The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Obama Approves $30 Billion in Military Aid to Israel Over Next Decade
As the single largest expense of the 2010 foreign aid budget, President Obama approved $2.775 billion in military aid to Israel, the first payment in a decade-long commitment that will reach at least $30 billion.
Continue reading “Journal: $30B for Israel, 75% Earmarked for US KR”
UPDATE: Superceeded by final published version a tReference: Intelligence-Led Peacekeeping
Phi Beta Iota: Dr. Walter Dorn is one of a tiny handful of truly authoritative academic observers of UN intelligence, a pioneer in his own right, and perhaps the only person who has followed UN intelligence from the Congo in the 1960's to the creation of new capabilities in Haiti and elsewhere in the 21st Century. He is the dean of UN intelligence authors. See also Who’s Who in Peace Intelligence: Walter Dorn.
Published on Friday, December 18, 2009 by Rebel Reports
Stunning Statistics About the War Every American Should Know
Contrary to popular belief, the US actually has 189,000 personnel on the ground in Afghanistan right now—and that number is quickly rising.
A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill's Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense's total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That's not in one war zone-that's the Pentagon in its entirety.
In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by McCaskill's staff, “From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.”
At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that's right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.
Continue reading “Journal: Contractors Out of Control, Money Wasted”
Phi Beta Iota: This is a brilliant piece of work, precisely what we should have been doing from 1988 onwards. It is probably too late only because the US Government is incapable of a 180 degree turn that puts two Berlin Airlifts in motion, one to Afghanistan and one to Iraq, with each redirected to Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen as the process moves forward.
Edit of 20 Dec 09: This article is one of two cited by a top US flag officer speaking to COINSOC in Iraq. The other one is Reference: PK Officer View on AF.
This blog is that of Steven Pressfield is the author of Gates of Fire and four other historical novels set in the ancient world, including The Afghan Campaign. His most recent book is Killing Rommel, a WWII story. He is also the author of The Legend of Bagger Vance and The War of Art.
The blog entries below begin with a feature of the work now available in the full original, Reference: One Tribe at a Time by Maj Jim Gant and then segue into new work by Steven Pressfield.
Interview w/Tribal Chief #11: Pakistan, continued
One Tribe At A Time #10: A Report from embedded journalist Andrew Lubin
Continue reading “Reference: One Tribe at a Time by Steven Pressfield”
By Jim O'Neill Thursday, December 17, 2009
“The Crusader would have been quite justified in suspecting the Muslim even if the Muslim had merely been a new stranger; but as a matter of history he was already an old enemy. The critic of the Crusade talks as if it had sought out some inoffensive tribe or temple in the interior of Tibet, which was never discovered until it was invaded. They seem entirely to forget that long before the Crusaders had dreamed of riding to Jerusalem, the Muslims had almost ridden into Paris.”—G.K Chesterton (1874-1936)
“O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.” —Qur’an (5:51)
“No one can be a true Muslim and a true American simultaneously.”—Wafa Sultan (From “A God Who Hates”)
Are you familiar with the word “dhimmi?” You should be; it means an infidel (non-Muslim) living under the heel of an Islamic theocracy. The plural is “dimam,” and Europe has increasingly become a Balkanized checkerboard of nationalistic strongholds, and Islamic dimam regions.
The servitude of the dimam will be America’s fate as well, unless “we the people” wake up to Islam’s threat to our freedom. That’s not hyperbole people—just check out what has happened, and is happening, in Europe—Nazi Eurabia. America’s next.
Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones
$26 Software Is Used to Breach Key Weapons in Iraq; Iranian Backing Suspected
WASHINGTON — Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.
Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.
Today, the Air Force is buying hundreds of Reaper drones, a newer model, whose video feeds could be intercepted in much the same way as with the Predators, according to people familiar with the matter. A Reaper costs between $10 million and $12 million each and is faster and better armed than the Predator. General Atomics expects the Air Force to buy as many as 375 Reapers.
Additional Insights from CBS News Beyond Wall Street Journal
The implications of the Predator's unencrypted transmissions have been known in military circles for a long time. An October 1999 presentation given at the Air Force's School of Advanced Airpower Studies in Alabama noted “the Predator UAV is designed to operate with unencrypted data links.”
A 1996 briefing by Paul Kaminski, an undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology, may offer a hint about how the Iraqi's interception was done. Kaminski said that the military had turned to commercial satellites – “Hughes is the primary provider of direct (satellite) TV that you can buy in the United States, and that's the technology we're leveraging off of” – to share feeds from Predator drones.
