10 Security – Page 137 – Public Intelligence Blog

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Pentagon Shifts Its Strategy To Small-Scale Warfare

By August Cole and Yochi J. Dreazen

Wall Street Journal January 30, 2010 Pg. 4

The shift in strategy sets up potential conflicts with defense contractors and powerful lawmakers uneasy with the Pentagon's growing focus on smaller-scale, guerilla warfare.

In particular, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has come to think that the Pentagon's traditional belief that it needed to be able to fight two major wars at the same time was outdated and overly focused on conventional warfare. The new QDR moves away from that model, a mainstay of U.S. military thinking for more than two decades, in favor of an expanded focus on low-intensity conflict.

Phi Beta Iota: This is most fascinating; it is also not the last word. Here is the timeline in short and long versions. Short: 22 years from advance guard to leadership; 12 years from internal think tanks to leadership; probably further delay from leadership acceptance to bureaucratic implementation: another 20 years.

1988: Commandant of the Marine Corps Al Gray and the USMC Intelligence Center figure it out. General Gray publishes “Global Intelligence Challenges in the 1990's,” American Intelligence Journal (Winter 1989-1990).

1992: USMC seeks redirection of one-third of the National Intelligence Topics (NIT) to Third World. Across the board stone-walling by other services and the US Intelligence Community.

Continue reading “Journal: DoD Mind-Set Time Lags Most Fascinating”

2010/01/292010/01/29

Journal: Haiti–A Special Forces Sergeant Major Reports Our National Crime Against Humanity in Haiti

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence, Threats

From A Retired Special Forces Sgt Major:

To All,

I just returned from Haiti with Hebler. We flew in at 3 AM Sunday to the scene of such incredible destruction on one side, and enormous ineptitude and criminal neglect on the other.

Port o Prince is in ruins. The rest of the country is fairly intact. Our team was a rescue team and we carried special equipment that locates people buried under the rubble.

There are easily 200,000 dead, the city smells like a charnel house. The bloody UN was there for 5 years doing apparently nothing but wasting US Taxpayers money.

The ones I ran into were either incompetents or outright anti American. Most are French or french speakers, worthless every damn one of them.

While 1800 rescuers were ready willing and able to leave the airport and go do our jobs, the UN and USAID ( another organization full of little OBamites and communists that openly speak against Americana) [REDACTED].

These two organizations exemplified their parochialism by:

Continue reading “Journal: Haiti–A Special Forces Sergeant Major Reports Our National Crime Against Humanity in Haiti”

2010/01/282010/01/28

Journal: National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) Goes from Dumb to Dumber

09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Analysis, Government, Methods & Process

Full Story Online

Director: NCTC has analyst shortage
The National Counterterrorism Center does not have enough analysts to comb through the thousands of pieces of terrorism-related information it receives every day, even though a plan to cut millions of dollars from its budget has been reversed, NCTC Director Michael Leiter told House lawmakers on Wednesday.

. . . . . . .

Each day, the NCTC receives more than 5,000 pieces of terrorist-related information and reviews 5,000 names of suspected terrorists, Leiter said.

aa nctc boss — From Clerk to CT Boss (Bio)

Phi Beta Iota: The guy in charge of NCTC is a lawyer–his greatest achievements have been as a clerk for a Justice and as a staffer for the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). Who are we kidding here? The NCTC is a monstrous travesty with 80 disconnected databases and too many contractors. NCTC needs four things: A DNI with proper authorities who can down-size any agency that does not join a SINGLE automated database ingesting at machine speed (which can have pointers to the others); a leader who actually knows something about intelligence, not a Friend of Whomevers (FoW as in Bow Wow); and the return of Paul Strassmann to unscrew what is clearly an information technology cesspool. As for John Brennan, who created this mess in the first place, he's holding forth at the White House, working for a President that has no idea that all these guys are really do not know what they are doing! So much for heads will roll–the only person being rolled is the Presiden–and the Republic he represents.

And by the way, we still think this is probably an Israeli false flag, with or without a wink and a nod from the secret side of the US Government. Where is the guy with the video camera? Remember how the Israeli's sent a video crew (well in advance) to cover 9-11? This matter has not been properly investigated, and giving a lawyer more clerks is NOT going to change the fact that US intelligence is in free-fall.

2010/01/272010/09/02

Reference: The Emerging Law of Detention in USA

09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Ethics, Law Enforcement

The Guantanamo Habeas Cases as Lawmaking. Recommended by Berto Jongman.

2010/01/272010/01/27

Journal: MILNET Selected Headlines

03 Economy, 04 Education, 05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Communities of Practice, Ethics

Obama’s Credibility Gap (New York Times)

Americans are still looking for the answer, and if they don’t get it soon — or if they don’t like the answer — the president’s current political problems will look like a walk in the park.

Public Rifts On Afghanistan: Leaks suggest that the administration is divided, endangering Obama's strategy (Philadelphia Enquirer)

A divided administration will produce an incoherent policy.

U.S. school bans the dictionary (Many Sources)

A California school district has added a new book to the controversial list of literature that is considered unfit for young eyes. . . . It's the dictionary.

Pentagon Report Calls for Office of ‘Strategic Deception’ (WIRED)

The Defense Department needs to get better at lying and fooling people about its intentions. That’s the conclusion from an influential Pentagon panel, the Defense Science Board (DSB), which recommends that the military and intelligence communities join in a new agency devoted to “strategic surprise/deception.”

Continue reading “Journal: MILNET Selected Headlines”

2010/01/262010/09/02

Journal: Home-Grown Terrorism in USA

08 Immigration, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Government, Law Enforcement

aa real instistitute — Full Review Online

The Homegrown Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland (ARI)

Lorenzo Vidino

ARI 171/2009 – 18/12/2009

EXTRACT 1: All these plots are very diverse in their origin, degree of sophistication and characteristics of the individuals involved. Yet they all contribute to paint the picture of the complex and rapidly changing reality of terrorism of Islamist inspiration in the US. Moreover, they smash or, at least, severely undermine an assumption that has been widely held by policymakers and analysts over the last 15 years. The common wisdom, in fact, has traditionally been that American Muslims, unlike their European counterparts, were virtually immune to radicalisation.

EXTRACT 2: The wave of arrests of the last months of 2009 has contributed to shedding light on a reality that is significantly more nuanced, showing that radicalisation affects some small segments of the American Muslim population exactly like it affects some fringe pockets of the Muslim population of each European country. Evidence supporting this view has been available for a long time, as the cases of American Muslims joining radical Islamist groups date back to the 1970s.[12] According to data collected by the NYU Center on Law and Security, for example, more than 500 individuals have been convicted by the American authorities for terrorism-related charges since 9/11.[13] Most of them are US citizens or long-time US residents who underwent radicalisation inside the US.

Phi Beta Iota: Recommended by Contributing Editor Berto Jongman.

2010/01/232010/01/23

Journal: MILNET US Muscles South, Islamic Genocide

01 Brazil, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 06 Genocide, 07 Venezuela, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Government, Military

Muscling Latin America: The Pentagon has a new Monroe Doctrine (The Nation)

In September Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, delivered on an electoral promise and refused to renew Washington's decade-old, rent-free lease on an air base outside the Pacific coast town of Manta, which for the past ten years has served as the Pentagon's main South American outpost. The eviction was a serious effort to fulfill the call of Ecuador's new Constitution to promote “universal disarmament” and oppose the “imposition” of military bases of “some states in the territory of others.” It was also one of the most important victories for the global demilitarization movement, loosely organized around the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases, since protests forced the US Navy to withdraw from Vieques, Puerto Rico, in 2003. Correa, though, couldn't resist an easy joke. “We'll renew the lease,” he quipped, “if the US lets us set up a base in Miami.”

Funny. Then Washington answered with a show of force: take away one, we'll grab seven. In late October the United States and Colombia signed an agreement granting the Pentagon use of seven military bases, along with an unlimited number of as yet unspecified “facilities and locations.”

MAY: Islam's war against others: Ethnic cleansing spreading in Muslim world (Scripps News)

Connect these dots: In Nigeria this week, Muslim youths set fire to a church, killing more than two dozen Christian worshippers. In Egypt, Coptic Christians have been suffering increased persecution including, this month, a drive-by shooting outside a church in which seven people were murdered. In Pakistan, Christian churches were bombed over Christmas. In Turkey, authorities have been closing Christian churches, monasteries and schools. Recently, churches in Malaysia have been attacked, too, provoked by this grievance: Christians inside the churches were referring to God as “Allah.” How dare infidels use the same name for the Almighty as do Muslims!