Former Minnesota governor, navy SEAL, and pro rassler Ventura has a new truTVshow investigating but not necessarily debunking conspiracy theories. This companion to the program, a sort of teaser, dissects such famed objects of unending speculation as the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations. Ventura concludes that none of those were twisted-loner crimes but rather resulted from conspiracies of varying vastness. Anent the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Ventura asserts that “our government engaged in a massive cover-up” and had “ties to the hijackers.” He ventures that “unanswered questions remain about how the towers were brought down and whether a plane really struck the Pentagon” and that the “Bush Administration either knew about the plan” or “had a hand in it.” Heady, paranoiac stuff, to be sure, but there are even more forthright charges regarding the assassination of Malcolm X, the Jonestown massacre, and the “stolen” elections of 2000, 2004, 2008, and, for that matter, 1980. Believable? Some of it. An action-packed read? You bet. –Mike Tribby
It is my pleasure to announce the publication of The Pentagon Labyrinth: 10 Short Essays to Help You Through It. This is a short pamphlet of less than 150 pages and is available at no cost in E-Book PDF format, as well as in hard copy from links on this page as well as here and here. Included in the menu below are download links for a wide variety of supplemental/supporting information (much previously unavailable on the web) describing how notions of combat effectiveness relate to the basic building blocks of people, ideas, and hardware/technology; the nature of strategy; and the dysfunctional character of the Pentagon’s decision making procedures and the supporting role of its accounting shambles.
This pamphlet aims to help both newcomers and seasoned observers learn how to grapple with the problems of national defense. Intended for readers who are frustrated with the superficial nature of the debate on national security, this handbook takes advantage of the insights of ten unique professionals, each with decades of experience in the armed services, the Pentagon bureaucracy, Congress, the intelligence community, military history, journalism and other disciplines. The short but provocative essays will help you to:
identify the decay – moral, mental and physical – in America’s defenses,
understand the various “tribes” that run bureaucratic life in the Pentagon,
appreciate what too many defense journalists are not doing, but should,
conduct first rate national security oversight instead of second rate theater,
separate careerists from ethical professionals in senior military and civilian ranks,
learn to critique strategies, distinguishing the useful from the agenda-driven,
recognize the pervasive influence of money in defense decision-making,
unravel the budget games the Pentagon and Congress love to play,
understand how to sort good weapons from bad – and avoid high cost failures, and
reform the failed defense procurement system without changing a single law.
The handbook ends with lists of contacts, readings and Web sites carefully selected to facilitate further understanding of the above, and more.
6+ Deep Moral Practical Look at Loss of Integrity Across US National Security
February 28, 2011
FINAL REVIEW
It is difficult for any intelligence book to make it to my 6+ category, or top ten percent. What brings this book to the very top of the heap is the skillful weaving of a constant appraisal of the moral in tandem with the practical. Sight unseen I knew this book would be a five, but it jumped to six when I read it from the back to the front and saw:
Page 354: The Agency has become inbred, ossified, parasitic…a prescription for the abuse of individual rights and fatally flawed analyses of the world-at-large that have plagued CIA over the past 30 years…
In the same concluding chapter he slams Congress for not demanding full access to classified information and the Congressional intelligence committees for serving as controllers of Congressional access rather than oversight bodies, with a particular disdain and disinterest in whistle-blowers; the Pentagon for infecting its own troops with alleged medicine that cause neurological problems, and for consistently covering up and lying to one and all about the causes of Gulf War syndrome; and the US Government generally for isolating “military medicine” from civilian medicine to the point that the troops are guinea pigs for bad science, and then victims of cover-ups that would not be countenanced outside the Pentagon.
AFTERTHOUGHT: What Wall Street greed did to the economy with the aid of its corrupt US Government enablers, the US Government did to US society and to global stability, spending trillions a year on the wrong things for the wrong reasons. See my chapter on “Paradigms of Failure” in the book (both here at Amazon and free online) ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig.
The other reviews are very good and I strongly recommend that whether or not you buy or rent the DVD (or watch it in a hotel as I have just done), that you read all the reviews, especially those that provide summary detail.
For myself, this movie is most extraordinary for the manner in which it pieces together the story to include very compelling interviews with many of the culprits including professors of economics who themselves were corrupted. Those who declined to be interviewed, including Laura Tyson, Paulson, Geithner, Greenspan, Summers, and a few others, are the worst of the culprits.
Compellingly–and consistent with all my reading on the two-party tyranny and the corruption of the US Government–the film is especially strong in showing with absolute clarity that the Obama Administration has been, if anything, more of a Wall Street front than any prior administration. “Nobody's gone to jail.” Worse, there have been no serious investigations. The US Government is NOT representing the public interest.
My focus with this review is to point to ten books that I have reviewed in summary form:
Right up front, and in part because this is going to be a “tough love” commentary, I want to say that of all those of any persuasion who are known presidential contenders, Mike Huckabee is the only one I genuinely like, trust, and would support. Mitch Daniels surprised me with his gifted presentation at the conservative caucus, and Donald Trump has his own gifts, but for me, Huckabee is a natural. I review his book in the third part of this review, the first two sections are short tough love stage setters.
That said, he is not attracting the big money, he needs a broader advisory base, and he needs to inspire ALL Americans.
In the realm of JFK assassination investigations: lore, irrefutable facts, fiction “factions” and myths, all often compete side-by-side for the right to be accepted. The reader is thus forced to develop a finely tuned “crap-detection system” in order to sort out one from the other.
It is no different in this manuscript produced by Wim Dankbaar, which, as it introduces a new kind of medium (“the investigative internet book”), also blazes its own fresh trail of validated facts in pursuit of uncovering the “real” culprits of the JFK whodunit.
Worth reading for Nathaniel Fick's introduction alone. And then some….
Dick Couch
Dick Couch is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and served with the Navy Underwater Demolition and SEAL Teams in Vietnam. He is the author of twelve other books, including The Warrior Elite, Chosen Soldier and SEAL Team One. A resident of Ketchum, ID he is a frequent guest on radio and TV talk shows. He has lectured the Air Force Academy, the Naval Special Warfare Center, the JFK Special Forces Center and School, the FBI Academy, the Naval Postgraduate School, The Joint Special Operations University and The Academy Leadership Forum. Recently he served as adjunct professor of Ethics at the U.S. Naval Academy.
The message of this slim volume is simple: the two strands of a unit's technical competence and its moral compass are equally critical, with the moral health reflected in the actions and words of our junior leaders possibly more important to combat effectiveness— especially in the insurgent environment, where the war is waged and won at the small unit level and the target is not the insurgent, but the trust and support of the local population.
“A Tactical Ethic: Moral Conduct in the Insurgent Battlespace”, by Dick Couch, is a handbook reminding the men and women who put boots on the ground that actions that seem logical to you, can have a far different effect than anything anticipated. Having served as a Navy SEAL during the Vietnam War and professor of “Moral Reasoning for Military Leaders” at the United States Naval Academy, Couch offers his expert insights to the current and next generation of warriors. Americans need to look no further than the embarrasment caused by bored, misguided soldiers at Abu Graib to understand why a book such as this is needed.
Couch begins the book with a statement of the moral problems currently facing our military. He writes, “If the Vietnam War was the first war in which TV cameras roamed the battlespace, then Iraq and Afghanistan are the first extended stuggles in which digital imaging, text messaging, and cell-phone cameras are commonplace. Today there is far more opportunity for a bad act to be reported.” Couch proposes that the speed and ease of sharing that information will end up losing the fight for the “human terrain” — the support of the local populace, for which the insurgents are also competing.
With a basic understanding of the problem, Couch investigates how America takes the current generation of youth and transforms the insecure teenageers into bold, confident men that serve on the front lines. Feminists may feel slighted that the book does not focus on women, but Couch offers very compeling arguments as to why women are not are not central to the issues addressed earlier. He then looks at ethics training integrated with the basic training of the Army and Marine Corps, neglecting the Air Force because it does not engage in the same type of small-unit combat actions that routinely interact with the local populace. He rounds out his analysis of the warrior ethic training with by examining the (lack of) integration of ethics training with the advanced training of the various Special Forces.
Couch concludes the book by proposing “Battlefield Rules of Engagement (ROE)”, or the keys to moral success. He perfectly summarizes the the common vision of all warriors “All share a universal goal: to prepare appropriately for the fight, conduct themselves in battle with courage and virtue, win the fight, and return with honor.” In this age of pocketcards, I'm sure that the 10 ROEs he proposes will make their way onto the next set issued to the men and women going into harm's way. They are succinct, understandable, and right on the mark. I highly recommend this book for NCOs and company grade officers — your leadership will set the moral compass for the men and women who serve under you. This is a great book to help you chart the course.
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Phi Beta Iota: Advanced Information Operations (IO) must focus heavily on the spectrum of morality, both within blue forces and red forces, and all along the other tribes of intelligence. Will Durant is not alone, when he says in Lessons of History, that morality is a strategic asset of priceless value. The arrogant lose their grip of reality–and morality–before they lose their power.
6+ Deep Moral Practical Look at Loss of Integrity Across US National Security
