Much of how DOD will respond to falling budgets and the challenges of 2013 will depend on who President Obama selects to be SecDef. This is why I am hoping that Senator Chuck Hagel will be chosen. Yet he alone will be unable to do much of anything to solve DOD’s systemic problems of incompetence, corruption, and dereliction of duty. He will need to fire the existing senior civilian and military bureaucrats who have made maintaining the dysfunctional status quo an art form and who will fight any change tooth and nail. The senator in short needs to surround himself with people like yourself who will not be afraid to change the moribund operations and culture of DOD.
So what are the Senator’s chances of becoming SecDef? I don’t think they are very good at all. Although I don’t normally agree with Gordon Duff’s opinions, I think he is right about how the pro-Israeli lobbies and neo-cons will oppose the conformation of Senator Hagel. There will also be considerable opposition to him from the military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC), who correctly see him as a treat to their gravy train. In addition the DOD military and civilian bureaucracy would fight against his nomination, even if the MICC were not threatened — they KNOW they are over-staffed at the top. Finally the self-referentials that occupy so many seats in the U.S. Congress will oppose him on so-called principles based on paranoid fears, adherence to rigid ideologies, and general opposition to anything the President attempts.
This is a shame because it will cost us yet another good public servant and a thinker who could actually transform U.S. National Security.
Phi Beta Iota: Concise but very deep, very provocative. 13 is the Maonic “New World Order” magic number, containing the 12, these reflections from Anthony Judge are very pertinent to moving beyond the 13, toward the self-healing open source everything.
Robert David STEELE Vivas Click on Image for Personal Page
Telling the truth to those who have replaced intelligence with ideology and integrity with loyalty to something other than their Republic is most difficult and more often than not will get you fired, because those without integrity tend to be promoted in corrupt systems, and they see clearly the threat to their world-view — and their perks — of someone who persists in pointing out that the truth at any cost reduces all other costs.
Reform can be job and revenue neutral from state to state and district to district — and is of course subject to Congressional oversight via the authorization and appropriations process. Below are seven truths about the US military that I would like to see introduced into the hearings on the confirmation of the next Secretary of Defense, and ideally also tasked to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), where the senior specialist for each of the major services is capable of validating my views.
By Gordon Duff and Press TV
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”Real or not, Netanyahu feels Israel has been abandoned by the US. Some Americans, I am certainly one of these, Hagel is one also as is Chairman of the JCOS, Martin Dempsey, see Israel as interfering in domestic affairs, American elections and an irresponsible “actor” in the Middle East.”
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Senator Chuck Hagel (ret), a republican from Nebraska, is expected to be nominated by President Obama to the vital post of Secretary of Defense, taking the place of Leon Panetta.
Hagel is the only GOP senator to have stood up to the Israel/AIPAC lobby, the only senator to question sanctions against Iran and a rare and independent voice that is needed to bring Pentagon “adventurism” to an end.
However, Hagel is now under attack and stands accused of “anti-Semitism,” this time by infamous neocon Bill Kristol.
If you thought a soldier's best friend was a weapon, try again. Meet LS3 (Legged Squad Support System) — the four-legged machine being developed for military use by engineering firm, Boston Dynamics. The outfit designed the not-so-cuddly contraption (aka AlphaDog) under contract by DARPA to work as an aid alongside US troops. BD has been advancing this particular beast for more than two years, which has already proved it can carry up to 400 pounds of gear for about 20 miles without refueling. Just a few months ago, the robot was upgraded to jog at about 5MPH over rugged terrain to up the ante even further — an improvement over its slower-moving and noisy predecessor. Prior collaborations between the two have spawned unique projects like Cheetah (a robot purposed to run as similarly as possible to the animal it's named after) and Atlas (a human-like droid that walks and climbs walls).
Click on Image to Enlarge
Fast forward to the present with AlphaDog now back in the spotlight, BD is ready to show off some newly engineered tricks. These latest alterations stem from two weeks of real world testing in the woods of central Virginia, demonstrating a number of improvements to its autonomy and maneuverability, including the ability to recover from a pretty substantial roll. What's more, DARPA's also shown off how the robot can respond to voice commands as well as what it calls “Leader Follow” decision making. By doing so, the loyal companion itself determines how best to trail its human counterpart. All that and some sounds to keep you up at night are in the video below.
Herewith is a stunning series of reports by Gareth Porter, one of the very best investigative journalists in America. Not only does he show how King David created the myth of his success and became naked in the process, he puts the failures of the surges in Iraq and Afghanistan into a definitive perspective. But perhaps most importantly, at least to my thinking, Gareth also expose the emptiness of real lesson learned by the US military from its failure in Vietnam … namely how protect the institution from criticism by manipulating and controlling the narrative of failing wars and a breakdown of leadership by capturing the thinking and imagination of the press. This manipulation was evident in the uncritical coverage of the First Gulf War, but the superficial appearance of success in those wars masked the rot embedded (pun intended) in the “lesson learned.” Thanks to Gareth, it is now clear to anyone who makes an effort to study this report.
The Petraeus Legacy: Conscious and Unconscious Falsehoods
David Petraeus always demonstrated political agility in his management of the “war of perceptions” in Iraq and Iran, gravitating to story lines that would create an image of success even though the larger picture still looked uncertain, if not unfavorable.
But in Afghanistan, the Petraeus strategy did have the same effect as it had in Iraq. He was never able to show that the Taliban insurgency had been brought under control. As Lt. Col. Danny Davis, who returned from his second tour in Afghanistan in late 2011 after having traveled more than 9,000 miles around the country, reported in an 84-page assessment, the level of Taliban attacks in 2011 was still at or above the 2009 levels that had prompted US officials to fear that the war was being lost.
Davis charged that Petraeus' March 2011 report to Congress was “misleading, significantly skewed or completely inaccurate.” Davis presented a classified version of his report to a bipartisan group of Senators and House members that cited dozens of classified documents in support of his charge. And in a telling reflection of Petraeus' failure of to make a credible case, The New York Times covered Davis' critique in a front page story in January 2012. The only question about his attack on Petraeus' claims was whether Petraeus was knowingly lying or saying what he chose to believe.
The record of Petraeus' command in Afghanistan – especially the case of the Taliban impostor – suggests that his public posture on the progress of his command combined claims he knew were untrue with some that he actually believed were true. His need to maintain the image he had so artfully created had led him to believe increasingly his own myth.
So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence of Rupert Murdoch‘s ultimate and most audacious attempt – thwarted, thankfully, by circumstance – to hijack America's democratic institutions on a scale equal to his success in kidnapping and corrupting the essential democratic institutions of Great Britain through money, influence and wholesale abuse of the privileges of a free press.
In the American instance, Murdoch's goal seems to have been nothing less than using his media empire – notably Fox News – to stealthily recruit, bankroll and support the presidential candidacy of General David Petraeus in the 2012 election.
