Category: 10 Security

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Journal: Afghanistan Bay of Pigs Reprise

05 Civil War, 10 Security, Military

Wall Stree Journal Full Story Online
Wall Stree Journal Full Story Online

What Next In Afghanistan? The Five People Obama Is Asking

Click on photo for full story.  Grades and comments are those of Phi Beta Iota.

Vice President Joe Biden. C+. Scale back, Drones and Special Forces on high-value targets.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. F.  Delusional on Taliban as lovers of Al Qaeda, listening to slick Australian on spending our way into hearts and minds.

National Security Adviser James Jones. D. Good man that does not know what he does not know, drops from a C to a D because his job is outreach and ensuring the President hears from a diversity of views, that is not happening.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen.  C+. A strategic savant trapped between a rock and a hard-place, his integrity fights his loyalty every day.  A for the rest of the world, D for not calling AF for what it is: a blunder of epic proportions.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates.  B-. Found his integrity in pushing the troop demand into the public eye after first being a loyalist.  Learned from Viet-Nam that Ho was a nationalist after all, Taliban is more of the same.  A lame duck while Obama decides between Chuck Hagel and John Hamre.

Administration Over-All:  D. Empire as Usual, Bureaucracy as Usual, Sacrificing our Troops to Buy Time, Not Listening to Serious Experts, Not Able to Think a Strategic Thought, Not Able to Plan, Program, and Execute a Whole of Government Anything.

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Journal: Fighting against ourselves in Afghanistan

05 Civil War, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Ethics, Military
Full Story Online
Full Story Online

The U.S. trains forces in Afghanistan that then go to work for the Taliban

Ann Jones

Key Points:

1.  Washington and U.S. military out of touch with ground truth and historical-cultural reality in Afghanistan.

2.  We are training individuals in US techniques who desert and join the Taliban–we are literally training the Taliban to beat us.

3.  Many individuals are re-enrolling under multiple names in order to get the training and the good food, while many others take the training and the food and never come back after their first period of leave (vacation after training).

4.  Pashtuns are not joining police and so the Americans are sending non-Pashtuns back into Pashtun territory to act as police–this is so stupid as to be insanely criminal and irresponsible.

Phi Beta Iota: This article was linked to in an earlier post on connecting the dots, but it reads better in Salon and we recommend a careful review–this is journalism at its very best, informing the public about FACTS that the Administration desires to ignore.

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Journal: The Afghanistan Impasse–Chuck Spinney Highlights NYT Review of Books

04 Inter-State Conflict, 10 Security, Military

The Afghanistan Impasse

By Ahmed Rashid New York Review of Books
Volume 56, Number 15 · October 8, 2009
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan by Nicholas Schmidle Henry Holt, 254 pp., $25.00

Amazon Page
Amazon Page
Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda by Gretchen Peters Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's, 300 pp., $25.95
Full Story with Spinney Highlights
Full Story with Spinney Highlights

Follow the Frog to the full article with Chuck Spinney's highlights, nine pages in an easily downloaded document.

Highlights as we read them:

1) Massiviely fraudulent election in Afghanistan;

2) Military situation going from bad to worse for US and the (virtually non-existent) Afghan Army and Police;

3) Pakistan keeping 80% of its troops on the border with India;

4) Pakistan refusing to rein in its one really disciplined jihadist group that keeps attacking India (Mumbia plus).

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Journal: Afghanistan–Connecting the Dots

10 Security, Military, Strategy

2001: What to do about Afghanistan?  Prospects for Stability

2008: Memo Leak Says Mission In Afghanistan Doomed

Meet the Afghan Army: Is it a figment of Washington's imagination? by Ann Jones

Afghan agony: More troops won't help by Ralph Peters in the NY Post

Time to Get Out of Afghanistan By George F. Will Tuesday, September 1, 2009


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Journal: Information Arms Race

10 Security, Government, Reform, Strategy

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

Information as the New Arms Race

An official report last week reveals weaknesses in our effort to prevent another 9/11.

Gordon Grovitz
Gordon Grovitz

L. GORDON CROVITZ

Monday, September 21, 2009

The U.S. is the only country whose laws mandate the release of details of its intelligence goals and operations. Every four years, the National Intelligence Strategy document discloses the priorities of the usually hidden operations of the country's 16 intelligence agencies.

A key theme of last week's report is that we're now in what might be called an information arms race, driven by technology.

. . . . . . .

One previously top-secret disclosure last week was the amount the U.S. spends across its civilian and military intelligence operations. Mr. Blair said this is $75 billion a year, including 200,000 intelligence professionals. These details alert other countries to what it would take to close the intelligence gap.

Continue reading “Journal: Information Arms Race”

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Journal: CIA Ramps Up In Afghanistan While Public Intelligence About Empire as Usual Hard to Find

10 Security, Government, Reform

Secret vs. Public Intelligence
Full Story Online (Secret Side Only)

CIA expanding presence in Afghanistan: report

AFP  Sat Sep 19

. . . . . . . .The Central Intelligence Agency is deploying teams of spies, analysts and paramilitary operatives on top of the nearly 700 employees it already has in the war-torn country in parallel with a military expansion that will see 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan by year's end.  . . . . . . . The incoming spies are receiving a broad range of assignments, including working in tandem with special forces units hunting high-value targets, tracking public sentiment in regions seen as shifting support toward the Taliban and gathering intelligence on corruption in the Afghan government, the Times said.

Continue reading “Journal: CIA Ramps Up In Afghanistan While Public Intelligence About Empire as Usual Hard to Find”

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Journal: Chuck Spinney on Al Qaeda Message, Two Comments on CIA and Al Qaeda

05 Civil War, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Peace Intelligence, Reform, Strategy

First, a link to the translated Al Qaeda message. Then Chuck Spinney's commentary on the rmessage (there is no assurance it is actually from Bin Laden, who may be long dead).   Finally, a Phi Beta Iota comment that will outrage the lame of mind and resonate with every average American.