It's a good think Ike is dead… else he would realize his nightmare survived. Chuck
Newsday January 13, 2011 Pg. 34
The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex
Eisenhower warned against the influence of arms production, but did we listen?
By Bob Keeler
EXTRACT: Now, the deficit has caused some unexpected voices to say, ever so softly, that everything is on the table – including defense cuts. Last week, Gates talked about plans to slow the defense budget's growth by $78 billion over five years. That dainty nibble is a start, but we need big bites. A group called the Sustainable Defense Task Force has laid out ways to cut $1 trillion in 10 years. That's better.
I have read the released Odom interview MFR. Odom is not kind (perhaps not fair) to CIA or Gen Mike Hayden. Interview, like all others in extensive series, was done circa 2003-2004. Some prominent military SO names, such as Schoomaker and Boykin are among the interviewees. Extent of redaction ranges from fairly light to very heavy. Pre-sanitization/release original classification of interview MFRs ranges from U to TS//SCI (multiple caveats). As documented, little/no evidence that 9/11 Commission interviewers operated in hostile/coercive manner. Even through sanitization, knowledgeable readers can glean some interesting opinions.
The CIA is “out of control” and often refuses to cooperate with other parts of the national security community, even undermining their efforts, said former National Security Agency head William Odom, according to a recently released record of a 9/11 Commission interview.
“The CIA currently doesn't work for anyone. It thinks it works for the president, but it doesn't and it's out of control,” says a report summarizing remarks made by Odom, a retired three-star general who served as director of the NSA from 1985 to 1988.
Odom, who also served on the National Security Council staff during the Carter administration, was known as an outspoken advocate for intelligence reform. He died in 2008.
. . . . . . .
While deeply critical of the CIA, Odom also had harsh words for other NSA directors, including Adm. Bobby Inman, whom he accused of “playing games” in Washington. He also said that Gen. Michael Hayden, then the director of the NSA, was “destroying” the agency and didn't know his “intellectual limits.”
President Obama's ballyhooed surge of US forces in Afghanistan added 17,000 troops in early 2009 plus an additional 30,000 by 2010, in effect doubling the number of troops in Afghanistan (not to mention the concomitant surge in the camp-follower contractor force). The Taliban may not have doubled its troop strength, but as Tom Vanden Brook reports in the 10 January issue of USA Today, the insurgents have doubled the the total number of casualties inflicted by mines in just the last two years of the nine year war. [See graphic]
China- US: CJCS Admiral Mullen said today that China's high-tech military capabilities, including the radar-evading stealth J-20 fighter, focus on America.
China has every right to develop military capabilities, Mullen said, adding that he cannot understand why many appear to target the United States despite North Korea's being an evolving threat to the region and to the United States. If Pyongyang obtains long-range nuclear missile capabilities, its provocations may become more catastrophic, Mullen stated, adding that China must pressure North Korean leadership to cease development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and expansion of nuclear weapons capability.
Comment: It is difficult to accept at face value that Admiral Mullen does not understand the Chinese obsession with the threat from the United States.
Taking the statement at face value – and not as an act of political manipulation – it implies that the J2 and J5 staffs have failed to brief him about the origins of Chinese national defense strategy since the death of Deng Xiao Ping. If the Chairman's statement is genuine and not posturing, it is astonishing.
By Simon Johnson, co-author of 13 Bankers (out in paperback on Monday)
Baseline Scenario, 9 January 2011
Highlighted extracts:
The Bill Daley Problem is completely bipartisan – it shows us the White House fails to understand that, at the heart of our economy, we have a huge time bomb.
…largest U.S. banks – have far too little equity and far too much debt relative to that thin level of equity…
Today’s most dangerous government sponsored enterprises are the largest six bank holding companies: JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.
No one can show significant social benefits from the increase in bank size, leverage, and overall riskiness over the past 15 years. The social costs of these banks – and their complete capture of the regulatory apparatus – are apparent in the worst recession and slowest recovery since the 1930s.
Paul Volcker gets it; no wonder he has resigned. Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, gets it. Tom Hoenig, president of the Kansas City Fed, gets it. Elizabeth Warren, the tireless champion of consumer rights, gets it. Gene Fama, father of the efficient financial markets view, gets it better than anyone.
Phi Beta Iota: Our generous and well-intentioned philanthropists appear to be unaware that the Federal Reserve, Morgan Chase, and Citi-Bank have pulled a Bernie Maddoff on them–they think they are being “taken care of” at the very moment when everything they have worked so hard for is most vulnerable to a massive melt-down. The control of the President's mind and time is the ultimate victory for anyone seeking to control the White House. It is “checkmate” against We the People. None of the bureaucracies in the Executive–and certainly not the so-called “intelligence community”– are capable of rescuing the President–he is a happy captive.
Phi Beta Iota: The shooting of an elected official, a judge, and multiple others in Arizona is a strong signal. It was anticipated by the book TYRANNICIDE The Story of the Second American Revolution, a work of fiction that anticipated a nation-wide spree of attacks on elected politicians now known not to represent the public interest–but we never anticipated the book being other than a cultural icon, a rhetorical call to arms. Now it is real.
Col Dr. Max Manwaring, USA (Ret), one of the most authentic scholar-warriors we have, nailed it in his edited work, The Search for Security–A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century. Security comes from LEGITIMACY, and the hard truth Washington and Wall Street must face is that they both lack legitimacy in the eyes of the majority (roughly, 70%, assuming a 15% extremist band on either end of the two-party tyranny).
This is not about “tone.” This is about substance. You can screw all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you cannot screw all of the people all of the time. America is at an internal fork in the road. 9/11 was the rest of the world being pissed. Arizona is about the heartland being pissed. FOCUS!
Below is a RECAP of just a few of the many signals justifying public rage at the betrayal of the Republic by elected politicians selling out to Wall Street and special interests. The Nation is so out of balance that it is on the verge of imploding. Lies kill us all. Now here is the GOOD NEWS: a restoration of integrity, with transparency leading to truth and truth leading to trust, would push back the anger. The super-rich evidently do not realize this, but they are on the brink of a violent push-back when they can avoid all push-back simply by stepping back and letting the legitimacy of government be restored–one simple elegant solution: Electoral Reform (1 Page, 9 Points).
The assassination of Salmaan Taseer has shown only too clearly the growing extremism in Pakistan, the radicalisation of its society and the polarisation that is taking hold. This is not just between the religious and the secular, but also the polarisation that the “war on terror” has caused between the various religious sects.
Is the Global War in Terror Creating More Problems than it is Solving?
Chuck Spinney
The late historian Chalmers JOHNSON popularized the term “blowback” to describe the unintended grand-strategic consequences resulting from interventionist foreign policies and military actions. The term blowback dates to the CIA's internal history of the US’s 1953 Iranian coup that threw out the Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh (a progressive social reformer who wanted to nationalize the oil industry among other things) and replaced him with the tyrannical American puppet Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi. No one can doubt that contemporary problems with Iran today are rooted in resentments dating back to the 1953 coup.
