08 Wild Cards – Page 179 – Public Intelligence Blog

2010/10/192010/10/19

Journal: Taliban Ramps Up North, Holds South + RECAP

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Strategy

Taliban Influence Grows in North

Insurgents Attack, Recruit, Adjudicate, Countering NATO's Advance in South

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV

PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan—The Taliban's influence in northern Afghanistan has expanded in recent months from a few hotspots to much of the region, as insurgents respond to the U.S.-led coalition's surge in the south by seizing new ground in areas once considered secure.

Taliban militants stop traffic nightly at checkpoints on the road from Kabul to Uzbekistan, just outside Baghlan province's capital city of Pul-e-Khumri, frequently blowing up fuel convoys and seizing travelers who work with the government or the international community.

In many areas here and the rest of the north, the Taliban have effectively supplanted the official authorities, running local administrations and courts, and conscripting recruits.

– – – – – – –

The Taliban have consolidated their war gains by tapping into broad disillusionment with the incompetence and venality of Afghan government officials.

“People don't love the Taliban—but if they compare them to the government, they see the Taliban as the lesser evil,” said Baghlan Gov. Munshi Abdul Majid, an appointee of President Hamid Karzai.

Full Story Online…

Phi Beta Iota: Based on what we now know about Viet-Nam, we predict that the military-industrial complex will declare victory in November 2012, and inform the new President that the US military has been entirely “used up” in Afghanistan and Iraq, and therefore we need to increase the Pentagon budget to rebuy the military from scratch.

See Also (RECAP Last Six Months):

Continue reading “Journal: Taliban Ramps Up North, Holds South + RECAP”

2010/10/182010/10/18

Secrecy News Headlines: Iraq + Lies Leading to Iraq

04 Inter-State Conflict, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Government, Media, Military, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

** DOD SEES NO INTEL COMPROMISE FROM WIKILEAKS DOCS
** REVISITING THE DECISION TO GO TO WAR IN IRAQ

It is to be expected that national intelligence services will sometimes fail to identify and discover a threat to the nation in a timely fashion. But when intelligence warns of a threat that isn’t really there, and then nations go to war to meet the phantom threat — that is a serious, confounding and deeply disturbing problem.

But in a nutshell, that is the story of the war in Iraq, in which the U.S. and its allies attacked Saddam Hussein’s Iraq because of the supposedly imminent threat posed by Saddam’s stockpile of weapons of mass destruction — a threat that proved illusory.

A new book published in the United Kingdom called “Failing Intelligence” provides a remarkable account of the British experience of how intelligence on the Iraqi WMD program was shaped and packaged to support the decision to go to war in Iraq. The book’s author, Brian Jones, was the chief specialist in weapons of mass destruction on the UK Defence Intelligence Staff. He was also a skeptic of the stronger claims made about the existence of Iraqi WMD stockpiles. The book documents his mostly unsuccessful attempts to register that skepticism, to moderate the extreme claims made by government officials, and later to hold those officials accountable for their actions.

He provides a detailed first-hand account of how his efforts were consistently deflected in the rush to war, and how intelligence declined into propaganda. It’s a grim but instructive case study in the overlapping failure of intelligence gathering, intelligence production, and intelligence oversight.

The National Security Archive has recently published three richly informative collections of declassified U.S. and British government documents on the lead-up to the Iraq war (including several key documents cited or relied upon by Brian Jones).

“The more deeply the processes of creating the government reports on the alleged Iraqi threat are reconstructed — on both sides of the Atlantic — the more their products are revealed as explicitly aimed at building a basis for war,” wrote John Prados of the National Security Archive and journalist Christopher Ames in an analysis of the documents.

“In the light of a decision process in which no serious consideration was given to any course other than war, the question of whether American and British leaders set out to wage aggressive war has to be squarely faced,” they wrote.

Review: Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush

Review: VICE–Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

Review: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

Review: Shooting the Truth–The Rise of American Political Documentaries

Review: Grand Theft Pentagon–Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror

2010/10/182010/10/18

Reference: Humanizing “The Man”

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Articles & Chapters, Blog Wisdom, Officers Call, Strategy

Humanizing “The Man:” Strengthening Psychological and Information Operations in Afghanistan
by A. Lawrence Chickering

In this paper, I will argue there are three great challenges the coalition forces need to overcome in their search for narratives that resonate with Afghans and that ultimately will promote support for the coalition and for the government. First is the traditional and tribal Afghan antagonism to outsiders. Second is the lack of a stake that ordinary Afghans have in the larger system. And the third involves a conflict in impact of major activities in the country, a conflict between programs that empower Afghans and programs that disempower them.

Download the Full Article: Humanizing the “Man”

Phi Beta Iota: The four levels of war and peace were best explained by Edward N. Luttwak, see Review: Strategy–The Logic of War and Peace, Revised and Enlarged Edition. We raise this point, as we raised it while teaching at a Civil Affairs course at Fort Bragg, because no amount of good intentions at the operational and tactical levels of war can overcome flagrant irresponsibility and immorality at the strategic level, or the lack of anything other than killing tools at the tactical level. War and Peace are a whole. If you cannot start with morality and a just cause, and if you cannot implement a Whole of Government strategy that leads to an outcome of peace and prosperity for those you wish to win over, then everything in the middle is waste–wasted blood, wasted treasure, wasted spirit. And if everything you do on the battlefield and in your supply line is rife with corruption–e.g US funding the Taliban, never mind–then you are thrice cursed and unlikely to prevail.

Review: Modern Strategy

Search: Strategic Analytic Model

Search: four levels intelligence analysis

2010/10/152010/10/15

Journal: That Should Be Classified….

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, Cultural Intelligence, Government

I continue to hear military and civilian IC folks belittle Open Source. I passed this around to show them what can be done and all I get is the response, “this should be classified”. They cannot believe it is from purely open source data…..link provided due to size of document…

The Haqqani Network: From Pakistan to Afghanistan

Key Findings

The Haqqani network, which has the backing of elements within the Pakistani security establishment, is one of Afghanistan’s most experienced and sophisticated insurgent organizations.

Although the Haqqani network is officially subsumed under the larger Taliban umbrella organization led by Mullah Omar and his Quetta Shura Taliban, the Haqqanis maintain distinct command and control, and lines of operations.

Siraj Haqqani, the son of the famous anti-Soviet fighter Jalaluddin Haqqani, is the current leader of the Haqqani network. Siraj is more extreme than his father and maintains closer ties to al-Qaeda and other foreign extremists in Pakistan.

The Haqqani network maintains a safe haven in North Waziristan, Pakistan, across Afghanistan’s southeastern border. The Pakistani Army has consistently refused to launch a military operation in North Waziristan despite the presence of al-Qaeda senior leadership.

Elements within the Pakistani security establishment continue to view the Haqqani network as a useful ally and proxy force to represent their interests in Afghanistan. To this end, Haqqani forces have repeatedly targeted Indian infrastructure and construction projects in Afghanistan.

The Haqqani Network Afghanistan Report #6 October 12, 2010 Jeffrey Dressler . . Haqqani_Network.pdf

Phi Beta Iota: It is now known that Pakistan successfully fooled the most experienced CIA officers in the world, leading them to believe for decades that the Pakistani ISI elements dealing with the Taliban were “renegades” whose misbehavior was not sanctioned by the government. We now know that every move, every word was sanctioned, and we now can calculate that at least half of the money from CIA intended for Afghanistan was siphoned off to fund Pakistani priorities and private bank accounts. If CIA cannot figure this out while it is happening, why should we trust them to figure anything else out? A major reason CIA did NOT know what it needed to know was because then and now it refuses to actually deal in depth with anyone lacking clearances or US citizenship. The one decent initiative CIA had, apart from Project GEORGE, was the Global Futures Partnership. Both died in infancy. Nothing has changed.

See Also:

Historic Contributions (241)
History of Opposition (15)
Honour Society (13)
- Awards 1992-2006 (2)

2010/10/122010/10/12

Reference: THE WORLD ORDER A Study in the Hegemony of Parasitism with an Emphasis on the Rothschilds and the Central Banks of Europe

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Historic Contributions, History, IO Sense-Making, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Waste (materials, food, etc)

Cover World Order Small Footprint — Free Online (282 Pages)

This one book will explain more history than any other I have ever read. South Pole Sends.

Phi Beta Iota: The public is starting to do to the Rothschilds, Central Banks, and the Federal Reserve what plane spotters did to CIA rendition flights. We support truth & reconciliation; we do NOT support revenge or expropriation of illicit assets. The ill-gotten gains of the Rothschilds and the banks that front for them, notably the Federal Reserve, are a drop in the bucket compared to the infinite wealth that the five billion poor can create if these parasitic “elites” will just get out of the way. So that is the deal: stay out of the way and keep what you have. Interfere with the emergence of the global community of informed participatory democracy, and the deal is off.

USA Specific:

Journal: Five Myths Debunked–Treasury Run by Crooks

Journal: Mother of All Frauds AFTER 9-11 Mother of All Atrocities–The Information Canivores Begin Circling Wall Street and the Two-Party Tyranny

Journal: $750 Billion Wall Street Scam, Russian Anger, Chinese Intent, We are NOT Making This Up!

Reference: Alternative Views of 9/11–Massive US Financial & Gold Fraud & 240 Billion Covert Fund Against Russia

Reference: US Intelligence & Global Banking

Review: 9-11 Descent into Tyranny–The New World Order’s Dark Plans to Turn Earth into a Prison Planet

Review: Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids

Review: Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect

Review: The Naked Capitalist

Review: The New Rulers of the World

Review: Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

2010/10/112010/10/12

Worth a Look: Hugely Inflamatory Slam on US Muslim Tax-Deductible Fund-Raising for Hamas and Hezbollah

08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Civil Society, Non-Governmental

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Ladies and Gentlemen:

1. Invite your attention the video at the YouTube link in the message below.

2. Just to be clear:

a. I cannot tell you precisely who made the video.

b. I cannot tell definitively whether or not it is true in whole or in part..

c. To me, it looks like it ((COULD)) be a product of selective editing with individual items extracted from multiple source and reassembled, without context, to suggest conclusions supporting somebody's predetermined viewpoint. But that does not necessarily mean that it is not wholly or partially true.

d. Invite your special attention to the credits at the very end — about 13:06 and beyond. If Steven Emerson and the Investigativer Project are involved with this video, that would increase its credibility in my eyes.

e. All foregoing said, I am inclined to believe video and message are more true than not.

3. For some of you addees, I think this is relatively local for if I understand east Florida geography.

Busted – Orlando Mosque Finances Hamas Fundraiser

Phi Beta Iota: The above YouTube is just under 14 minutes and well-worth watching. We offer several observations:

Continue reading “Worth a Look: Hugely Inflamatory Slam on US Muslim Tax-Deductible Fund-Raising for Hamas and Hezbollah”

2010/10/102010/10/10

Worth a Look: Robert Young Pelton Goes Fishing…

08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Peace Intelligence

pelton in colombia — DuckDuckGo Update on RYP

Robert Young Pelton, along with Stephen E. Arnold, was the only “repeat” speaker year after year at the multinational open source intelligence event that ran from 1992-2006. Here is a photo of RYP that just came to our attention while discussing how to fish for drug dealers crossing border lakes.

Review: Licensed to Kill–Hired Guns in the War on Terror (Hardcover)

Review: Robert Young Pelton’s The World’s Most Dangerous Places: 5th Edition

2006 Pelton (US) Recommends The Changing Face of Global Violence

2004 Pelton (US) Value-added Citizen Blogs, Forums, and Wars

2003 Pelton (US) World’s Most Dangerous Places