07 Other Atrocities – Page 412 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/12/19

Marcus Aurelius: The Future of Afghanistan – and US Policy

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

The Future of Afghanistan and U.S. Foreign Policy

Foreign Affairs Snapshot, December 15, 2011

Running Out of Time for Afghan Governance Reform

Stephen Biddle

In Afghanistan, even minimally accountable democracy may soon be beyond reach. If so, some form of constrained warlord rule will be the most that's achievable.

Snapshot, December 16, 2011

The Three Futures for Afghanistan

Zalmay Khalilzad

Success in Afghanistan would not be as difficult or expensive as it was for the United States to win wars in Europe or counter the communist threat. Given the risks and the opportunities ahead, an investment in South Asia is worth making.

Snapshot, December 16, 2011

The Case for Continuing the Counterinsurgency Campaign In Afghanistan

Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan

The drawdown in Afghanistan may be afoot, but racing for the exits will leave large parts of the country — especially around Kabul in the east — infested with insurgent havens.

Letter From, December 1, 2011

A Shift in the Afghanistan Strategy

John Nagl

The drawdown of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan will proceed rapidly through 2014. As a consequence, the mission will change sooner than many people expect, and that means the fledgling Afghan National Army has to take charge of the fight now.

Snapshot, December 15, 2011

Afghanistan's Lost Decade

Jason Lyall

Judged by any yardstick, Afghanistan has made little progress since 2001. The United States and its allies have bred an overly centralized and ineffective government in Kabul that is hooked on foreign aid and struggles against a resurgent Taliban. Without serious reforms, the next ten years could be worse.

Snapshot, December 15, 2011

Washington's Colonial Conundrum in Afghanistan

Ivan Arreguín-Toft

In Afghanistan, the United States faces a choice: either establish a permanent administrative and security presence, or stand back and risk the country becoming a haven for organized criminals and terrorists. Staying forever won’t work, so Washington must accept the risks of withdrawal.

Snapshot, December 16, 2011

An Absence of Strategic Thinking

Paul L. Yingling

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is driven largely by domestic politics. That is a privilege of a country that is both rich and safe. But the United States has security interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan that, despite its best attempts, it will not be able to ignore.

Phi Beta Iota: Nowhere in this edition of Foreign Affairs is there any reference to an over-arching strategic model that is reality-based and focused on the public interest. Instead, what we have here are a variety of ideological viewpoints that are totally lacking in any sort of “true cost” accounting analytics.

2011/12/18

Marcus Aurelius: Obama Vacation Cost to Taxpayer: $4 Million

07 Other Atrocities, Budgets & Funding

With More Vacation Days and Separate Travel, Price of Obama’s Annual Hawaiian Holiday Rises

Hawaii Reporter

BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – KAILUA, OAHU – The U.S. Secret Service has arrived, street barricades are in place, and the U.S. Coast Guard has stationed itself in the waters surrounding Kailua, Oahu. That is a sure sign President Barack Obama’s security team is preparing for the first family to arrive in the small beachside community as early as Friday night for what is expected to be a 17-day vacation.

The President and his family are traveling separately to Hawaii because he wants resolve the payroll tax cut issue before leaving Washington – and his wife does not want to wait.

But the advanced trip and the cost that comes with it – as much as $100,000 (flight and security) – adds to an already expensive vacation for the taxpayers.

Hawaii Reporter research shows the total cost for the President’s visit for taxpayers far exceeded $1.5 million in 2010 – but is even more costly this year because he extended his vacation by three days and the cost for Air Force One travel has jumped since last assessed in 2000. In addition, Hawaii Reporter was able to obtain more specifics about the executive expenditures.

The total cost (based on what is known) for the 17-day vacation roundtrip vacation to Hawaii for the President, his family and staff has climbed to more than $4 million. Here's why.

Read full article.

2011/12/18

Chuck Spinney: German Economic Imperialism Killing Europe?

01 Brazil, 02 China, 03 Economy, 03 India, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Transnational Crime, Analysis, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Policy, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, White Papers

Will Germany Kill the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg?

Since the middle of the 19th Century, the central questions in European politics have been been have been the closely connected questions of nationalism and the rise of German power. As my good friend and eminent historian Gabriel Kolko shows in the brilliant essay attached below, the post war solutions of NATO and the European Union, together with the exigencies of the Cold War, put these questions on hold, but their fundamentals remained, sleeping beneath the surface, and today, the conflicting questions of nationalism and German power are again coming to the fore to create ominous problems for Europe and the world.

There can be no question that, until 2007 or so, the European Union — particularly the opening of borders, the free flow of labour and capital, the disappearance of tariffs, and diminution of non-tariff trade restrictions, etc. combined to make life better for the mass of average Europeans. Standards of living rose steeply and social services improved in parallel. This was particularly evident in the poorer EU countries on the southern rim. I saw and experienced this astounding improvement in the quality of life on a very personal level, living on a sailboat in southern Europe since the summer of 2005. I will never forget the comment made to me by an Italian psychologist in Calabria in 2006, which is the heart of the provincial south of Italy, “It is a great time to be a European.” To be sure, he was an educated member of the upper middle class, and not representative of the average Calabrian, but it struck me that this Calabrian saw himself as a European. It was not very long ago, that such a person would only loosely consider himself to be an Italian, not to mention a European.

2011/12/152011/12/15

Chuck Spinney: Political Fluff on Iraq vs Real-World Appraisals

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Corruption, Government, Military, Officers Call

After running for President in 2008 on a platform that criticized Iraq as a “dumb war,” Barack Obama just declared America’s misbegotten Iraqi adventure to be an “extraordinary achievement” in a speech to soldiers at Fort Bragg. That declaration of success is not enough for Congressman Duncan Hunter, who took Obama to task, saying, “And even now, as president, he refuses to acknowledge that victory was achieved,”

Such is the self-referencing nonsense produced in contemporary American political discourse shaped by a perpetual election cycle that disconnects debate from the real world and stifles rational governance, but keeps the masses entertained and distracted, much like the circuses did for the Roman masses in the waning days of the Empire. With American politicians are arguing endlessly how great a victory we achieved in Iraq, a natural question remains unasked: What does the rest of the world — particularly the Arab world — thinks of our ‘success'?

Attached, FYI, are two thoughtful alternative points of view on this question.

The first headline is from Rami Khouri's. He is a columnist for the Lebanese Daily Star and is syndicated by the prestigious Agence-Global. The second headline is from Patrick Cockburn's, writing in the Independent [UK]. He is one of the most well informed western reporters now writing about the Middle East.

Praise Tunisia, not the Iraqi nightmare

By Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star, 14 December 2012

The United States under President George W. Bush drew on a deep well of nonsense, lies and fantasy when it entered Iraq in 2003. President Barack Obama continued this bipartisan American tradition when he said Monday that the departure of American forces from Iraq left behind a country that can be a model for other aspiring democracies. On the other side of the Arab world on the same day, the Tunisian people elected a new president, providing a more credible example of how Arabs can aspire to become democratic without foreign armies destroying their national fabric. Read more.

Wars without victory equal an America without influence

World View: For all its military might, the US has failed to get its way in Afghanistan and Iraq, severely denting the prestige of the world's only superpower

Patrick Cockburn, Independent, 12 December 2011

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: Mr. Cockburn's article contains one major assumption, to wit that the US Government will not attack Iran nor condone an Israeli attack on Iran. We disagree. Now more than ever, Israel is bent on attacking Iran and drawing the US in–the deployment of US/NATO troops all around Syria, the plans for major NATO air operations ostensibly against Syria (long billed, falsely, as an Iranian puppet state) all point to precisely the opposite: a cresendo joint US-Israel mega-attack on Iran and Syria together.

2011/12/122011/12/12

DefDog: Washington’s Integrity Part N to the Nth

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

More of the lack of integrity and the bilking of the middle class…..

Mr. Corzine Goes to Washington, With No Pull

William D. Cohan

Bloomberg.com, 11 December 2011

When it comes to shining a light on the cozy relationships between Wall Street and Washington, and how the rich and powerful get access to things the rest of us don’t, there can never be too many juicy examples.

Last month, thanks to Bloomberg Markets magazine, we were treated to the excellent story about how former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson met with a bunch of bankers and hedge fund managers in New York during the summer of 2008 and shared with them some of his early thinking on the futures of the mortgage behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Then, last week, Jon Corzine, the former chief executive officer of the defunct MF Global Inc. with a gold-plated resume — he was also a senior partner of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and a U.S. senator and governor of New Jersey — testified before the House Agriculture Committee about his often-successful campaign to thwart the efforts of Washington regulators to enact rules that he and MF Global didn’t like.

Read full story.

Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both

Journal: Reflections on Integrity UPDATED + Integrity RECAP

2011/12/122011/12/12

Steven Aftergood: CIA Classifies Open Source Works

04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, Intelligence (government), IO Impotency, Methods & Process, Officers Call

Charter of Open Source Org is Classified, CIA Says

Open Source Works, which is the CIA’s in-house open source analysis component, is devoted to intelligence analysis of unclassified, open source information. Oddly, however, the directive that established Open Source Works is classified, as is the charter of the organization. In fact, CIA says the very existence of any such records is a classified fact.

“The CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to your request,” wrote Susan Viscuso, CIA Information and Privacy Coordinator, in a November 29 response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Jeffrey Richelson of the National Security Archive for the Open Source Works directive and charter.

“The fact of the existence or nonexistence of requested records is currently and properly classified and is intelligence sources and methods information that is protected from disclosure,” Dr. Viscuso wrote.

This is a surprising development since Open Source Works — by definition — does not engage in clandestine collection of intelligence. Rather, it performs analysis based on unclassified, open source materials.

Thus, according to a November 2010 CIA report, Open Source Works “was charged by the [CIA] Director for Intelligence with drawing on language-trained analysts to mine open-source information for new or alternative insights on intelligence issues. Open Source Works’ products, based only on open source information, do not represent the coordinated views of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

As such, there is no basis for treating Open Source Works as a covert, unacknowledged intelligence organization. It isn’t one.

Continue reading “Steven Aftergood: CIA Classifies Open Source Works”

2011/12/12

Susan Lindauer: A Dangerous Woman? Indefinite Detention at Carswell, and the Trashing of the US Constitution

07 Other Atrocities

woman in jail — Click on Image to Enlarge

A Dangerous Woman: Indefinite Detention at Carswell

thepeoplesvoice.org, December 11th, 2011

By Susan Lindauer

Some things are unforgivable in a democracy. A bill moving through Congress, authorizing the military to imprison American citizens indefinitely, without a trial or hearing, ranks right at the top of that list.

I know—I lived through it on the Patriot Act. When Congress decided to squelch the truth about the CIA's advance warnings about 9/11 and the existence of a comprehensive peace option with Iraq, as the CIA's chief Asset covering Iraq, I became an overnight threat. To protect their cover-up scheme, I got locked in federal prison inside Carswell Air Force Base, while the Justice Department battled to detain me “indefinitely” up to 10 years, without a hearing or guilty plea. Worst yet, they demanded the right to forcibly drug me with Haldol, Ativan and Prozac, in a violent effort to chemically lobotomize the truth about 9/11 and Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence.

Read rest of article.