Category: Key Players

Posted on

Journal: Iran Bombings–Whu Dun It? Update 1

05 Iran, Ethics, Government
Webster Griffin Tarpley
Webster Griffin Tarpley

Phi Beta Iota: The public and Congress–and perhaps even the White House–are not fully informed on the this matter.  In our view, “the Borg” is out of control and Iran could be a nuclear flash-point.  See headlines.  Zbigniew Brzezinski is the common threat, and is doing as much damage as he is because the “Bush Lite” team does not have heavy-weight thinkers willing to speak the truth (two part qualification, most fail on the second).

Webster Griffin Tarpley was interviewed by Russia Today in Washington DC discussing the role of the CIA and British intelligence in yesterday's terror bombing in Iran's Baluchistan region claimed by Jundullah which killed several key commanders of the Iranian Pasdaran Revolutionary Guards. Tarpley locates the US-UK strategy in the attempt to break up Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran in favor of the microstates and ministates demanded by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the grey eminence of Obama's foreign policy. Baluchistan is the location of the strategic port of Gwadar, which could become a key to solving China's need for imported oil – a perspective the Anglo-Americans are determined to block.   Watch the interview on Russia Today.

Posted on

Journal: $400 per gallon gas in Afghanistan

03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Ethics, Military

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

$400 per gallon gas to drive debate over cost of war in Afghanistan

By Roxana Tiron

The Hill

10/15/09

The Pentagon pays an average of $400 to put a gallon of fuel into a combat vehicle or aircraft in Afghanistan. The statistic is likely to play into the escalating debate in Congress over the cost of a war that entered its ninth year last week.

. . . . . .

“It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome,” Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Defense panel, said in an interview with The Hill. “When I heard that figure from the Defense Department, we started looking into it.”

The Pentagon comptroller’s office provided the fuel statistic to the committee staff when it was asked for a breakdown of why every 1,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan costs $1 billion. The Obama administration uses this estimate in calculating the cost of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

Posted on

Journal: “Free Obama” and From What….

08 Wild Cards, Commerce, Ethics, Government, Military, Policies, Reform, Strategy, Threats

Full Op-Ed Online
Full Op-Ed Online

Obama’s Delusion

David Bromwich

22 October 2009

Afghanistan is the largest and the most difficult crisis Obama confronts away from home. And here the trap was fashioned largely by himself. He said, all through the presidential campaign, that Iraq was the wrong war but Afghanistan was the right one. It was ‘a war of necessity’, he said this summer. And he has implied that he would accept his generals’ definition of the proper scale of such a war. Now it appears that Afghanistan is being lost, indeed that it cannot be controlled with fewer than half a million troops on the ground for a decade or more. The generals are for adding troops, as in Vietnam, in increments of tens of thousands. Their current request was leaked to Bob Woodward, who published it in the Washington Post on 21 September, after Obama asked that it be kept from the public for a longer interval while he deliberated. The leak was an act of military politics if not insubordination; its aim was to show the president the cost of resisting the generals.

Continue reading “Journal: “Free Obama” and From What….”

Posted on

Worth a Look: Innovation Orientation

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Key Players, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats, Worth A Look

We keep an eye on what folks's are searching for; this posting is inspired by one such search.  Use Contact Page or comments section to engage–we respond to all contacts or comments within 24 hours.

First, use the menu–there will be overlap!

Best Practices in Management (52)  Change & Innovation (60)  Complexity & Resilience (45)  Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design (55)  Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean) (4)  Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized) (34)

Voices Lost are a fundamental source of innovation once heard–diversity matters at all levels.  It merits comment that “status quo” bureaucracies are death-beds, antithetical to innovation.  This is why there is a “spike” or “lifeboat” theory of change.  OSS and EIN may one day be recognized as the lifeboat that saved US Intelligence from oblivion.  We are not holding our breath, but the reality is that there is more innovation in intelligence outside the wire–not federal, not expensive, and most certainly not secret–but the White House is too busy to realize it is being fed expensive waste.

Continue reading “Worth a Look: Innovation Orientation”

Posted on

Journal: Israel, USS Liberty, & Palestine

06 Genocide, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice

Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

Golda vs. Goldstone: A Cultural Evolution of Getting Away With Murder

The date when the United States became Israel's unquestioning benefactor can the fixed with precision: June 8, 1967, the fourth day of the six-day 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

It was on this day that Israel's air and naval forces attacked the USS Liberty, killing 34 US Navy sailors, in what is still the worst loss of naval personnel due to hostile fire since the end of WWII.  It was on this day that the Johnson Administration aborted a rescue mission in the process of being mounted by aircraft of the US Navy's 6th Fleet.  With the cooperation of the US Congress, the Johnson Administration put into motion a series of responses and non-responses that cumulatively resulted a complete whitewash any serious investigation into the question of whether not Israel deliberately chose to attack a neutral US naval vessel sailing in international waters, 14 miles off the Sinai Peninsula.  To date, the Liberty incident is the only major naval disaster that has not precipitated an in-depth investigation by the US Congress.

Continue reading “Journal: Israel, USS Liberty, & Palestine”

Posted on

Journal: Afghanistan, Warning, Peak Oil, & Strategy

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Military

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. ignored warnings before deadly Afghan attack…Three intelligence reports dismissed days before eight U.S. soldiers killed

Bill Gertz, October 16, 2009

Army Maj. T.G. Taylor, a spokesman for the Army's Task Force Mountain Warrior, told The Times that the three reports did not stand out among hundreds of others and that the intelligence was deemed to be not specific and uncorroborated.

Subscription No Link
Subscription No Link

The Economist October 17, 2009 Cover Story

Obama's War:  Why the Afghanistan war deserves more resources, commitment and political will

The coalition, however, lacks three essential components of a successful strategy. It needs a credible, legitimate government to work with, the resources to do the job and the belief that America’s president is behind this war.

Many Afghans find it bizarre that the West should devote so much money to Mr Karzai, yet be unable to hold him to account over something so basic as stuffing ballot boxes on an industrial scale. For most, however, the local and provincial leaders matter more than the distant central government.

Continue reading “Journal: Afghanistan, Warning, Peak Oil, & Strategy”

Posted on

Journal: Afghanistan, Biden, Baer, & Brains

03 India, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 10 Security, Communities of Practice, Ethics, History, Peace Intelligence, Policy, Reform, Strategy, True Cost
Full Story Online
Full Story Online

Rethink Afghanistan Part Six

Robert Baer, a former CIA field operative says, “The notion that we're in Afghanistan to make our country safer is just complete bullshit… what it's doing is causing us greater danger, no question about it. Because the more we fight in Afghanistan, the more the conflict is pushed across the border into Pakistan, the more we destabilize Pakistan, the more likely it is that a fundamentalist government will take over the army — and we'll have Al-Qaeda like groups with nuclear weapons.”

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

U.S. troop funds diverted to pet projects

Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops. . . . . . .

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

Why Joe Biden Should Resign

Citing a Newsweek story: “Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?” Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. “And how much will we spend on Pakistan?” Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. “Well, by my calculations that's a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?” The White House Situation Room fell silent.

Continue reading “Journal: Afghanistan, Biden, Baer, & Brains”