DoD – Page 33 – Public Intelligence Blog

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Sounds Off....

November 23, 2010

The Root Causes of the Defense Budget Mess

Another Free Ride for the Pentagon?

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY

Counterpunch

http://www.counterpunch.org/spinney11232010.html

The Simpson-Bowles Deficit Commission will be reporting out its results in early December. We can expect that it will focus on domestic spending, especially entitlements, including Social Security. By the time the dust settles, it is quite likely that the Pentagon — really the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex — will get a free ride for the reasons predicted by President Eisenhower in his farewell address.

Given the short attention span of the mainstream media, we can expect the Commission's recommendations will be examined as if they are current news, devoid of historical context. But the question of context — specifically, as it relates to how the spending behaviour of the US government managed to destabilize the improving trend in budget balances of the late 1990s (due in large part to the huge and growing surpluses of the Social Security Trust Fund in the 1990s as well as the effects of the economic expansion) — is central to any rational determination of whether the enactment of Simpson-Bowles' recommendations will make things better or worse. Given the gravity of our economic situation, this kind of omission would simply compound the ongoing American Tragedy.

Read the rest of this referential article, including historical and current referential links…

Reference: USA in Denial Over Reality

Journal: Who Dun It on the Deficit?

Reference: Saving Defense from Itself

2010/11/192010/11/19

Reference: Saving Defense from Itself

10 Security, Commissions, DoD, Hill Letters & Testimony

Weekend Edition

November 19 – 21, 2010

Open Letter to Erskine Bowles

How to Cut the Defense Budget

By THOMAS CHRISTIE, PIERRE SPREY, FRANKLIN SPINNEY et al.

Counterpunchhttp://www.counterpunch.org/christie11192010.html

The Honorable Erskine Bowles
National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform
1650 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20504

Dear Mr. Bowles:

We are writing to you and other members of the President's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform as individuals who have worked in national security affairs for decades for the Department of Defense, in the Armed Forces and for Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Our concern is the defense budget.

Similar to what your “Co-Chairs' Proposal” said last week regarding Social Security and other issues, we do not believe that defense spending should be reduced to a bargaining chip in budget negotiations at the Deficit Commission. On the other hand, we do believe that the defense budget is dangerously bloated, giving rise to serious decay in our armed forces.

Weaker forces at higher costs (discussed below) are the result of many years of exploitation of defense spending for political purposes, dereliction of oversight duties, and gross mismanagement by the Pentagon, the White House and the Congress. There has been a fundamental absence of accountability, both that required by the Constitution and that which accompanies sound management.

Read entire very detailed letter of testimony…

Phi Beta Iota: What our distinguished colleagues have not included in this letter is the fact that the US does not have a coherent reality-based strategy within which to evaluate ALL threats and provide a force structure suitable to ALL threats, nor does the US have an intelligence community able to provide any more than 4% (“at best” according to General Tony Zinni) of what we need in the way of intelligence support to policy, acquisition, and operations. At the same time, the Pentagon is committing a major crime against its own humanity by spending less than 1% of its budget on the 4% of the force that takes 80% of the casualties: the infanty, this from General Robert Scales. With all due respect, both Gates and Clapper have presided over the maintenance of the status quo; they have not changed the game for the better; and they have failed to do what needed to be done.

2010/10/102010/10/10

Reference: Peace versus War–Competing Visions

10 Security, DoD, YouTube

Go In Peace: An Essay on the War on Terror

Can you see peace? What does it look like? Can you see a time when we do not send our young people in harm’s way?

The challenge for us is to build a vision of peace. This will require courage to be introspective, to look deeply within ourselves and to ask difficult questions, to strip away the rhetoric and the hate.

Tip of the Hat to John Marke LinkedIn.

U.S. GOV can kill ANYONE including YOU without trial COVERTLY !! YouTube featuring Ron Paul at the end, raises core issues. Should be watched with 1961 speech Eisenhower Warns us of New World Order (also YouTube)

Tip of the Hat to Mario Profaca at Facebook.

Phi Beta Iota: At the end of President Eisenhower's speech, he emphasizes the role of an informed engaged citizenry in assuring the balance of values and power in government.

2010/10/022010/10/02

Reference: Enemies are Brave, Not Cowards

08 Wild Cards, Analysis, Articles & Chapters, DoD, Officers Call, Reform

Special NightWatch Comment: Mirror imaging is a serious analytical flaw. If things are not done their way, analysts are prone to consider them inferior or wrong. It manifests a dangerous, potentially lethal cultural bias.

This week US officers were quoted in international press, yet again, as accusing the Taliban of cowardice because they use improvised explosive devices and don't come out and fight like men. An odd taunt.

In the past nine years of fighting, the Taliban — who go to war wearing robes, sandals and turbans and fight mainly with assault rifles, rocket propelled grenades and IEDS — never accuse US soldiers of cowardice for wearing ceramic armor; riding in tanks and armored fighting vehicles; fighting from forts; using the most advanced artillery invented, helicopter gunships and fighter aircraft; relying on advanced communications, satellites, armed drones; and rotating out after a tour in the field.

The officers might drop the name calling and try to understand what motivates pre-modern men so ill equipped to continue to fight the most advanced military forces in the history of the world for nearly a decade.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: It is an honor and a privilege to read NIGHTWATCH. NIGHTWATCH commentaries, along with those by Chuck Spinney, Ralph Peters, and Robert Young Pelton, are among a handful of analytic commentaries that are consistently intelligent and honest. Few others can make this claim. “Strategic Decrepitude” has been joined by “Intellectual Decrepitude” among the ranks of those officers who would rather fight than think. Sun Tzu would call them assured losers….losers who are enablers of the ideological idiots who lie to the public and betray the public trust. In combination, the lack of integrity by both parties robs the Republic of blood, treasure, and spirit.

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Empire as Cancer Including Betrayal & Deceit

2010/10/012011/01/14

Reference: 27 Sep MajGen Robert Scales, USA (Ret), PhD

DoD, White Papers

The Next Generation of Small Unit Warfare [NOTES]
A Lunch Discussion with Major General (ret.) Robert H. Scales, PhD

Monday, September 27, 2010, 12:00 pm — 1:30 pm

The Brookings Institution, Stein Room, 1775 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC

The 21^st Century American military it has found itself fighting two extended land wars, neither against a nation state or conventional armed forces. Our forces have responded to with changes in doctrine, and the introduction of new technologies to the integration of new human resources in the form of contractors, translators, and human terrain experts. But where will we go from here? In his recent work, Scales has focused on how changes in selection, training, and organization might make future small units not only more powerful, but also the backbone of our operations.

Major General (ret.) Robert H. Scales is an authority on both land warfare and leadership development. Prior to his current position, as President of Colgen, LP, he served for over thirty years in the Army, in command and staff positions in the United States, Germany, and Korea. Scales ended his military career as the Commandant of the United States Army War College. In 1995 he created the Army After Next program which was the Army’s first attempt to build a strategic gaming and operational concept for future land warfare. He has written three works: Future Warfare, Yellow Smoke: the Future of Land Warfare for America’s Military, and The Iraq War: A Military History. He is a graduate of West Point and holds a PhD in History from Duke University.

See Also: Review: Firepower In Limited War

Inspired by Attending this Briefing:

Journal: Reflections on Integrity

Dr. Peter W. Singer, Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at Brookings, will introduce and moderate the discussion.

2010/09/282010/09/29

Reference: Alternative Views of 9/11–Massive US Financial & Gold Fraud & 240 Billion Covert Fund Against Russia

Blog Wisdom, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, White Papers

Source 1: Collateral Damage–US Covert Operations and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001

Source 2: Evil is as Evil Goes–Globalization at Work

Continue reading “Reference: Alternative Views of 9/11–Massive US Financial & Gold Fraud & 240 Billion Covert Fund Against Russia”

2010/08/302010/08/30

Reference: USDI Open Source Intelligence Instruction

DoD

USDI OSINT Instr Small Footprint — Full 12 Pages Online

Phi Beta Iota: Also known as dodi 3115.12, august 24, 2010. While the document displays some tiny hints that someone somewhere is thinking, it is largely bureaucratic pap that sanctifies the existing dysfunctional status quo, to include an SES as a branch chief rather than as the head of a new Department, DO, co-equal to DH and DI and DX. The only glimmer of progress is in requiring a consolidated defense program, but even this will be mangled and prolonged. This is a bean-counter instruction, not a real-world instruction intent on providing OSINT support to policy, acquisition, and operations.

Graphic: Herring Triangle of Four Levels Need & Cost

2009 DoD OSINT Leadership and Staff Briefings

2009: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy

Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]