WASHINGTON – Melting ice caps. Drought. Spreading disease. US defense planners view global climate change as a national security threat because it could create millions of new refugees and intensify conflicts over resources.
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A new debate is unfolding over whether linking climate change too closely with security planning will create a self-fulfilling prophecy, running the risk that the United States will rely too heavily on its armed forces to deal with global problems.
Despite Surge in U.S. Deployments, More Civilians Are Posted in War Zone; Reliance Echoes the Controversy in Iraq
Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2009, Pg. 6, By August Cole
Even as U.S. troops surge to new highs in Afghanistan they are outnumbered by military contractors working alongside them, according to a Defense Departm! ent census due to be distributed to Congress — illustrating how hard it is for the U.S. to wean itself from the large numbers of war-zone contractors that proved controversial in Iraq.
The number of military contractors in Afghanistan rose to almost 74,000 by June 30, far outnumbering the roughly 58,000 U.S. soldiers on the ground at that point. As the military force in Afghanistan grows further, to a planned 68,000 by the end of the year, the Defense Department expects the ranks of contractors to increase more.
In the name of beating the Taliban, the West is sticking with allies who are anything but the good guys, reports Paul McGeough.
Buried in the wastes of south Afghanistan, Oruzgan is a lost-cause province often invoked as a decorative footnote, because it is the birthplace of Mullah Omar, the founder of the Taliban.
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As home to the bulk of Australian forces in Afghanistan, Oruzgan also has become the military parking-lot in which Canberra spins its wheels, at the edge of a nation-building black hole consuming hundreds of billions of dollars coughed up by the international community.
Mark Palmer
Phi Beta Iota Editorial Comment: USG, in name of USA, is still “best pals” with 42 of th 44 dictators on the planet. Click on Ambassador Mark Palmer's photograph to access his utterly honest book, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025, and his presentation to OSS '04.
Ambassador Palmer has INTEGRITY. Without it, no foreign policy will succeed, and will continue to waste national blood, treasure, and spirit.
For those who say that comparing the current war in Afghanistan to the Vietnam War is taking things too far, here's a reality check: It's not taking things far enough. From the origins of these North-South conflicts to the role of insurgents and the pointlessness of this week's Afghan presidential elections, it's impossible to ignore the similarities between these wars. The places and faces may have changed but the enemy is old and familiar. The sooner the United States recognizes this, the sooner it can stop making the same mistakes in Afghanistan.
Rear Admiral Gilbride has promulgated the Concept of Operations (CONOP) for the National Maritime Intelligence Center (NMIC), effective 19 August 2009.
It is quite good and serves as a model for all others. it is, as of now, the single best attempt to truly integrate the concerns and capabilities of the inter-agency community of interest.
A few shortfalls are easily corrected. The Department of Agriculture and food security, for example, are not embraced. That needs to be corrected. The CONOPS is also too focused on security and avoids both protective and enabling opportunities for maritime intervention. Environmental Impacts, for example, focuses only on weather and the opening of the Northwest Passage, not on pollution or other maritime dumping activities that further toxify 75% of our Earth.
When censorship goes too far, we cannot say Gar-ner anymore
Gar-ner gets what it deserves, all blogs deleted with company name in it as an act of protest
Click on the logo to visit the idiots being written about. Click on the title to read the rest of the story. This is right up there with Google claiming it owns “dead souls” books and Western water companies claiming they own the rainfall in Latin America.
Idiocy is what happens when leadership is subordinated to lawyers. They subsequently backed off but the damage is done, Gartner has officially entered the twilight zone of idiocy incarnate. This comprises their epitaph.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is more of a laughingstock around the world than most realize. From being called “useful idiots” (tontos utiles) in Latin America to much, much worse in the Middle East, it appears to have become a bloated bureaucracy incapable of achieving anything of positive significance. Intelligence is an inherently governmental function, and clandestine and covert intelligence especially so. Both require the very highest standards of integrity and professional skill. CIA appears to be lacking in both, and nothing has changed under Leon Panetta. It is in our view high time that the President and Congress require a full General Accountability Office (GAO) of every aspect of CIA operations, as well as those of the National Security Agency (NSA).
