5.0 out of 5 stars A Story that Demands to be Told Honestly – A PAGE TURNER – 5 STARS for Jim Rasenberger
April 10, 2011
It is very strange that a story as important as this one has simply not received either the historical attention or public attention that it deserves. Very simply, President Kennedy's people will tell you that prior to entering office, JFK was briefed in a meeting with Eisenhower about plans for CIA trained Cuban exiles (some 1400 in number) to invade Cuba and foment a revolution against Castro. Eisenhower's people deny that this ever happened. Continue reading “Review (Guest): The Brilliant Disaster–JFK, Castro, and America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs”
This book The Threat on the Horizon: An Inside Account of America's Search for Security after the Cold War offers a detailed account of the creation and workings of the now nearly forgotten Aspin-Brown Commission on Intelligence Reform (1995-1996). Its author, Loch Johnson, is a recognized authority on intelligence issues and was on the Commission's staff. This book is in part the result of a promise Johnson made to the Commission's original head, Les Aspin before his death.
Some would dismiss this book as concerning a forgotten footnote in the history of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), but this would be a mistake. This book actually provides a detailed chronicle of the only real effort to introduce comprehensive reform in the IC prior to the 9/11 tragedy. It also explains in some detail why these reforms proved ineffective. Perhaps unintentionally, the book also provides an excellent picture of the structure and culture of the IC principals (CIA, DIA, NGA, and NSA) as well as the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) immediately after the end Cold War. The problems of the IC principals in the mid-1990's do much to explain the problems that beset them today and offer a cautionary tale about intelligence reform.
The story of this Commission's efforts to seriously reform the IC demonstrates how by its composition and approach the Commission was more or less bound to fail. Its final recommendations were superficial and would have done nothing to change the moribund cultures and direction of the IC principals even if they had actually been enacted. Indeed as occurred with intelligence reforms recommended by the 9/11 Commission Report which were for the most part enacted, their lack of substance would have made them ineffective.
Johnson attributes much of the problems with the Aspin-Brown Commission to the untimely death of Les Aspin in 1995. He has a point; Aspin was willing to invest a good deal of himself in the search for intelligence reform and clearly took the matter very seriously. This attitude was reflected in the way the Commission's Staff went about the detailed work need for the Commission to be effective and in the way Commission itself went about fact gathering. Aspin's successor Harold Brown was as brilliant as Aspin, but clearly did not take the Commission's work as seriously.
By any standards this book is a very important one for those interested in reform of the U.S. Intelligence System and the reasons why such reform has always failed.
Deeper and more Complex of Three Books on Same Topic
April 7, 2011
I tend to read in threes, and this is the deeper and more complex of the three. The first, the one I gave 6+ stars to for its simplicity and coherence, was God and Science: Coming Full Circle?. The second–and also recommended as the second to buy and read if you do two– was Questions of Truth: Fifty-one Responses to Questions About God, Science, and Belief. The latter, by John Polkinghorne, perhaps the most prolific and qualified of authors on the subject of science and religion, is with Hans Kung a Nobel-level contributor.
My reading of this book certainly benefited from the reading of the other two first. This is more of a graduate-level book, and the references to many other authors and works “in passing,” as if one were already familiar with them, makes this book one best appreciated by those who have invested time in the topic and the related writings by others.
This is one of three books that I selected to explore the science versus religion or science with religion reflections. Although I awarded the six star ranking to the shortest of three, God and Science: Coming Full Circle?, it must be acknowledged that John Polkinghorne, co author of this book, and Hans Kung, author of the third book I chose, The Beginning of All Things: Science and Religion are Nobel-level pioneers on the topics of God's existence and the complementarity of science and religion.
In general all three of the books slam Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion, which my own review found to be sophmoric, but I was too quick to accept God and reject religion. The three books together make a very persuasive case for the value of the spiritual, which I have always accepted, and also for religion as organized emphathy, which I now see as a spectacular offset for uncaring governments and corporations, if, if, if inter-faith collaboration can recognize that secular corruption is the obstacle to creating a prosperous world at peace [see my letter to the Pope at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, or tiny URL Assisi-Intelligence.
6 Stars Plus for SImplicity, Coherence, & Importance
April 7, 2011
I tend to read in threes, and read this book together with Questions of Truth: Fifty-one Responses to Questions About God, Science, and Belief and The Beginning of All Things: Science and Religion. The three books complement each other very nicely, and if you can afford the time and money, all three are recommended. Of the three, this is the six plus, with the other two being solid fives, but with the added comment that Questions of Truth is easily the second recommended book, and for the more general audience, while Beginning of All Things is more of a graduate review. It must be said that John Polkinghorne and Hans Kung are Nobel-level pioneers on this topic, and hence I must emphasize that while their intellects and total published contributions in the aggregate are six plus in every way, in this instance, this particular book by James Molben won by a solid head and neck.
The discussion of science and religion as NOT being in conflict, and as both being complementary and both sharing a focus on finding the truth, has been given recent impetus by Pope Benedict XVI, who has appointed a Protestant to head the Science Academy of the Catholic Church; sponsored an inter-faith summit at Assisi in October 2011 that we hope will focus on the reality that secular corruption and indemnification from the truth are what create war and poverty; and made direct statements to the effect that there is no conflict religion and science, and both strive toward the same end, the truth. As I like to say, the truth at any cost lowers all other costs, it is high time We the People demanded the truth, and nothing but the truth, from what I call the eight tribes of intelligence (academic, civil society including labor and religion), commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, and non-government/non-profit).
Ralph Peters is an acquired taste for some, an addiction for others. I am in the latter camp and read everything he publishes, with a strong preference for his non-fiction books about reality, war, and the general lack of integrity across both governments and corporations.
The book is full of gifted phrases and insights, a few of which stick with me now:
— Staff officer's smile
— Idiocy of military classifying a BBC documentary
— How far the mighty can fall
— Army swooning for computers, losing its collective mind
— Broken promises (or lost integrity) = men die
This book, while good, is not as good (at least for me) as his first military-industrial complex book, Traitor, where the detail was chilling and compelling. I also liked The Devil's Garden This particular new book is certainly a good read, and I endorse the other positive reviews, but for Ralph Peters at his very best, I recommend his non-fiction and his Civil War novels, the latter written under a pseudonym.
The food industry pissed off the wrong Mommy of Four. Sarah Palin might call Robyn O'Brien (author of The Unhealthy Truth) a pitbull with lipstick. She might be blond and pretty, but when her youngest child, Tory, had an allergic reaction to eggs, she didn't take “Don't worry your pretty little head about it” for an answer. Why are allergies and asthma on such a rise in America?
The answers were largely: We don't know and we're not really studying it. Better yet, there were two competing camps that each thought the other one's strategy would harm the kids. One thought you should expose your kids to the foods they are allergic to in small doses to see if the allergy would go away, and the other thought you should totally avoid any contact to the allergic food at all to see if it would go away. Riiight. It's nice to have theories, it's nice to do research, but what happens if you have kids, they have allergies, and you have to feed them NOW?
Deeper and more Complex of Three Books on Same Topic
Gifted writing, much less detail than expected
