War & Face of Battle – Page 19 – Public Intelligence Blog

2007/07/312009/10/16

Review: The Folly of War–American Foreign Policy, 1898-2005

6 Star Top 10%, Congress (Failure, Reform), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Strategy, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, War & Face of Battle

Truly Brilliant, Reflects a Sea Change in Scholarship

July 31, 2007

Donald E. Schmidt

There are some fine reviews, so my primary purpose in posting this review is to flag it for the folks that keep an eye on what I read.

My one complaint is the tiny font size. I had to get special glasses from the supermarket to read this book, a $15 cost that should not have been necessary. The publisher made a serious mistake on the font size and I urge that all future printings be at least 11 font. This entire book is in a font normally used for obscure notes, and it takes dedication to get through this. Such valuable material should NOT be so parsimonesouly treated by a publisher, who should have known better.

I am among those that believe that war is a racket and that we live in an unconquerable world where the only possible positive outcome comes from combining the wealth of networks with the new craft of intelligence and free distance learning as well as on demand answers via cell phone, in order to empower the five billion at the base of the pyramid. Only they can create infinite wealth that stabilizes the entire planet in a sustainable fashion.

This author has ventured where few have had the imagination, persistence, or integrity to go. He has taken on the military-industrial establishment, the banks, the rule by secrecy and scarcity mandarins, and he has nailed it. This is a Nobel Prize level effort and I for one am deeply impressed.

His organization is superb, and even his fanciful conversation among all our Presidents is provocative. This is not “turgid text,” this is the fabric of history restored and rewoven.

Shortly Medard Gabel will have a book come out entitled “Seven Billion Billionaries,” and I urge one and all to buy that book along with this one. They are two sides of the coin. This book is focused on the folly of war (which today costs $900 billion a year across all nations, with the USA being the most spendthrift), while Medard's focuses on the inexpensiveness and achievability of peace and prosperity–in his carefully documented manuscript, every bit the equal of this author's, he shows how $230 billion a year–LESS than a third of what we spend on our varied militaries, could resolve every single one of the high level threats to mankind identified by LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft, USAF (Ret), and the other members of this United Nations panel.

I hope this book is put into the digital domain prompty, for the wealth of information it contains will be made all the more valuable as we move to an era of transparent budgets, digital democracy, and constant oversight from the people whose money has been wasted so cruelly all these years.

See my many lists for other recommended readings. Below are a handful of books that complement this one.
War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Designing Web-Based Training: How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century
Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

2007/07/222009/10/16

Review: Wars of Blood and Faith–The Conflicts That Will Shape the 21st Century

5 Star, America (Anti-America), Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Civil Affairs, Country/Regional, Culture, DVD - Light, Diplomacy, Force Structure (Military), Future, Geography & Mapping, History, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Religion & Politics of Religion, Security (Including Immigration), Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, War & Face of Battle

You Can Read This More Than Once, and Learn Each Time

July 22, 2007

Ralph Peters

Ralph Peters is one of a handful of individuals whose every work I must read. See some others I recommend at the end of this review. Ralph stands alone as a warrior-philosopher who actually walks the trail, reads the sign, and offers up ground truth.

This book is deep look at the nuances and the dangers of what he calls the wars of blood and faith. The introduction is superb, and frames the book by highlighting these core matters:

* Washington has forgotten how to think.
* The age of ideology is over. Ethnic identity will rule.
* Globalization has contradictory effects. Internet spreads hatred and dangerous knowledge (e.g. how to make an improvised explosive device).
* The post-colonial era has begun.
* Women's freedom is the defining issue of our time.
* There is no way to wage a bloodless war.
* The media can now determine the war's outcome. I don't agree with the author on everything, this is one such case. If the government does not lie, the cause is just, and the endeavor is effectively managed, We the People can be steadfast.

A couple of expansions. I recently posted a list of the top ten timeless books at the request of a Stanford '09, and i7 includes Philip Allott's The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State. Deeper in the book the author has an item on Blood Borders, and it tallies perfectly with Allott's erudite view that the Treaty of Westphalia was a huge mistake–instead of creating artificial states (5000 distinct ethnic groups crammed into 189+ artificial political entities) we should have gone instead with Peoples and especially Indigenous Peoples whose lands and resources could not be stolen, only negotiated for peacefully. Had the USA not squandered a half trillion dollars and so many lives and so much good will, a global truth and reconciliation commission, combined with a free cell phone to every woman among the five billion poor (see next paragraph) could conceivably have achieved a peaceful reinvigoration of the planet with liberty and justice for peoples rather than power and wealth for a handful.

The author's views on the importance of women stem from decades of observation and are supported by Michael O'Hanlon's book, A Half Penny on the Federal Dollar: The Future of Development Aid, in which he documents that the single best return on investment for any dollar is in the education of women. They tend to be secular, appreciate sanitation and nutrition and moderation in all things. The men are more sober, responsible, and productive when their women are educated. THIS, not unilateral militarism, virtual colonialism, and predatory immoral capitalism, should be the heart of our foreign policy.

The book is organized into sections I was not expecting but that both make sense, and add to the whole. Part I is 17 short pieces addressing the Twenty-First Century Military. Here the author focuses on the strategic, lambastes Rumsfeld for not listening, and generally overlooks the fact that all our generals and admirals failed to be loyal to the Constitution and instead accepted illegal orders based on lies.

In Part II, Iraq and Its Neighbors, we have 24 pieces. The best piece by far in terms of provocative strategic value is “Blood Borders: How a Better Middle East Would Look.” Curiously he does not address Syria or Lebanon, but I expect he will since the Syrians just evacuated Lebanon and Syria and Iran appear to be planning for a pincer movement on Baghdad after they cut the ground supply line from Kuwait.

A handful of pieces, 5 in all, are grouped in Part III, The Home Front. The best two for me were “Our Strategic Intelligence Problem” in which he points out that more money and more technology are NOT going to make us smarter, it is humans with history, culture, language, and eyes on the target that will tease out the nuances no satellite can handle. He also points out how easily our satellites are deceived. I share his anguish in the piece on “Lynching the Marines.” I called and emailed the Colonel at HQMC in charge of the defense, and offered a heat stress defense that I had just learned about from a NASA engineer helping firefighters. If the body gets too hot, the brain starts to fry, and irrational behavior is the norm. The Colonel declined to acknowledge. That told me all I needed to know about how the Marines were all too eager to hang their own.

Part V was the most unfamiliar to me, covering Israel and Hezbollah. In 17 pieces, the author, an avowed supporter of Israel, pulls no punches, tarring and feathering the Israelis for being corrupt (selling off their military supplies on the black market (to whom, one wonders, since the only people in the market are terrorists?) confident the US will resupply them) and militarily and politically incompetent. To which I would add economically stupid and morally challenged–Stealing 50% of the water Israel uses to do farming that is under 5% of the GDP is both nuts and short-sighted. See the brief by Chuck Spinney at OSS.Net.

Part V, The World Beyond, is a philosophical tour of the horizon, from water wars and plagues (see my lists for books on each of the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers), to precision knifing of Russia, France, and Europe. Darfur, one of over 15 genocides being ignored right now (Darfur because Sudan pretends to be helping on terrorism and the US does not have the will or the means to be effective there) is touched on.

The book ends marvelously with a piece on “The Return of the Tribes,” a piece that emphasizes the role of religion and the exclusivity of cults and specific localized tribes. They don't want to be integrated nor do they want new members.

Robert Young Pelton's The World's Most Dangerous Places: 5th Edition (Robert Young Pelton the World's Most Dangerous Places)
Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude
Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict With a New Introduction by the Author
Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy

2007/06/282009/10/16

Review: The Price of Liberty–Paying for America’s Wars

5 Star, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, War & Face of Battle

Three Flaws Easily Corrected, Views are of Strategic Importance

June 28, 2007

Robert D. Hormats

would normally deduct one star for three flaws, but because they are easily corrected and the author's former boss is now Secretary of the Treasury, and perhaps powerful enough to ignore Dick Cheney's craven amoral direction as documented in both The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill and Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency, I restore the one star for actionable potential. My review of the latter itemizes 23 high crimes and misdemeanors committed by Dick Cheney as documented by the authors, and no review our fiscal decrepitude can be complete without understanding how Dick Cheney has bankrupted the Republic and betrayed the Nation and our troops.

I like this author. He gets it. I would gladly work with him in remediation as he suggests, which I summarize below. First, however, the three flaws:

1) He really believes the government baloney about how the military budget is a tiny fraction of our disposable income in comparison to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Not so. See my first image. If we restore universal service (inclusive of demanding two years from anyone asking for citizenship), end most of the “support” (read: looting) contracts that transfer taxpayer wealth to Halliburton and others of their ilk, and if we reform our national health system to provide a mix of lifestyle, environmental, alternative or natural, and medical care, with drug prices based on global wholesale prices, we drop drug unit prices from $600 (US) to $6 (global), bypassing the current Canadian pricing ($60). Extend the retirement age, modify education to be lifelong, and dramatically improve minimum wages, end illegal immigration, and introduce children to the work force as apprentices earlier, and we have the flexibility to heal ourselves and get out of insolvency, which the Comptroller General told Congress is where we are as of six months ago.

2) The author understands that asymmetric warfare allows our enemies to spend $1 and we have to spend much more. Bin Laden actually said this publicly a few years ago, and my second image illustrates both “the Bin Laden equation” of $1 from them requires $500,000 from us, and also the ten threats and twelve policies that must be addressed in a harmonized inter-agency and coalition fashion, using transparent accountable information as the “glue” for information arbitrage, a term I devised in the 1990's, the conversion of information into intelligence and intelligence into profit or cost and risk reduction. The hedge fund managers have been doing this for decades, with one big difference: they manage for the profit of the few rather than the sustainable profit to the many.

3) Alluded to above, and certainly in strong support of the author's recommended program, is the role that information and public (legal, ethical, sharable) intelligence can play in creating infinite wealth. See for instance, the books below (or read my reviews as a short-cut):

Revolutionary Wealth
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization
Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Power at the Edge of the 21st Century
Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era

I take the trouble to emphasize the above prior to summarizing the author's views, and loading a third image on how I am attempting to work with Amazon and others to create a global information arbitrage economy that includes serious games and empowers every *locality*, because “The Price of Liberty” is NOT financial, it is intellectual. Where we have gone wrong these past decades is in forgetting that if We the People drop out of politics, we are left with corrupt minority parties that are Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It and a Congress that is impeachable for failing to act on two stolen elections and as the Article 1 branch of government (see for instance:

Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)

It is in this larger context that the author's views become vital to the Republic, and actionable by the current and next Secretary of the Treasury. For the record, I am betting on Bradley-Bloomberg and 16 years of transpartisan government with multi-party (5-6 parties, not two) announced in advance and elected as part of “Our Deal.”

This is a lovely history with deep meaning for our future. The author's core point is that a long war requires a long-term fiscal strategy. His elaborations make it clear that the Bush-Cheney Administration, which made fiscal policy from the Office of the Vice President and continues to demean the Cabinet, has bankrupted the Nation.

The author is especially strong at showing the differences between past indebtedness and today's indebtedness. Today we have no surplus, we have an energy deficit, we have idiotic tax cuts for the wealth and an unfair burden on the poor, we continue benefits that are unaffordable and crippling to our evolution, and we are not planning for the future needs of our rapidly aging and often needy.

I was moved to conceptualize “Our Deal” after reading the author's brilliant but down to earth discussion of how the Roosevelt “New Deal” and the Truman “Fair Deal” and the Johnson “Great Society” all ran aground, more or less, because of the rocks of war. The author is clear is saying that it was the Reagan era that turned us into a debtor nation.

The author connects social justice at home with the sacrifices of our troops abroad, and concludes that the Pentagon, above all, must re-examine its allocation of resources (see my fourth image, the “Four Forces After Next” that I began recommending in 1992).

Amnesia & Ambivalence are the death of a Nation. Lack of inter-agency coordination is killing us. We need energy patriotism, savings patriotism, and I would add, democratic patriotism. I am working to create a “big bat” for Transpartisanship, one capable of raising $500M a year in Liberty Bonds with which to buy back our government and force Congress to attend to the people's priorities.

This book helps us all.

2007/06/272009/12/04

Review: Betraying Our Troops–The Destructive Results of Privatizing War

4 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, War & Face of Battle

June 27, 2007

Dina Rasor

This is an excellent book for those that do not follow the broader press (I ignore the “mainstream” press, the NYT, Washington Post, and LA Times are largely worthless–the Boston Globe continues to please from time to time). The author has ably catalogued the disgrace to our nation, and the betrayal of our loyal troops, from the outsourcing of virtually every function including some combat operations.

I will honor the author by quoting Ralph Peters, one of the top US military strategists alive, who has said that we have outsourced so much that we have ultimately outsourced our honor (this includes our outsourcing to 42 dictators–there are only 2 we do not love) and to several despotic or illegal narco-regimes, including Colombia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan.

The author is careful to identify some real heros that excel at supporting our troops, but on balance he provides a very bleak narrative that could be used to set the stage for Congressional hearings. In my view, Title 10 needs a complete overhaul, to create four joint forces after next: Big War built around Air Force; Small War built around Army and Marines; Peace War built around Navy and Coast Guard, and Homeland Defense, built around a National Guard that shifts toward law enforcement and does NOT go overseas for anything less than World War IV.

Below are a couple of related recommendations:
Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror
Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
Squandered Victory: The American Occupation And the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq

2007/06/212009/10/16

Review: Devil’s Game–How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (American Empire Project)

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Congress (Failure, Reform), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Iraq, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Religion & Politics of Religion, Terrorism & Jihad, War & Face of Battle

Amazon Page

Complements Web of Deceit

June 21, 2007

Robert Dreyfuss

Robert Dreyfuss interviewed me once, for a piece in WIRED or Mother Jones, and I remember him as a serious, methodical person. It is no surprise to find him producing this meticulously documented and objectively constructed history, a perfect complement to Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush, on whose Amazon page I have a more detailed review of the overall topic.

The author captures the essence in his own introduction: the US was so focused on anti-communism and anti-Soviet campaigns that it deliberately chose to sponsor extreme rightist Islamic fundamentalists, fascists in their own way as the extreme right in America is today (see American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America).

The author is very specific in addressing how the US feared “nationalism, humanism, secularism, socialism” in its obsession with countering the Soviets, and so it chose to aid Islamic fundamentalists who opposed those more rational and publicly-oriented altneratives. In essence, the premise of the invasion of Iraq, that we are doing it to spread democracy, is yet another big lie–we have been denying democracy to the Arabs every since Roosevelt met with the Saudi king and formed a pact with the devil himself.

I totally agree with the author as he documents and sums up his own view that “A war on terrorism is precisely the wrong way to deal with the challenge posed by political Islam.”

The author offers four prescriptions for US action, and at the end here I list some relevant books that provide a broader context:

1) Remove the grievances–US troops in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, support for Israel's genocide against the Palestinians, support for Israel's plans to attack Iran

2) Abandon imperial pretentions in the Middle East

3) Refrain from seeking to impose preferences–political, economic, cultural, or religious, on the region

4) Stop making bellicose threats against Islamic nations from Iran to Sudan (and I would add, to Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, and others)

I am reminded by this book of the common sense prescriptions in Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. The raw fact is that the global literature is coming around to three points of view that are inter-related:

1) Bin Laden is largely right and on firm grounds in taking on both the debauched Saudi regime and the amoral unilaterally invasive US

2) Dick Cheney has committed so many high crimes and misdemeanors, with similar high crimes at the operational level (warrantless wiretapping on Americans, rendition and torture of all others) that America has lost all moral legitimacy both at home and abroad

3) We have the wrong global strategy, indeed we have no global strategy–we are trying to put out a forest fire with a hammer.

Some of the reviewers jump to conclusions, for example, the CIA was NOT really trying to ramp up the war in Afghanistan, until Congressman Charlie Wilson made it his personal vendetta. There is a much larger context within which American incompletence at world affairs can be judged, and it includes the shortcomings of the US educational system, the corruption of the US electoral system, and the grotesque dysfunctionality of the “winner take all” US system of governance. I hope some of the books below–or at least my reviews of them–will provide addtional context for this excellent work. See Web of Deceit for detailed comments I choose not to repeat here–the two books are a good combination with some overlap.

The American Empire Project has produced some really first-rate books on their chosen theme, and for this they are to be praised.

Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times
The Black Tulip: A Novel of War in Afghanistan
Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century
Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict With a New Introduction by the Author
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)

2007/05/202009/12/04

Review: Unintended Consequences–The United States at War

4 Star, Politics, Strategy, War & Face of Battle

Strong Buy, Simplistic but Focused,

May 20, 2007

Kenneth J. Hagan

I think enough of this book by Hagan and Bickerton, both, significantly, respected professors in the US military war college system, to recommend it very strongly. It is simplistic, but in combination with the books I list below, it is quite striking.

Key points:

1. Wars have consequences, not only in the defeated region, but within the USA where the national and regional cultures (Nine Nations) can be conflicted.

2. War *alters* policy for all future generations.

3. America's wars have been engines of economic growth, but the authors fail to observe that the rich benefit while the poor die.

4. The post-war period is a continuation of the war and cannot be ignored. Both explicitly and implicitly, they crucify Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith.

5. In every single case, the outcome of the war has been “far removed” from the stated objectives.

6. Each war brings with it repressive measures against those who dissent. I am reminded of Valley Girl Condi Rice suggesting that General Tony Zinni was a “traitor” for saying the idea of invading Iraq was idiocy. How now, cow?

7. War tends to loosen the bonds of traditional authority and undermine community.

8. Across our history, not just at our inception, Native Americans have lost big. Genocide was not only perpetuated in the wars of independence, but after the Civil War, when the US Army practices scorched earth war.

9. The most importance consequence of the war of 1812 was it total lack of achievement of ANY of its goals, together with an accentuation of sectional differences within the USA.

10. On page 47: “Enhanced chauvinism, ambitious jingoism, and patriotism [per Samuel Johnson, the last refuge of the scoundrel] were unintended consequences of the war. The slave trade continued.

11. The Indian Wars were deliberately genocidal.

12. In general, in its first hundred years, the USA was a belligerent against Canada, Mexico, and the Indian Nations.

13. The war on Mexico caused long-term host8ility and led to the civil war by aggravating differences between North and South (and one might add, Texas as the largest ego in the West). The war on Mexico was mostly fought and led by the South.

14. The Civil War was America's first ideological war.

15. The Emancipation Proclamation applied only to slaves in hostile states, not to Northern states.

16. Civil War extended the power of the Federal Government, which increasingly sold the American people out to special interests including European banks.

17. The authors provide a *fascinating* description of Abraham Lincoln's unprecedented abuse of presidential powers, including the suspension of habeas corpus, and I can now understand why “W” thinks he is following greatness by turning America into a police state.

18. Civil War introduced total annihilation (scorched earth) as an American “war of war.”

19. Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino war is, in the author's view, most similar to the Iraq war in terms of the mendacity preceding and the insurrections following.

20. WWI, WWII, and the Cold War are discussed in terms that show the US to have been the more belligerent. Stalin learned not to trust the US, and this led to the ideological stand-off and the emergency of “fantasy war.”

21. In Korea, General McArthur exceeded his authority, the Chinese warned the US via an Indian who was blown off, and the game was on.

22. The US concurrence in the restoration of the French in Indochina (now Viet-Nam), and the conflicts that Johnson had in having to support being a hawk on Viet-Nam in order to have his “Great Society,” are covered.

23. The authors are *brutal* on the Bush Family, to the point that one is inspired to think of a lunatic asylum as the natural resting place for the whole lot of them.

24. According to the authors, Iraq is a “phony war” in every sense of the word except the casualties.

25. Iran is not in the index but the authors observe that US pressure on Syria to withdraw from Lebanon opened the door for Iran.

Bottom line: going to war does not solve problems, it creates more of them. The authors conclude that war is both folly and futile. I agree.

All Americans have a choice in 2008: they can continue business as usual, with the corrupt and inept Republican and Democratic “machines” that are “running on empty” and totally beholden to Wall Street, or Americans can reassert the fact that this is a Republic and the government as a whole can be fired for cause. See the books listed below. May God have mercy on our souls. It's time we started living up to our sacred responsibility as citizen-warriors, as Minutemen.

The authors lose one star to simplicty and an avoidance of both the intelligence availabale but ignored, and lack of couinter-vailing forces (e.g. Congress and the media inevitably fall for the Executive deceptions).

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
The Nine Nations of North America
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It
Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars

2007/05/052009/12/04

Review: At the Center of the Storm–My Years at the CIA

4 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Corruption, Crime (Government), Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Iraq, Justice (Failure, Reform), Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Security (Including Immigration), Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), War & Face of Battle

Deceptive Beginning, Vital Middle, Disappointing End,

May 5, 2007

George Tenet

This is a very good book. There are some extremely important nuggets in here that essentially put the final nail in Dick Cheney's coffin while certifying the importance of holding Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Cambone accountable for their high crimes and misdemeanors. Condi Rice continues to be depicted, in this book and others, as a zero in the sense of having been ignored, sidelined, or run over by Dick Cheney and his minions.

The book loses one star for a lack of prior context. George Tenet was Staff Director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) for many years, and then Intelligence Director for Bill Clinton. He avoids any mention of his long-standing role in helping dismantle the very IC he ended up leading, and he is terribly deceptive when he says he asked for more funding for anti-terrorism, but fails to mention his inability to redirect funds within the $35-40 billon he had at the time. Today the IC has $60-70B and we are no safer–these clowns cannot even put together a consolidated accurate terrorist watchlist five years after 9/11.

The bottom line on the author is that he is a big-hearted staffer, not a leader and not a strategic thinker. He was a place-holder in a job that two presidents saw fit to relegate to losers–a mouse, a pit-bull, and a turtle.

He takes credit for months of redesign dialog but fails to point out that there was no substantive contact with iconoclasts, published author-practitioners. I am especially angry that he placed Buzzy Krongard in as Executive Director. In my view, Krongard was there to look out for Wall Street interests and ensure Brown and Root did not get caught smuggling drugs into the USA through New Orleans and heavy equipment being returned to the USA “for repairs.” I've come to the conclusion, after thirty years in this business, that there are four CIA's: 1) White House sychophants; 2) Wall Street support via Carlyle Group and a small network of retired intermediaries; 3) the “front” of earnest people working out of official installations, incapable of actually doing serious spying (I was part of this group); and finally, a multinational “dirty deeds” arm that does terribly immoral and illegal things with Saudi money, Egyptian sodomy of children (photographed so as to force them to spy on their fathers), and so on.

In many ways, this book is a capstone account of the death of US secret intelligence. It's gone. The DNI, DCI and USDI are earnest men, but they will fail because they simply do not comprehend the “paradigms of failure” (essay online) and are not willing to contemplate a clean-sheet fresh-start. On page 26 the author confirms that “time and technology [have] passed us by.”

As fascinating as his claims are of ramping up on Bin Laden, I go with Michael Sheuer's damnation as published by the Washington Post. Condi Rice blew off warnings, Dick Cheney focused on energy conspiracies with Enron and Exxon, and the plain truth is that the CIA refused to read the book by Yossef Bodansky or view the PBS broadcast in 1994 by Steve Emerson. They closed themselves off from open sources (called “Open Sores” within the now near-moronic secret world).

The middle of the book is sensational. Chapter Thirteen on “The Threat Matrix” and the succeeding chapters in Part II of the book are superb and contain many nuggets that restored much of my respect for the author.

The author damns Cheney on page 138 for taking over the National Security Council and it is clear that if there is one person to be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, it is not the President, but rather the Vice President.

On page 317 he tells us that “Policy makers have a right to their own opinions but not their own set of facts.”

He slams Rumsfeld for blocking several 737's full of State people and language-qualified individuals specifically trained and organized to get the post-war reconstruction off to a good start. He does not mention Rumsfeld's idiocy in allowing Pakistan to evacuate 3,000 Taliban and Al Qaeda people from Tora Bora, but he does mention that General Tommy Franks refused to put the Rangers in Bin Laden's path, claiming he needed weeks to set it up (this is of course baloney, they could have been air-dropped in 24 hours with a 3-day resupply 24 hours after arrival).

He defends himself on the “slam dunk” as applying to the presentation plan for the UN, not the intelligence. I want to believe this, but the fact that he took imagery and other materials to the first NSC meeting, significantly on Iraq rather than terrorism, gives me pause. I certainly do believe that Dick Cheney hijacked the White House and closed out the entire policy process, but George Tenet, Colin Powell, and our generals all failed us by not resigning and screaming out at the top of their lungs against the high crimes and misdemeanors they witnessed Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and Steve Cambone commit, day after day.

He lays bare Cheney's misbehavior in stating on 26 August 2002 that “there is no doubt” on Iraq's having weapons of mass deception but very strangely does not mention that both Hussein's son-in-law who defected to the US, and every one of the 25+ line crossers that Charlie Allen sent in, all said the same thing: kept the cook books, destroyed the stocks, bluffing for regional ego's sake.

He slams Paul Bremer for de-Bathification and confirms that “Iraq came at exactly the right time for Al Qaeda.”

The author avoids major criticism of Stephen Cambone, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, but he reveals the DoD operations against Iran. He tells us about Chalabi hoaxing DIA for millions, and that President Bush ordered Chalabi off the payroll.

He confirms Paul William's view on Al Qaeda having nuclear capabilities.

Pre 9/11 air travelers believed “be calm, see Cuba” when hijacked. Pre 9-11, and today still, our senior government executives are still confusing loyalty with integrity. We can do better. We need, right now, a “Smart Nation.”

On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World
Intelligence Failure: How Clinton's National Security Policy Set the Stage for 9/11
Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America
First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan
Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
Osama's Revenge: THE NEXT 9/11 : What the Media and the Government Haven't Told You
The True Cost of Conflict/Seven Recent Wars and Their Effects on Society
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest

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