WASHINGTON — Adm. James G. Stavridis, who stepped down this month as NATO’s supreme commander, has been at war in two wars — overseeing the alliance’s role in the enduring mission in Afghanistan as well as the shorter combat air campaign over Libya.
Combined with his tenure before NATO — he was the top officer at the military’s Southern Command, for a total of seven years in a senior four-star billet — Admiral Stavridis had been the longest-serving global combatant commander in the American military.
As he rose through the ranks of command over a 37-year career in uniform, Admiral Stavridis also came to be recognized as one of the military’s most prolific authors on strategy, operations and tactics. Today, though, ask what worries him most, and he answers in a single word: convergence.
This apparent abduction by terrorists of our ambassador and then negotiated trade for the Blind Sheikh would have been the “October Surprise” that would have elevated President Obama’s flagging popularity and boosted his approval ratings for a re-election. A dramatic prisoner exchange that saved our ambassador’s life However, something went horribly wrong. A cunning and illegal bit of treachery by the Obama White House turned into something entirely different. Obama’s October surprise turned into a carnage orchestrated by the White House itself as the President, Leon Panetta, and CIA Director, David Petraeus watched via a UAV real-time feed as a 7 hour attack on the Benghazi Embassy raged. Reportedly, stand down orders were given several times to different units within striking distance.
A plot of pure deception
With what should have been only a staged kidnapping of Ambassador J. Christian Stevens, instead, Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty refused a stand down order and began doing their job of protecting the ambassador using force. Immediately the well-trained Seals began inflicting heavy casualties upon the terrorists who thought they were merely in a cake walk to abduct Ambassador Stevens without mishap. As a result of the plan going awry, a massive attack arose from the anger of the terrorists who felt they had been betrayed by President Obama. In the aftermath of the battle which saw Navy Seal Glen Doherty killed after the embassy had been overrun along with the ambassador’s staff. Ambassador Steven’s whose body showed up 5 hours later at a Benghazi hospital supposedly overcome by smoke, but as the initial foreign press reports indicated a much different outcome, in fact, Stevens was raped, tortured, and dragged around Benghazi in retaliation for the botched Obama White House plan.If not for foreign press agents, who were there and saw, we would never have known the truth as the sold out leftist media of the US would have hidden this fact to aid President Obama’s campaign efforts.
The U.S. Army continues to be one of the most thoughtful of the services. Below is a superb list of responsibilities associated with the protection of civilians. Where the list goes wrong is in assuming that the military will have a major responsibility across all these elements. In fact US thinking continues to be severely flawed at each level of analysis:
Strategic: If the strategy is non-existent or corrupt to the bone, based on ideology or financial bribes rather than ethical evidence-based decision-support, it will inevitably fail in prolonged expensive ways because nothing done at the lower levels can overcome ignorant, arrogant, mis-directed strategy that refuses all ethical evidence-based decision-support.
Operational. If Whole of Government capabilities have been been developed that are agile, scalable, and truly represenative of all elements of national power, the campaign will inevitably fail (it may take a quarter century or longer, but it will fail) for lack of harmonization, legitimization, and the embedded inability to do what is needed in the manner that is needed (e.g. soft indigenously-embraced contributions rather than predatory corrupt practices).
Tactical. If the military is the only tool, and its insertion is bracketed by strategic idiocy, operational incoherence, and technical albatrosses (aviation, fuel-heavy mobilty, communications inadequate to “eight tribes” harmonization local to global, lack of language and culture skills), then however heroic the military might be in executing its often insane and all too often illegal unconstitutional orders, it will fail.
Technical: For 50 years the US military has been a pork pie. What we build has been determined by who bribes Congress the most effectively, and who offers retiring flag officers the most lucrative second career. It has also been gored by a lack of counterintelligence against religious and financial traitors, by a lack of honest design, honest operational testing and evaluation, and honest field commanders willing to blow the whistle as soon as possible. Four percent of the US military force takes 80% of the casualties, and gets 1% of the Pentagon budget. This is criminally insane and insanely criminal.
Since really waking up to all that is wrong in 1988, I have agonized over the broken US intelligence archipelago focused on spending money rather than producing intelligence, and on the broken US process for planning, programming, budgeting, and executing Whole of Government capabilities that are not at this time responsive to the public interest — they have been co-opted by the recipients of the public's revenue and are comprised of one-third waste, one-third treason, and one-third well-intentioned but over-whelmed good mired in a cesspool of bureaucratic corruption and political treason.
Below is an excellent list, additional commentary, and further references.
I read “Google Adds Nutrition Info for over 1,000 Foods to Search Results.” According to the write up, “Google is incorporating nutrition data into search; beginning today, results will include “extensive” details on calories, carbohydrates, proteins, sugars, and other relevant food info.” How significant is the fact delivery adjustment? I think it is pretty important. Google can shape content based on its numerical recipes to advance an agenda via search results. Just as Google is influencing the perception of self driving vehicles and commercially sponsored connectivity in the US and Africa, Google’s ability to push buttons and spin dials in the information world will have interesting consequences.
Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's monthly news digest and action update — being read by you and 68,736 other activists. That's 268 more than last month!
Shares of Monsanto (MON) dropped again Friday after South Korea joined Japan in suspending importation of genetically modified wheat sourced to the crop seed company.
The moves came after the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday that it found genetically engineered wheat, never approved for sale and thought to have been shelved, growing on a farm in Oregon.
. . . . . . . .
Japan earlier canceled plans to buy more wheat from the U.S. Other Asian countries said they're mulling similar moves.
Meanwhile, Monsanto plans to quit lobbying for acceptance of its genetically modified seed in Europe, where it's met with strong resistance. Everyone from French wine producers to German crop growers has objected to its modified seed.
. . . . . . . .
Last year, GM crops accounted for 88% of all corn in the U.S., 94% of cotton and 93% of soybeans, according to USDA figures. In Europe, they're estimated to account for less than 1% of crops.
