Tuesday night’s “Rachel Maddow Show” was dedicated to interviewing former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper who has written a book, “Facts and Fears.” Rachel reads some excerpts from the book between her interview with Clapper, a retired lieutenant general in the United States Air Force and career intelligence officer for over 50 years. She …
Tag: Intelligence
Mar 14 2011
CBS 60min.: “Curve Ball”
eighth anniversary of America’s invasion of Iraq.
Yep, and it seems now that the U.S. media is trying to spin their own rovian revisionist history as to why they didn’t do their jobs, eight years later!
And after all this time, questions still remain as to why the United States launched the war in the first place.
Really Simon, questions? Seems hundreds of thousands here with added millions, us ‘focus groups’, around this planet were questioning before, on the day the invasion started and all these years later, as well as paying attention to the better late then never Inquiries held as well as all the proof then and through these eight years. Where have all of you been?
So how did U.S. intelligence get it so wrong?
Did intelligence get it all wrong “who spun a web of lies which convinced America’s top spies”, or is it more reality that you all followed breathlessly what cheney and all his brother and sister neo-cons, who found a story line from a single source they could build up with what other ‘intelligence?’ they cherry picked, think powell at the U.N., and added to justify their destructive goals, sold you and few questioned, remember all that love towards rumsfeld!
Apr 26 2010
Afghanistan and Imperial Wars — How to Achieve Success with Failure
(now cross posted at DailyKos)
The ongoing war in Afghanistan-it can now be thought of as perpetual and unending is more important than a lot of people seem to think. It is not just a far-away semi-colonial war but part of an ongoing struggle for control of Central Asia and the Middle East by the imperial forces of NATO.
It has to be very clear than despite the fact that Europeans are somewhat reluctant partners in this enterprise they are, nevertheless partners and part of essential parts of the Empire. Europeans, like Americans, like their priviledged position in the world. They are a little less bloodthirsty than we are-it is a less essential part of their cultural life. In America violence is loved for its own sake. In Europe it is merely a sometimes necessary component of asserting interests. That’s the only realistic difference between Europe and the United States. The notion that Europeans are more “progressive” than Americans in foreign policy is just not true. Europeans sees the United States as the military arm of the Empire required to insure that world security is maintained particularly energy security. Europeans like the fact the United States provides them with security and are quite willing to accede to the brutality of the the American military in keeping the wogs in check-a brutality that they have far more knowledge of than the American people do. I generalize here because in Europe a large segment of the left is notably against militarism still unlike here.
Having said that the war itself shows us some interesting patterns. As reported in the NYT, the great show “battle” has not really had any real results. The article Violence Helps Taliban Undo Afghan Gains is worth reading but you and I both know what it says and probably knew even before the “battle” happened what the results would be as do all non-compromised journalists and observers of the situation. This and many other stories of the recent war in Afghanistan often buried on the back pages of the NYT tell a tale of woe almost unbelievable in its pathos.
Apr 10 2010
An Opening to Indictments and Accountability?
Turning the innocent, not only those who were grabbed and held for years but their countrymen and women, into potential foreign criminal terrorist, not winning hearts and minds and not being the law abiding country we not only claim but attack others for doing same!
Mar 01 2010
Don’t start bumping your bigoted d***heads just yet.
At least of couple bloggers I read fairly regularly have cited Kanazawa et al. Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent. Social Psychology Quarterly, 2010, based on press releases. The actual article is DOI: 10.1177/0190272510361602, but unless you have a subscription, the journal is charging an outrageous $32.00 fee to download the article. (I’ll get back to that.)
PZMeyers, an evolutionary biologist and blogger at Pharyngula, has already sounded the warning on the predictable self-congratulatory praise for the findings expected from liberals and atheists.
Meyers says:
Stop patting yourselves on the back over this study
Good grief. This ridiculous study is making the rounds of the atheist community, with its claim that liberals and atheists are smarter than conservatives and religious people. Look at the numbers!
Young adults who identify themselves as “not at all religious” have an average IQ of 103 during adolescence, while those who identify themselves as “very religious” have an average IQ of 97 during adolescence.
Seriously? Show me the error bars on those measurements. Show me the reliability of IQ as a measure of actual, you know, intelligence. Show me that a 6 point IQ difference matters at all in your interactions with other people, even if it were real. And then to claim that these differences are not only heritable, but evolutionarily significant…jebus, people, you can just glance at it and see that it is complete crap.
Feb 04 2010
Deeper Politics: For Profit Government, Intelligence, Foreign Policy, and War
Last week we heard Peter Dale Scott, former Canadian diplomat and University of California at Berkeley Professor, and author of Drugs, Oil, and War (2005), The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America (2007), The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11 and the Deep Politics of War (2008), talk with Paul Jay of The Real News in the first and second parts of a multipart series about the corrupted mindset in Washington that chooses who becomes president, and about the war machine that co-opted Obama into his escalation of a drug-corrupted war in Afghanistan.
Scott also talked about an “iceberg” analogy of US politics in which which “the visible part, the public politics, or, if you like, what goes on in the public state, is only a small percentage of the totality of what’s going on, a lot of this is not subject to the restraints of the Constitution at all”
Here in part 3 of the series Scott again talks with Jay, this time about something much more sinister that permeates American political reality penetrating and corrupting much deeper than the normal military-industrial complex we’ve read about in the past – about the fact that the way to succeed in Washington has become to support the next use of the war machine to attack its next chosen target – about privatized intelligence services creating for profit wars, representing a private business that has become a form of permanent government – and concludes that the only way he can see out of the mire is that “We have to pull back from the two-party system and start a new kind of politics. We have to essentially build a new kind of civil society in America. And this is not easy, and I’m not confident that it will happen. The most likely thing to happen is that America will just go into decline from overextension the way that Britain went into decline from overextension before it“.
To give you an example of how powerful they are, when it was clear that the intelligence about Iraq [had] been skewed and we went in because of weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there. And they commissioned (Science Applications International Corporation) SAIC to investigate what went wrong. And SAIC came up with a report that didn’t mention that some of the key people who had been saying that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction had been saying that it would be necessary to deal with him militarily were people who were in fact working for SAIC. So when you give a private corporation the job of seeing whether we should go to war against a country, and then you give that same private corporation the job of finding out why false information was given, you can see that there has been a very, very deep corruption of the process of gathering and analyzing intelligence in Washington and SAIC.
JAY: Who are some of the individuals you referring to?
SCOTT: If you don’t mind, I’m going to read from an article by Donald Barlett that you already quoted from. This was David Kay, who was on the committee, and this is what he said in 1998 to the Senate Armed Services Committee, that Saddam Hussein, quote, “remains in power with weapons of mass destruction,” and that, quote, “military action is needed.” Wayne Downing, a retired general and proselytized for an invasion of Iraq, stating that the Iraqis, quote, “are ready to take the war … overseas. They would use whatever means they have to attack us.” Both of these men, David Kay and Wayne Downing, worked for SAIC. And so a decent analysis of what went wrong would have pointed to the fact that we were relying on people who had, really, a profit motive. I’m not saying that they did all of this thinking only of profit; I’m saying that they were totally part of this dominance mindset that I’m talking about, and they know that the way to succeed in Washington is to support the next target, the policy for the next use of the war machine.
JAY: Now, Robert Gates, Obama’s secretary of defense, used to be part of SAIC as well. Is that true?
SCOTT: Was on the board of directors of SAIC, yes. And, you know, for that matter, Mike McConnell was with Booz Allen Hamilton.
JAY: So, given the Obama administration, again, promises of a new mindset, has the role of SAIC and these kinds of companies changed in any way?
SCOTT: No. See, this is why I talk about deep politics.
Real News Network – February 04, 2010
Full Transcript here
New mindset for US foreign policy? Pt.3
Scott: The military-industrial-counterterrorism complex is beyond Eisenhower’s worst nightmare
Dec 31 2009
The More That Comes Out
The more it’s showing what the cheney and his puppet bush were telling us, after They established the Homeland Security Agency and Swore that the Intelligence Agencies would share information and work together for Homeland Security etc. etc. etc., that They Didn’t Do Much Of Anything As To Security Against Any Criminal Terrorist Attacks!!
Dec 01 2009
Iraq War Inquiry, Day Six
As we wait to hear President Obama we already know that he will be increasing military troops in Afghanistan. We now need to hear just what the plan is now going to be, i.e. Exit Strategy, once a mainstay meme of the so called Strong on National Defense GOP. Even a certain State Governor called on the meme: “Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is,” – George W. Bush, Texas Gov., 1999
But that was before they increased the hatreds and thus possible enemies towards us a thousand fold and for the coming decades!
Nov 30 2009
Iraq War Inquiry, Day Five
Caught the first piece earlier today, lays out similar to what many in our country have been saying for years, especially the recent years, and similar to other countries that are supposed to be leaders on this planet.
Nov 29 2009
Iraq War Inquiry: Analysis and Push Back Grows Against any Coverup
But first we have the release of a scathing report from the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, {46 page PDF} How we failed to get bin Laden and why it matters today
As I’ve said in a few posts, the past week of the hearings, the picture coming out was our administration then especially, and others, weren’t focused on bin Laden, al Qaeda nor the Taliban who were harboring them in Afghanistan, their almost complete focus prior to 9/11, as to that region, was a growing want to have regime change in Iraq, that became the total focus on the same day as 9/11, as has been noted by Condoleezza Rice mentioning Saddam as a possible suspect behind the 9/11 attacks or supporter of al Qaeda, which he never was.
Here is an analysis of the released report:
Nov 27 2009
Iraq War Inquiry, Day Three
On Sept 11 2001 Condi Rice was already sure al Qaeda did the hijackings and attacks but was also Already Mentioning Iraq as being Involved, or hoping so! To me I keep seeing a picture forming that they weren’t interested At All in seeking out bin Laden nor even al Qaeda members, but Were Hell Bent On Regime Change In Iraq, which was already being discussed and pushed prior to Sept 11 2001. They had no concern for seeking out those who were a part of this extremely destructive criminal act against our Nation and it’s Citizens, nor seemingly concern or thought as to the victims of the three extremely destructive acts, Saddam was on their minds!!
Sep 11 2009
On The Eve Of 9/11, Could It Have Been Prevented?
According to an FBI informant Yes!
FBI Informant Says Agents Missed Chance to Stop 9/11 Ringleader Mohammed Atta
Undercover Operative ‘One Million Percent Positive’ Attacks Could Have Been Prevented
This was just on the ABC World News, video report not yet up, but is one more of the Brian Ross Investigative Unit.
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