One of the biggest and fiercely kept “fog facts” in America's Dirty Linen Basket – one for which any further revelations for both political parties is absolute dynamite with ample portions of nitroglycerine thrown in for good measure – has been made into a feature film, starring of all people Tom Cruise.
1,500. That figure stunned me. I found it in the 12th paragraph of a front-pageNew York Times story about “senior commanders” at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) playing fast and loose with intelligence reports to give their air war against ISIS an unjustified sheen of success: “CENTCOM’s mammoth intelligence operation, with some 1,500 civilian, military, and contract analysts, is housed at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, in a bay front building that has the look of a sterile government facility posing as a Spanish hacienda.”
“My Power to the People Plan creates deep system change, moving from the greed and exploitation of corporate capitalism to a human-centered economy that puts people, planet and peace over profit. It offers direct answers to the economic, social, and ecological crises brought on by both corporate political parties. And it empowers the American people to fix our broken political system and make real the promise of democracy. This plan will end unemployment and poverty; avert climate catastrophe; build a sustainable, just economy; and recognize the dignity and human rights of everyone in our society and our world. The power to create this new world is not in our hopes, it’s not in our dreams – it’s in our hands.” Specifics.
Phi Beta Iota: Vastly more specific and credible than Bernie Sanders, but lacking in appreciation for the reality that without electoral reform, there is zero chance of any small party ever over-coming the embedded corruption of the two-party tyranny.
What kinds of training enabled the Sioux to become “alert and alive to everything” and to develop a heightened state of situational awareness? We now turn to Eastman’s words to offer his insights: Read more.
Phi Beta Iota: Technology is not a substitute for thinking or human instincts refined in practice. This has been the fundamental corruption of the American way of war, on top of allowing money to direct elective wars.
REVEALED: The boom and bust of the CIA’s secret torture sites
The quality of debriefers and security officers being sent to the site was degenerating, while the information coming out of it was “mediocre or, I dare say, useless”.
Taken together, the secret documents lead to the conclusion that Washington’s 14-year high-value targeting campaign suffers from an overreliance on signals intelligence, an apparently incalculable civilian toll, and — due to a preference for assassination rather than capture — an inability to extract potentially valuable intelligence from terror suspects. They also highlight the futility of the war in Afghanistan by showing how the U.S. has poured vast resources into killing local insurgents, in the process exacerbating the very threat the U.S. is seeking to confront.