For the past several years Americans have been inundated by reams of journalistic puff pieces extolling the virtues of the new US Counterinsurgency (COIN) Strategy documented by General Petraeus in his much ballyhooed COIN manual — which for the most part was a merely regurgitation of the failed thinking of French Marshal Lyautey's ink spot strategy (that counterinsurgent forces should aim to secure an ever expanding geographic zone of security with each new area secured providing a basis for further spreading, and so on.)
It is becoming clear, however, the showpiece of this new strategy, the Marjah operation, has failed to deliver on the promised security improvements to the people, and in the words of the theater commander, General Stanley McChrystal, has become a “bleeding ulcer.”
Coupled with the deadlines imposed by President President Obama, when he approved McChrystal's ill-thought out plan last Fall, notwithstanding the cogent misgivings expressed by Ambassador Eikenberry, it is now clear that McChrystal is under mounting pressure to deliver some progress by the end of the year.
Indeed, hair may be on fire at McChrystal's Bagram headquarters. Rumors are circulating in military circles of backbiting and finger pointing, as well as complaints that MacChrystal is being set up as a fall guy, while his boss, General Petraeus, skates to a Republican presidential nomination in 2012.
Defying a previous veto threat from the White House, the House of Representatives will consider an amendment to bolster intelligence oversight by requiring intelligence agencies to cooperate with the Government Accountability Office when it performs audits that are requested by a congressional committee with jurisdiction over intelligence.
In general, the amendment (pdf) states, “the Director of National Intelligence shall ensure that personnel of the Government Accountability Office designated by the Comptroller General are provided with access to all information in the possession of an element of the intelligence community that the Comptroller General determines is necessary for such personnel to conduct an analysis, evaluation, or investigation of a program or activity of an element of the intelligence community that is requested by one of the congressional intelligence committees.”
The amendment to the FY2011 Defense Authorization Act (HR 5136) was sponsored by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and several colleagues.
When a similar amendment was included in the FY2010 Intelligence Authorization Act, which is still pending, it prompted a veto threat from the Obama White House. But the White House opposition was based on an erroneous interpretation of the law, the Acting Comptroller of the GAO told Congress.
Somewhat surprisingly, given the likelihood of a renewed veto threat, the House Democratic leadership ruled that the Eshoo amendment was “in order,” and it will therefore be considered on the House floor, perhaps today or tomorrow.
Back when he was a Congressman in 1987, CIA Director Leon Panetta introduced a bill called the “CIA Accountability Act” (pdf) that would have reinforced GAO oversight over the Central Intelligence Agency.
Can't Fix Stupid
Phi Beta Iota: Tip of the hat to Secrecy News for the above lead story. The secret world is long overdue for GAO oversight, and we have stated in writing before that the first decision by any Director of National Intelligence (DNI) with even a modicum of ethics (we're not holding our breath) should be to create an integrated IG/GAO office and put the entire secret intelligence world under a GAO microscope. It is our judgement that 90% of the contract positions should be eliminated, and at least 50% of the so-called government employee positions, most of which are very highly paid clerical positions, nothing more. The budget should be cut back to $25 billion a year, with the proviso that the other $50 billion remains under the DNI's purview for redirection toward education, research, and a global multinational multiagency multidisciplinary multidomain information sharing and sensemaking (M4IS2) grid focused on creating a prosperous world at peace. Budget intelligence, and the eradication of corruption at all levels by combining true cost intelligence with the exposure of blatantly stupid acquisition decisions, some but not all also corrupt acquisition decisions (most just uninformed), is the single best thing intelligence can do for the government; creating a Smart Nation is the ONLY thing that should be on the next DNI's mind. If Obama is dumb enough to keep John Brennan at the White House, he is assuredly dumb enough to move Jim Clapper or Leon Panetta to the DNI position and lose all hope of ever getting anything serious out of the secret world in the little time he has remaining. No one now serving is capable of serving the public interest–Panetta had a shot, but if he cannot handle CIA he assuredly cannot handle Jim Clapper and the Clapper Harem.
The New York Times this morning has a particularly lush installment of one of the American media's most favored, reliable, and self-affirming rituals — it's time to mock and pity Those Crazy, Primitive, Irrational, Propagandized Muslims and their Wild Conspiracy Theories, which their reckless media and extremists maliciously disseminate in order to generate unfair and unfounded hostility toward the U.S.:
Conspiracy theory is a national sport in Pakistan, where the main players — the United States, India and Israel — change positions depending on the ebb and flow of history. Since 2001, the United States has taken center stage, looming so large in Pakistan's collective imagination that it sometimes seems to be responsible for everything that goes wrong here. . . . The problem is more than a peculiar domestic phenomenon for Pakistan. It has grown into a narrative of national victimhood that is a nearly impenetrable barrier to any candid discussion of the problems here. In turn, it is one of the principal obstacles for the United States in its effort to build a stronger alliance with a country to which it gives more than a billion dollars a year in aid.
Initially, it's worth asking how these “conspiracy theories” compare to this: from the front page of The New York Times, September 8, 2002:
More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today. . . . In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. . . . An Iraqi defector said Mr. Hussein had also heightened his efforts to develop new types of chemical weapons. An Iraqi opposition leader also gave American officials a paper from Iranian intelligence indicating that Mr. Hussein has authorized regional commanders to use chemical and biological weapons to put down any Shiite Muslim resistance that might occur if the United States attacks.
From the front page of The Washington Post, April 3, 2003:
Nazareth. Israel faces unprecedented pressure to abandon its official policy of “ambiguity” on its possession of nuclear weapons as the international community meets at the United Nations in New York this week to consider banning such arsenals from the Middle East. Israel’s equivocal stance on its atomic status was shattered by reports on Monday that it offered to sell nuclear-armed Jericho missiles to South Africa’s apartheid regime back in 1975.
The revelations are deeply embarrassing to Israel given its long-standing opposition to signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, arguing instead that it is a “responsible power” that would never misuse nuclear weapons technologies if it acquired them. Reports of Israel’s nuclear dealings with apartheid South Africa will also energise a draft proposal from Egypt to the UN non-proliferation review conference that Israel — as the only nuclear power in the region — be required to sign the treaty.
Israeli officials are already said to be discomfited by Washington’s decision earlier this month to agree a statement with other UN Security Council members calling for the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear arms.
Energy-related economic, security, and environmental threats are intensifying the national conversation about how to regain energy leadership and competitiveness, restore jobs and prosperity, and build a secure and climate-safe energy system.
Yet America lacks a comprehensive vision of how a market economy can achieve these transformational goals.
RMI has that vision, and is now building its detailed roadmap, which we call Reinventing Fire™. This strategy will bring together RMI’s 28 years of innovation and engage the world in our most ambitious and important work yet—using whole-system thinking and integrative design to move the U.S. off fossil fuels by 2050, led by business for profit.
Phi Beta Iota: This is righteous good stuff. It does not go far enough. Agriculture & Water as well as Health & Society are other points on the compass that must be addressed coherently and simultaneously. That will not happen without the restoration of integrity (not just of honor but of thinking). We salute the Rocky Mountain Institute for taking the fist viable step in the right direction.
This important essay by Ray McGovern makes a compelling case for the recommendation he makes last two paragraphs which are repeated in italics below:
“As a former CIA analyst, I hope that Obama would have the presence of mind to order a fast-track special National Intelligence Estimate on the implications of the Iran-Brazil-Turkey agreement for U.S. national interests and those of the countries of the Middle East.
Obama needs an unvarnished assessment of the agreement’s possible benefits (and its potential negatives) as counterweight to the pro-Israel lobbying that will inevitably descend on the White House and State Department.”
The times may be a-changin’ — at least a bit — with the United States and Israel no longer able to dictate to the rest of the world how crises in the Middle East must be handled, though the new reality has been slow to dawn on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her neocon friends in Congress and the U.S. media.
They may think they are still in control, still the smart ones looking down at upstarts like the leaders of Turkey and Brazil who had the audacity to ignore U.S. warnings and press ahead with diplomacy to head off a possible new war, this one over Iran.
On Monday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced success in persuading Iran to send roughly 50 percent of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for higher-enriched uranium that would be put to peaceful medical uses.
