landpower in the 21st Century (1997)
Phi Beta Iota: When did it go out of style for warriors to speak the truth and only the truth? Lies kill our own and dishonor our Republic. It is time for integrity to come back into being. Advanced Cyber/Information Operations (IO) are about truth & trust. No amount of courage at the tactical level can overcome a dishonest, unaffordable, intellectually-bankrupt strategy.
Deluding ourselves from one failure to another
By COLONEL DOUGLAS MACGREGOR
American forces invaded Afghanistan more than nine years ago, and we still don't know whom we're fighting. It's hard to know who did the better job of playing us for fools a few weeks ago – the Afghan who passed himself off as the “moderate” Taliban leader, who was rewarded with American cash for his performance, or Hamid Karzai.
. . . . . . .
With the lion's share of Iraq‘s southern oil fields in Chinese hands and the Kurdish nationalists determined to control the country's largest oil reserves, more fighting in Iraq is inevitable. This sort of thing would almost be funny, in an insane sort of way, if such military leadership did not result in the pointless loss of American lives, undermine American strategic interests and erode the security and prosperity of the American people – the things the nation's four-stars are sworn to defend.
. . . . . . .
When the budget ax falls, many inconvenient facts will come to light, unmasking the great deception that America confronted a serious military threat in the aftermath of Sept. 11, a deception promoted and fostered by politicians and ambitious generals who sought to gain from it. It will horrify and discourage Americans to learn we've bankrupted ourselves in a fight that always was analogous to clubbing baby seals. From 2001 onward, we never confronted armies, air forces or capable air defenses. Bottom line: There was no existential military threat to the United States or its NATO allies emanating from Afghanistan or the Middle East. There is none today.
Read the entire righteous piece….
For the time being, no one will say these things. It's easier to go, in Winston Churchill's words, “from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm” and nurture the money flow to Washington.
Retired Col. Douglas Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran, is executive vice president of Burke-Macgregor Group. His newest book, Warrior's Rage, was published by Naval Institute Press. See also his earlier books, Breaking the Phalanx and Transformation Under Fire.
Why Can’t Europe Avoid Another Crisis? Why Can’t the U.S.?
By Simon Johnson (bio), Baseline Scenario, 30 December 2010
Our leading bankers looted the state, plunged the world into deep recession, and cost us 8 million jobs. And now many of them stand by with sharpened knives and enhanced bonuses – also most willing to suggest how the salaries and jobs of others can be further cut. Think about the morality of that one.
Will no one think hard about what this means for our budget and our political system until it is too late?
The Weekly Standard, DEC 29, 2010
In fact, the more we learn about what the plotters were up to, as well as the efforts to stop them, the more troubling the DNI’s ignorance becomes.
Three facts, in particular, have emerged that make this lapse inexcusable.
First, the State Department says the plotters had the U.S. embassy in London in their sites. On Monday, a Foggy Bottom spokesman confirmed that the embassy was on the plotters’ “targeting list.”
Second, according to the Guardian (UK), the alleged would-be terrorists were arrested “after several months of surveillance and monitoring by police and MI5 officers.”
Third, the UK press has reported that the plotters were, at the very least, inspired by the notorious al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki. … Awlaki is currently one of the most wanted terrorists in the world.
Phi Beta Iota: The DNI has been sand-bagged by three people and himself. Neither John Brennan (kitchen DNI at the White House), Leon Panetta (cheerleader for the CIA), or Michael E. Leiter (lawyer fronting the National Counterterrorism Center) appear to have any direct interest in seeing Jim Clapper succeed. Unfortunately, Jim Clapper has also sand-bagged himself by accepting “business as usual” and contenting himself with improvements on the margins–doing the wrong things righter. There is not a single piece of the US secret world that is working the way it should, in part because the entire mess lacks the legitimacy derived from relevance, and in part because the one thing Jim Clapper could have done on his own authority–the creation of an Open Source Center and an embedded Multinational Decision Support Centre–he has not done. Since the obvious needs to be spelled out, here are the two reasons why the OSC/MDSC are essential: 1) to begin providing the 96% of the decision-support not now provided to everyone including the President but explicitly not provided by classified to anyone below the President including policy, acquisition, and operations action officers; and b) to create the baseline for evaluating the Return on Investment (RoI) for the mis-begotten pieces of the secret world that are not, by any stretch of the imagination, worth the $90 billion a year they are costing us now. If there were one person among the seniors actually capable of making a difference, it should have been Jim Clapper. Happy New Year…
See Also:
Afghanistan: A Coalition officer told the US press today that “There is no practical way to secure the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and the U.S. military will fight insurgents outside Afghan villages where they are vulnerable.” The officer remarked that securing the border would take an inordinate amount of resources and would require more cooperation from tribes inside Pakistan.
NIGHTWATCH Comment: NightWatch Readers should understand that the fight in Afghanistan primarily is waged by Afghan Pashtun fighters who live in Afghanistan and hate foreigners, especially from Christian nations. The data show that Pakistan is important as the channel for logistic support to the Afghan fighters. Pakistan is not a recruitment base for anti-government fighters in Afghanistan and not a winter refuge.
The Afghan Pashtuns fight where they live. They get ammunition and supplies from Pakistan. They do not spend the winter in Pakistan, which well informed Readers and old hands recognize as complete nonsense.
Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH Extracts: Self-Delusions About AF-PK”
Earlier Reports:
• Part one: The London cab driver who fights for the Taliban
• Part two: Five days inside a Taliban jail
Talking to the Taliban about life after occupation
Special report: In the last of his series from Afghanistan, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad asks Taliban leaders past and present what kind of regime they would run – and whether there is a chance of negotiated peace
The administrator
In the south-eastern city of Khost, the everyday business of the Taliban administration carries on across the street from the fortified, government-run city court and police station.
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission) was created to examine how the terrorist attacks of September 2001 could have occurred and what could be done to prevent future attacks. Among other things the Commission recommended that there should be a National Intelligence Director who would have “two main areas of responsibility” namely:
1) to oversee intelligence centers on specific subjects affecting national security; and
2) to oversee the national intelligence program and the agencies that contribute to it.
In effect the Commission wished to have a single authority that could that could task and co-ordinate the processes and operations of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). The U.S. Congress was more or less forced to act on this specific recommendation because of public pressure. Thus the position of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was created by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.
In April 2005, Ambassador John D. Negroponte, former Ambassador to Iraq, was sworn in as the first DNI. Negroponte was chosen because no qualified candidate from the so-called IC was willing to take the job. In truth, the DNI was forced on the Federal Government by outside forces and began with no support either in the Congress, the Executive Branch, or the so-called IC. Indeed President Bush made it clear that he considered the DNI unnecessary. The position of DNI had responsibility for, but no authority over the IC, had no ready made constituency within the government, and was considered an unnecessary intrusion on intelligence operations by the principal members of the IC.
Continue reading “Assessment of the Position of Director of National Intelligence”
truthdig, Posted on Dec 27, 2010
By Chris Hedges
The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.
We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through sensual gratification, cheap mass-produced goods, boundless credit, political theater and amusement. While we were entertained, the regulations that once kept predatory corporate power in check were dismantled, the laws that once protected us were rewritten and we were impoverished. Now that credit is drying up, good jobs for the working class are gone forever and mass-produced goods are unaffordable, we find ourselves transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.” The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is sliding toward bankruptcy. It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are moving from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled.
Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the process by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement. Orwell understood the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse.
