Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Journal: A Day in the Life of US Grunts in AF

Ethics, Government, Military, Threats

It will take more than technology to win war

Despite the army's newest technology, one of their most valuable assets so far was an informant: a farmer with a taste for opium.

Seattle Times October 7, 2009 Pg. 1 Hal Bernton

In the farmlands and ancient villages of the Arghandab, an Army campaign launched this summer has been a slow, difficult grind, and insurgent forces continue to hold sway over large areas. Technology alone isn't enough to win this fight

Phi Beta Iota: This piece moved us, and reminded us of the The Soldier's Load.  Weight, Water, and “who's got eyes on?”  Then we recall The Tunnels of Cu Chi and more recently, Phantom Soldier.  President Obama is caught between those he listens to, who want him to see AF in isolation, and those he does not listen to, who want him to address all ten high-level threats by harmonizing all twelve core policies within a balanced budget.  The US IC, which should be empowering the President, appears AWOL.

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Journal: Chuck Spinney and Pat Buchanan on Groupthinking Apparat Moves to Finish Off Obama

05 Civil War, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Chuck Spinney Sends: The attached article, “Generals Open New Front in Washington,” by Pat Buchanan describes how the time honored practice of Versailles Groupthink is now closing in to circumscribe President Obama's strategic options in Afghanistan and Pakistan, much as it did to Lyndon Johnson during Vietnam.

Note how the “strategic” options for Afghanistan are boiling down to a consensus view of an either/or decision.  Either a large escalation of US ground forces or an escalation of destabilizing Predator attacks, particularly in Pakistan, or a compromise on some combination of the two.  In all cases, there will be a large increase in the size of the Afghan Army.  That questionable enterprise is taken as a given by the emerging consensus view.  If Buchanan is right about this either/or choice … Obama is being set up big time by advisors, because, as near as I can tell, Obama has no access to outside or dissenting views.  There is no third or fourth way, because there is no one in the role of George Ball to just say no (who LBJ ignored much to his chagrin), and there is no one on Capital Hill with political or military smarts or the stature to shape a third, more practical alternative. Continue reading “Journal: Chuck Spinney and Pat Buchanan on Groupthinking Apparat Moves to Finish Off Obama”

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Journal: Director of National Intelligence Reverses Progress–Time to Rethink Everything

Government, Methods & Process, Reform, Technologies, Tools

IC Meets OSINT
IC Meets OSINT

Shutdown Of Intelligence Community E-mail Network Sparks E-Rebellion

The Atlantic POLITICS

Marc Ambinder

Oct 6 2009

The intelligence community's innovative uGov e-mail domain, one of its earliest efforts at cross-agency collaboration, will be shut down because of security concerns, government officials said.  The decision, announced internally last Friday to the hundreds of analysts who use the system, drew immediate protests from intelligence agency employees and led to anxiety that other experimental collaborative platforms, like the popular Intellipedia website, are also in the target sights of managers.

It follows reports that another popular analytic platform called “Bridge,” which allows analysts with security clearances to collaborate with people outside the government who have relevant expertise but no clearances, is being killed, and indications that funding for another transformational capability, the DoDIIS Trusted Workstation, which allows analysts to look at information at a variety of clearance levels — Secret, Top Secret, Law Enforcement Sensitive– is being curtailed.
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Journal: CIA Opens Climate Center–the Reductionism and Irrelevance Continues within a “Dumb Nation”

Government

The Real CIA
The Real CIA

CIA Opens Center for Climate Change. The Central Intelligence Agency announced plans to launch a center on climate change to examine the potential security risks of environmental issues.  The CIA said it was working on its new Center on Climate Change and National Security to examine the national security impact of environmental issues such as population shifts, rising sea levels and increased competition for natural resources.  CIA Director Leon Panetta described the center as an effective support tool for U.S. lawmakers examining international agreements on the environment.  “Decision makers need information and analysis on the effects climate change can have on security,” said the director. “The CIA is well positioned to deliver that intelligence.”

Phi Beta Iota: Poor CIA.  Desperately seeking relevance, now it opens a Climate Center just as Al Gore gets trashed and the Skeptical Economist gains traction with the publication of The Resilient Earth.  A decade late and out of touch once again.  This is called “reductionism.”  It does not work.  What CIA needs is a Director that understands strategic holistic integrative analysis and the importance of open sources.  Not happening.  So very sad.

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Journal: Ron Paul, Grand Strategy, Ahem

Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Key Players, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Real Time, Threats
Full Story Online
Full Story Online

Chuck Spinney has nominated this short piece,

Instead of Bombs and Bribes, Let’s Try Empathy and Trade

Representative Ron Paul, October 6, 2009

What if tomorrow morning you woke up to headlines that yet another Chinese drone bombing on U.S. soil killed several dozen ranchers in a rural community while they were sleeping? That a drone aircraft had come across the Canadian border in the middle of the night and carried out the latest of many attacks? What if it was claimed that many of the victims harbored anti-Chinese sentiments, but most of the dead were innocent women and children? And what if the Chinese administration, in an effort to improve its public image in the U.S., had approved an aid package to send funds to help with American roads and schools and promote Chinese values here?

Continue reading “Journal: Ron Paul, Grand Strategy, Ahem”

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Journal: MI-5 Book by Christopher Andrew

10 Security, Law Enforcement

Badly marketed on Amazon by a publisher that evidently does not really care for the future of the book, we do what we can to highlight the availability of this new book by Christopher Andrew, In Defence of the Realm, an authorized but not controlled examination of the history of MI-5 (internal security) in the United Kingdom.  A short article on the book:

Defence of the Realm: author marks 100 years of MI5 with official history

Within the USA there has never been a proper review that we know of with respect to internal security, although there have been a number of books on the failures of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a few of which we list below.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been an abysmal expensive failure in all respects, substituting money, technology, and butts in seats for thinking, education, and common sense.

Continue reading “Journal: MI-5 Book by Christopher Andrew”

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Journal: Lee Hamilton on Congress

Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Reform
Lee Hamilton
Lee Hamilton

Overview

Is This The Congress We Want? We Can't Wait Much Longer To Fix Congress Lobbying Murkiness Undermines Our Trust in Congress Congress Confuses the Public and Itself Congressional Bickering Who Lobbies for the Rest of Us? It's Time for the Public to Fund Congressional Travel Congress Needs to Invigorate Its Ethics System, Not Weaken It Why Congress Must Learn To Look Ahead Broken Budget Process Congress and Individual Liberties A Balanced View of Congress The Money Chase Tackling the Tough Issues Is Congress out of Touch? Congress and the Pork Barrel

Phi Beta Iota: Lee Hamilton, a Representative for 30+ years, now leads The Center on Congress at Indiana University.  He is unique for being the single voice most responsible for putting an Open Source Agency (OSA) on pages 23 and 413 of the 9-11 Commission Report, something he did on the basis of what he learned from being on the Aspin-Brown Commission and watching the “The Burundi Exercise” that pitted Robert Steele with six open source telephone calls against the entire U.S. Intelligence Community.  Steele won, producing commercial imagery, Russian 1:50 combat charts, a list of the top academic experts; a list of the top journalists; tribal orders of battle including technical, etcetera.  CIA had a cute little map of the region and a regional economic study with flawed assumptions (mirroring).  Each of the above is a separate short discourse, each worthy of every citizen's attention.

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