This is from the Middle East Media Research Institute--if it is half correct, then what we are starting to do is going to cost us very dearly. I wonder if anyone in Wahington or in Afghanistan is aware of this sort of stuff?
Commander Of Taliban’s Haqqani Network Claims They Control 80 Percent Of Afghanistan, Warns: We Have Drawn Up Counter-Plans and are Waiting for Arrival of Fresh 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to Give Them a Tough Time
A prominent commander of the Haqqani Network, a key organization that forms part of the Taliban militant movement in Afghanistan, has claimed that the Taliban control over 80 percent of Afghanistan and do not need to flee to Pakistan to take refuge, according to a Pakistani daily.
Rejecting as baseless the U.S. allegations that the Afghan Taliban have a presence in Pakistan’s tribal areas, Mullah Sangeen said that there is no truth in the U.S. charges as the Taliban are holding 80 percent of territory in Afghanistan.
In a video message which the Taliban commander claimed was recorded in one of his camps in the Paktika province of Afghanistan, he said that the Haqqani Network is active and based in Afghanistan. Mullah Sangeen is associated with the Haqqani Network, which operates in the Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Logar, and Maidan-Wardak provinces of Afghanistan as well as in the capital city of Kabul.
The Haqqani Network led by Commander Sirajuddin Haqqani, the elder son of veteran Afghan Mujahideen leader Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, has nominated Mullah Sangeen as the shadow governor of the Paktika province, according to a report in the Pakistani daily The News.
By pressing the government of Pakistan to launch a military operation in North Waziristan, the U.S. is trying to weaken Pakistan, Mullah Sangeen said, adding that the U.S. is making all-out efforts to pit Pakistan’s armed forces and people against each other.
Mullah Sangeen claimed that the Taliban have become a strong force and are now ruling most of Afghanistan with support from the Afghan people.
“The U.S. knows that we are here in Afghanistan and are fighting against them. The U.S. always levels such allegations whenever it suffers losses at our hands,” he said, adding that the U.S. and its allies invaded their country with a claim to make it prosperous and developed.
“Instead, they turned Afghanistan into ruins. Thousands of Afghans were killed and their houses bombarded in the name of the war on terrorism. The U.S. still does not understand the complexity of the situation. It wrongly considers that the Taliban are furthering somebody else’s [Pakistan’s] agenda. Now is the time for the U.S. to understand that we are Afghans and are fighting for the freedom of our homeland,’’ he added.
The Taliban commander termed reports of secret U.S.-Taliban talks as baseless, saying that the Taliban does not want talks with the occupying forces because they have ruined their country, filled jails with innocent Afghans and made thousands of Afghan children orphans and women widows.
The Taliban have drawn up counter-plans and are waiting for the arrival of 30,000 fresh U.S. troops in Afghanistan to give them a tough time, he noted, warning: “With an increase in the number of their troops, they will suffer more casualties.”
Mullah Sangeen said that the Haqqani Network has inflicted heavy losses on the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan. “This is the reason the U.S. is putting pressure on Pakistan to launch a military operation in North Waziristan [a tribal district of Pakistan]. At a time when Pakistan is supporting the U.S. in its war against terror and U.S. drones are flying over North Waziristan round the clock, no sane person would like to live in Waziristan,” he added.
Source: The News, Pakistan, December 22, 2009
Posted at: 2009-12-22
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Afghanistan--The questions that haven't been answered
Many of you may remember Joe Galloway--he and General Hal Moore wrote, We Were Soldiers Once and Young. He and Moore have reprised this with We are Soldiers Still. I think of him as a sort of modern day Ernie Pyle. In this piece he repeats the questions that General Colin Powell asked, but in my estimation never got answered or answered himself. I wonder if these questions came up during the long debate around the White House conference table and if they did, what were the answers.
George
Afghanistan isn't worth one more American life
By Joseph L. Galloway McClatchy Newspapers
The debate over our creeping military mission in distant Afghanistan grows ever hotter, and before we march even deeper into trouble, perhaps it's time to dig out the old Powell Doctrine and answer the eight questions it poses.
Gen. Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said these questions all must be answered with a loud YES before the United States takes military action. He listed his questions in the 1990 run-up to the Persian Gulf War, drawing heavily on the Weinberger Doctrine that was laid down by former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger during the debate over America's ends and means in Lebanon.
•1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?
•2. Do we have a clear, attainable objective?
•3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
•4. Have all non-violent policy means been exhausted?
•5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
•6. Have all the consequences of our action been fully considered?
•7. Is the action supported by the American people?
•8. Do we have broad international support?
Those questions weren't asked and answered before we invaded Afghanistan late in 2001, and by the time we invaded Iraq early in 2003, then-defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was declaring the Powell doctrine "outmoded" as he ran premature victory laps around a fleeting success in Afghanistan.
The Bush administration is gone, but both Iraq and Afghanistan are still with us, and now a new president is overseeing a slow-motion U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and a slow-motion U.S. escalation in Afghanistan.
It can fairly be argued that not a single affirmative answer can be given to Gen. Powell's eight questions with regard to the actions now planned or underway in Afghanistan. Had those questions been asked about Iraq in early 2003, not a single affirmative answer could have been given.
There was, in the beginning in Afghanistan, a vital national security interest in toppling the Taliban government and killing or capturing the Taliban’s murderous guests, Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorists. We toppled the Taliban, but we let al Qaida flee over the rugged, mountainous border into Pakistan.
Even before that, we began to let Afghanistan fester, starved of U.S. manpower and money, and turned our attention to Iraq, where Rumsfeld had estimated that victory would be ours and our troops would be home in six months or so.
We no longer have a vital national security interest or a clearly attainable goal in Afghanistan. Our stated goal is to deny any future sanctuary to al Qaida in Afghanistan - but al Qaida isn't based in Afghanistan and hasn't been for years.
We've changed presidents, changed commanding generals and ambassadors, changed our tactics and changed the numbers of American boots on the ground in a buildup that's expected to reach a total of more than 70,000 U.S. troops by the end of this year.
The new U.S. military commander in Kabul, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, wants more U.S. troops — somewhere between 14,000 and 45,000 more, at least for now — to fight the newly resurgent Taliban guerrillas who control well over half the country, but he's been told that he shouldn't ask for them anytime soon.
With the country in recession, the budget deficit spinning into the trillions of dollars, American casualty rates in Afghanistan at record highs and public approval of the president and the war in Afghanistan falling like rocks, the White House desperately wants some breathing room.
That's politics, folks, and it runs counter to an important corollary to the Powell Doctrine: If you're determined to fight a war, choose a commander whom you trust and a strategy that you back, and then give your military leaders all the resources they say they need to achieve your objective.
If you can't do that, if your objective isn't clear, if the American people and the international community aren’t with you, then order a withdrawal and explain why.
For God's sake, don't ratchet up slowly, buying time with the bodies of dead and wounded American soldiers, while you try to sell the wrong war in the wrong place against the wrong enemy to the American people.
For eight years, we've heard presidents and other politicians talk about setting conditions for a democratic central government in a country — really a bunch of tribes and clans — that's never had such a thing in 2,000 years and seemingly doesn't want one now.
The national treasure we've invested in that effort has propped up an ineffective and corrupt Kabul regime. Its only economic success has been the restoration of the opium trade. Afghanistan is now the world's leading producer of opium and heroin, where under the Taliban government that was a death penalty offense.
It's time to make a decision, Mr. President, and I hope that for our sake and yours, you make the right one. Afghanistan isn't worth the life of one more American soldier, much less the hundreds and thousands that an open-ended commitment to a war that we cannot win would cost.
George
Afghanistan isn't worth one more American life
By Joseph L. Galloway McClatchy Newspapers
The debate over our creeping military mission in distant Afghanistan grows ever hotter, and before we march even deeper into trouble, perhaps it's time to dig out the old Powell Doctrine and answer the eight questions it poses.
Gen. Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said these questions all must be answered with a loud YES before the United States takes military action. He listed his questions in the 1990 run-up to the Persian Gulf War, drawing heavily on the Weinberger Doctrine that was laid down by former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger during the debate over America's ends and means in Lebanon.
•1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?
•2. Do we have a clear, attainable objective?
•3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
•4. Have all non-violent policy means been exhausted?
•5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
•6. Have all the consequences of our action been fully considered?
•7. Is the action supported by the American people?
•8. Do we have broad international support?
Those questions weren't asked and answered before we invaded Afghanistan late in 2001, and by the time we invaded Iraq early in 2003, then-defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was declaring the Powell doctrine "outmoded" as he ran premature victory laps around a fleeting success in Afghanistan.
The Bush administration is gone, but both Iraq and Afghanistan are still with us, and now a new president is overseeing a slow-motion U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and a slow-motion U.S. escalation in Afghanistan.
It can fairly be argued that not a single affirmative answer can be given to Gen. Powell's eight questions with regard to the actions now planned or underway in Afghanistan. Had those questions been asked about Iraq in early 2003, not a single affirmative answer could have been given.
There was, in the beginning in Afghanistan, a vital national security interest in toppling the Taliban government and killing or capturing the Taliban’s murderous guests, Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorists. We toppled the Taliban, but we let al Qaida flee over the rugged, mountainous border into Pakistan.
Even before that, we began to let Afghanistan fester, starved of U.S. manpower and money, and turned our attention to Iraq, where Rumsfeld had estimated that victory would be ours and our troops would be home in six months or so.
We no longer have a vital national security interest or a clearly attainable goal in Afghanistan. Our stated goal is to deny any future sanctuary to al Qaida in Afghanistan - but al Qaida isn't based in Afghanistan and hasn't been for years.
We've changed presidents, changed commanding generals and ambassadors, changed our tactics and changed the numbers of American boots on the ground in a buildup that's expected to reach a total of more than 70,000 U.S. troops by the end of this year.
The new U.S. military commander in Kabul, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, wants more U.S. troops — somewhere between 14,000 and 45,000 more, at least for now — to fight the newly resurgent Taliban guerrillas who control well over half the country, but he's been told that he shouldn't ask for them anytime soon.
With the country in recession, the budget deficit spinning into the trillions of dollars, American casualty rates in Afghanistan at record highs and public approval of the president and the war in Afghanistan falling like rocks, the White House desperately wants some breathing room.
That's politics, folks, and it runs counter to an important corollary to the Powell Doctrine: If you're determined to fight a war, choose a commander whom you trust and a strategy that you back, and then give your military leaders all the resources they say they need to achieve your objective.
If you can't do that, if your objective isn't clear, if the American people and the international community aren’t with you, then order a withdrawal and explain why.
For God's sake, don't ratchet up slowly, buying time with the bodies of dead and wounded American soldiers, while you try to sell the wrong war in the wrong place against the wrong enemy to the American people.
For eight years, we've heard presidents and other politicians talk about setting conditions for a democratic central government in a country — really a bunch of tribes and clans — that's never had such a thing in 2,000 years and seemingly doesn't want one now.
The national treasure we've invested in that effort has propped up an ineffective and corrupt Kabul regime. Its only economic success has been the restoration of the opium trade. Afghanistan is now the world's leading producer of opium and heroin, where under the Taliban government that was a death penalty offense.
It's time to make a decision, Mr. President, and I hope that for our sake and yours, you make the right one. Afghanistan isn't worth the life of one more American soldier, much less the hundreds and thousands that an open-ended commitment to a war that we cannot win would cost.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
French Arms Sales
I wonder--is this selling the hangman the rope he will use to hang you?
Proposed French arms sale to Russia faces mounting opposition on Capitol Hill Posted: 18 Dec 2009 07:26 AM PST
Have you heard of the French ship called the Mistral? Well, you're about to. Several senior members of the U.S. Congress are becoming heavily involved in trying to thwart the possible sale of the Mistral from France to Russia.
The Mistral is France's state-of-the-art amphibious assault ship, and discussions of selling it to the Russian Federation have been causing angst in European capitals for months. The sale would be the first significant arms transfer from a NATO country to Russia and what's more, the Russians have already indicated that it could be used in future operations in countries in its near abroad, such as Georgia, which it invaded last year.
Russian Navy Commander Admiral Vladimir Vysotskiy said in September that "In the conflict in August last year [against Georgia], a ship like that would have allowed [Russia's] Black Sea Fleet to accomplish its mission in 40 minutes, not 26 hours which is how long it took us [to land the troops ashore]."
This is just one of the concerns that prompted Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-LA, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to introduce a bill late Thursday that would express the sense of Congress that "France and other member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union should decline to sell major weapons systems or offensive military equipment to the Russian Federation."
The resolution alleges that Russia remains in violation of the French-brokered ceasefire that followed the Georgia invasion. Also, Russia is expanding its military presence in a way that threatens Georgia, and has made a number of aggressive moves toward several countries in the region, according to the text. The sale of the Mistral to Russia "would enhance that country's ability to potentially wage aggression against its neighbors," the resolution states.
Ros-Lehtinen is calling on President Obama, as well as Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to urge France not to sell major offensive weapons systems to Russia until Russia completely withdraws from Georgian territory and makes broad reforms in areas ranging from rule of law to human rights.
The bill has been referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee for consideration, but that's only the beginning of coming U.S. congressional involvement on the issue. Multiple Senate aides tell The Cable that several senators from both sides of the aisle are busily drafting a letter to the French Embassy calling on France to hold off on the sale. That letter is expected early next week.
There goes the neighborhood?
The 650-foot long Mistral is the second largest vessel in the French Navy and each one is capable of carrying up to 16 helicopters, tanks, land assault vehicles, and 900 troops.
In addition to Georgia, the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are also concerned about the Russians buying such a ship, especially from their fellow NATO and EU member France. Serious discussions have been initiated within NATO by these states about the possible deal.
"I'll say it quite bluntly --it has implications for NATO's security, because of what we saw last year," Marko Mikhelson, chairman of the European affairs committee in Estonia's Parliament, told the New York Times.
Despite that, the French sailed a Mistral directly past these states to the port of St. Petersburg last month to show off the ship for the Russian government. And Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin refused to rule out using the ship against the Baltics on his recent trip to Paris.
"Whoever we buy it from, we will reserve the right to use it where and when we consider necessary," he said.
The Baltic states have protection as part of NATO and the EU. Georgia? Not so much. A senior Georgian government official spoke with The Cable about that country's concerns about the sale.
"We have experienced ourselves that Russia is capable of using military force against its neighbors," the official said, pointing out that Georgia has less ability to build international support for their opposition to the deal.
A French Embassy spokesman told The Cable that the sale of a Mistral-class ship to Russia is still a project and no decision has been made by either the Russians or the French.
"There is a Russian request and we see no reason to refuse considering that request, which will be examined with all the necessary precautions as part of the military equipment export control regulatory procedures and will take time," the spokesman said.
He pointed out France has used Mistral-class ships for humanitarian missions and to evacuate nationals from dangerous situations.
The French have also have made the argument that selling arms to Russia is needed for peace and stability in Europe. "It would be impossible to call for continental stability in partnership with Russia if we refuse to sell armaments to Russia. A refusal would amount to contradicting our own discourse," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon reportedly said.
And while the French have said they would sell a scaled-down version of the Mistral without some weapons and advanced-control technologies, American defense experts warn that the sale could start a chain reaction of European states selling sensitive military technologies to Russia to shore up their struggling defense industries.
"Given the shrinking defense budgets of European countries and the pressure to keep domestic defense firms from going under by expanding exports, there is little question that less and less restraint would be shown by competing governments and companies on what could be sold to Moscow," wrote Gary Schmitt, defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Moreover, "there is the signal such a sale would send Moscow about just how unserious the West is in holding Russia's feet to fire over its invasion of Georgia and the terms of the subsequent agreement," he said.
Proposed French arms sale to Russia faces mounting opposition on Capitol Hill Posted: 18 Dec 2009 07:26 AM PST
Have you heard of the French ship called the Mistral? Well, you're about to. Several senior members of the U.S. Congress are becoming heavily involved in trying to thwart the possible sale of the Mistral from France to Russia.
The Mistral is France's state-of-the-art amphibious assault ship, and discussions of selling it to the Russian Federation have been causing angst in European capitals for months. The sale would be the first significant arms transfer from a NATO country to Russia and what's more, the Russians have already indicated that it could be used in future operations in countries in its near abroad, such as Georgia, which it invaded last year.
Russian Navy Commander Admiral Vladimir Vysotskiy said in September that "In the conflict in August last year [against Georgia], a ship like that would have allowed [Russia's] Black Sea Fleet to accomplish its mission in 40 minutes, not 26 hours which is how long it took us [to land the troops ashore]."
This is just one of the concerns that prompted Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-LA, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to introduce a bill late Thursday that would express the sense of Congress that "France and other member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union should decline to sell major weapons systems or offensive military equipment to the Russian Federation."
The resolution alleges that Russia remains in violation of the French-brokered ceasefire that followed the Georgia invasion. Also, Russia is expanding its military presence in a way that threatens Georgia, and has made a number of aggressive moves toward several countries in the region, according to the text. The sale of the Mistral to Russia "would enhance that country's ability to potentially wage aggression against its neighbors," the resolution states.
Ros-Lehtinen is calling on President Obama, as well as Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to urge France not to sell major offensive weapons systems to Russia until Russia completely withdraws from Georgian territory and makes broad reforms in areas ranging from rule of law to human rights.
The bill has been referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee for consideration, but that's only the beginning of coming U.S. congressional involvement on the issue. Multiple Senate aides tell The Cable that several senators from both sides of the aisle are busily drafting a letter to the French Embassy calling on France to hold off on the sale. That letter is expected early next week.
There goes the neighborhood?
The 650-foot long Mistral is the second largest vessel in the French Navy and each one is capable of carrying up to 16 helicopters, tanks, land assault vehicles, and 900 troops.
In addition to Georgia, the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are also concerned about the Russians buying such a ship, especially from their fellow NATO and EU member France. Serious discussions have been initiated within NATO by these states about the possible deal.
"I'll say it quite bluntly --it has implications for NATO's security, because of what we saw last year," Marko Mikhelson, chairman of the European affairs committee in Estonia's Parliament, told the New York Times.
Despite that, the French sailed a Mistral directly past these states to the port of St. Petersburg last month to show off the ship for the Russian government. And Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin refused to rule out using the ship against the Baltics on his recent trip to Paris.
"Whoever we buy it from, we will reserve the right to use it where and when we consider necessary," he said.
The Baltic states have protection as part of NATO and the EU. Georgia? Not so much. A senior Georgian government official spoke with The Cable about that country's concerns about the sale.
"We have experienced ourselves that Russia is capable of using military force against its neighbors," the official said, pointing out that Georgia has less ability to build international support for their opposition to the deal.
A French Embassy spokesman told The Cable that the sale of a Mistral-class ship to Russia is still a project and no decision has been made by either the Russians or the French.
"There is a Russian request and we see no reason to refuse considering that request, which will be examined with all the necessary precautions as part of the military equipment export control regulatory procedures and will take time," the spokesman said.
He pointed out France has used Mistral-class ships for humanitarian missions and to evacuate nationals from dangerous situations.
The French have also have made the argument that selling arms to Russia is needed for peace and stability in Europe. "It would be impossible to call for continental stability in partnership with Russia if we refuse to sell armaments to Russia. A refusal would amount to contradicting our own discourse," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon reportedly said.
And while the French have said they would sell a scaled-down version of the Mistral without some weapons and advanced-control technologies, American defense experts warn that the sale could start a chain reaction of European states selling sensitive military technologies to Russia to shore up their struggling defense industries.
"Given the shrinking defense budgets of European countries and the pressure to keep domestic defense firms from going under by expanding exports, there is little question that less and less restraint would be shown by competing governments and companies on what could be sold to Moscow," wrote Gary Schmitt, defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Moreover, "there is the signal such a sale would send Moscow about just how unserious the West is in holding Russia's feet to fire over its invasion of Georgia and the terms of the subsequent agreement," he said.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
The Hasan Case: Overt Clues and Tactical Challenges
We haven't heard much recently about Major Nidal Hasan what with all the other "stuff" going on to inclujde the five young Americans being held in Pakistan for their apparent attempts to join the jihad. Once again a small, home grown group who may or may not be terrorists, but they walk like a duck and quack like a duck--just may be a duck. This article is from STRATFOR. Thought you might find it interesting.
George
The Hasan Case: Overt Clues and Tactical Challenges
November 11, 2009 | 1841 GMT
By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton
In last week’s global security and intelligence report, we discussed the recent call by the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasir al-Wahayshi, for jihadists to conduct simple attacks against a variety of targets in the Muslim world and the West. We also noted how it is relatively simple to conduct such attacks against soft targets using improvised explosive devices, guns or even knives and clubs.
The next day, a lone gunman, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, opened fire on a group of soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas. The victims were in the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, a facility on the base where troops are prepared for deployment and where they take care of certain processing tasks such as completing insurance paperwork and receiving medical examinations and vaccinations.
Even though the targets of Hasan’s attack were soldiers, they represented a very soft target in this environment. Most soldiers on bases inside the United States are normally not armed and are only provided weapons for training. The only personnel who regularly carry weapons are the military police and the base civilian police officers. In addition to being unarmed, the soldiers at the center were closely packed together in the facility as they waited to proceed from station to station. The unarmed, densely packed mass of people allowed Hasan to kill 13 (12 soldiers and one civilian employee of the center) and wound 42 others when he opened fire.
Hasan is a U.S.-born Muslim who, according to STRATFOR sources and media accounts, has had past contact with jihadists, including the radical Imam Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki is a U.S.-born imam who espouses a jihadist ideology and who was discussed at some length in the 9/11 commission report for his links to 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Al-Awlaki, who is currently living in Yemen and reportedly has contacts with al Qaeda, posted a message on his Web site Nov. 9 praising Hasan’s actions. Despite Hasan’s connections to al-Awlaki and other jihadists, it is unknown at this point if he was even aware of al-Wahayshi’s recent message calling for simple attacks, and therefore it is impossible to tell if his attack was in response to it.
However, one thing that is certain is that investigators examining Hasan’s computer hard drive, e-mail traffic and Internet history will be looking into that possibility, along with other indications that Hasan was linked to radicals.
We noted last week that by their very nature, individual actors and small cells are very difficult for the government to detect. They must somehow identify themselves by contacting a government informant or another person who reports them to the authorities, attend a militant training camp or conduct correspondence with a person or organization under government scrutiny. In the Hasan case, it now appears that Hasan did self-identify by making radical statements to people he worked with, who reported him to the authorities. It also appears that he had correspondence with people such as al-Awlaki, whom the government was monitoring. Because of this behavior, Hasan brought himself to the attention of the Department of Defense, the FBI and the CIA.
The fact that Hasan was able to commit this attack after bringing government attention to himself could be due to a number of factors. Chief among them is the fact that it is tactically impossible for a government to identify every aspiring militant actor and to pre-empt every act of violence. The degree of difficulty is increased greatly if an actor does indeed act alone and does not give any overt clues through his actions or his communications of his intent to attack. Because of this, the Hasan case provides an excellent opportunity to examine national security investigations and their utility and limitations.
The Nature of Intelligence Investigations
The FBI will typically open up an intelligence investigation (usually referred to as a national security investigation) in any case where there is an indication or allegation that a person is involved in terrorist activity but there is no evidence that a specific law has been broken. Many times these investigations are opened up due to a lead passed by the CIA, National Security Agency or a foreign liaison intelligence service. Other times an FBI investigation can come as a spin-off from another FBI counterterrorism investigation already under way or be prompted by a piece of information collected by an FBI informant or even by a tip from a concerned citizen — like the flight instructors who alerted the FBI to the suspicious behavior of some foreign flight students prior to the 9/11 attacks. In such a case, the FBI case agent in charge of the investigation will open a preliminary inquiry, which gives the agent a limited window of time to look into the matter. If no indication of criminal activity is found, the preliminary inquiry must be closed unless the agent receives authorization from the special agent in charge of his division and FBI headquarters to extend it.
If, during the preliminary inquiry, the investigating agents find probable cause that a crime has been committed, the FBI will open a full-fledged criminal investigation into the case, similar to what we saw in the case of Luqman Ameen Abdullah and his followers in Detroit.
One of the large problems in national security investigations is separating the wheat from the chaff. Many leads are based on erroneous information or a misidentification of the suspect — there is a huge issue associated with the confusion caused by the transliteration of Arabic names and the fact that there are many people bearing the same names. Jihadists also have the tendency to use multiple names and identities. And there are many cases in which people will falsely report a person to the FBI out of malice. Because of these factors, national security investigations proceed slowly and usually do not involve much (if any) contact with the suspect and his close associates. If the suspect is a real militant planning a terrorist attack, investigators do not want to tip him off, and if he is innocent, they do not want to sully his reputation by showing up and overtly interviewing everyone he knows. Due to its controversial history of domestic intelligence activities, the FBI has become acutely aware of its responsibility to protect privacy rights and civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and other laws.
And the rights guaranteed under the Constitution do complicate these national security investigations. It is not illegal for someone to say that Muslims should attack U.S. troops due to their operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, or that more Muslims should conduct attacks like the June 1 shooting at a recruiting center in Little Rock, Ark. — things that Hasan is reported to have said. Radical statements and convictions are not illegal — although they certainly would appear to be conduct unbecoming a U.S. Army officer. (We will leave to others the discussion of the difficulties in dealing with problem officers who are minorities and doctors and who owe several years of service in return for their education.)
There are also many officers and enlisted soldiers in the U.S. Army who own personal weapons and who use them for self-defense, target shooting or hunting. There is nothing extraordinary or illegal about a U.S. Army major owning personal weapons. With no articulable violation of U.S. law, the FBI would have very little to act upon in a case like Hasan’s. Instead, even if they found cause to extend their preliminary inquiry, they would be pretty much limited to monitoring his activities (and perhaps his communications, with a court order) and waiting for a law to be violated. In the Hasan case, it would appear that the FBI did not find probable cause that a law had been violated before he opened fire at Fort Hood. Although perhaps if the FBI had been watching his activities closely and with an eye toward “the how” of terrorist attacks, they might have noticed him conducting preoperational surveillance of the readiness center and even a dry run of the attack.
Of course, in addition to just looking for violations of the law, the other main thrust of a national security investigation is to determine whom the suspect is connected to and whom he is talking to or planning with. In past cases, such investigations have uncovered networks of jihadist actors working together in the United States, Canada, Europe and elsewhere. However, if all Hasan did in his correspondence with people such as al-Awlaki was exercise his First Amendment right to hold radical convictions, and if he did not engage in any type of conspiracy to conduct an attack, he did not break the law.
Another issue that complicates national security cases is that they are almost always classified at the secret level or above. This is understandable, considering they are often opened based upon intelligence produced by sensitive intelligence programs. However, this classification means that only those people with the proper clearance and an established need to know can be briefed on the case. It is not at all unusual for the FBI to visit a high-ranking official at another agency to brief the official on the fact that the FBI is conducting a classified national security investigation involving a person working for the official’s agency. The rub is that they will frequently tell the official that he or she is not at liberty to share details of the investigation with other individuals in the agency because they do not have a clear need to know. The FBI agent will also usually ask the person briefed not to take any action against the target of the investigation, so that the investigation is not compromised. While some people will disagree with the FBI’s determination of who really needs to know about the investigation and go on to brief a wider audience, many officials are cowed by the FBI and sit on the information.
Of course, the size of an organization is also a factor in the dissemination of information. The Department of Defense and the U.S. Army are large organizations, and it is possible that officials at the Pentagon or the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command (still known by its old acronym CID) headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Va., were briefed on the case and that local officials at Fort Hood were not. The Associated Press is now reporting that the FBI had alerted a Defense Criminal Investigative Service agent assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Washington about Hasan’s contacts with al-Awlaki, and ABC reports that the Defense Department is denying the FBI notified them. It would appear that the finger-pointing and bureaucratic blame-shifting normally associated with such cases has begun.
Even more severe problems would have plagued the dissemination of information from the CIA to local commanders and CID officers at Fort Hood. Despite the intelligence reforms put in place after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government still faces large obstacles when it comes to sharing intelligence information with law enforcement personnel.
Criminal Acts vs. Terrorism
So far, the Hasan shooting investigation is being run by the Army CID, and the FBI has been noticeably — and uncharacteristically — absent from the scene. As the premier law enforcement agency in the United States, the FBI will often assume authority over investigations where there is even a hint of terrorism. Since 9/11, the number of FBI/JTTF offices across the country has been dramatically increased, and the JTTFs are specifically charged with investigating cases that may involve terrorism. Therefore, we find the FBI’s absence in this case to be quite out of the ordinary.
However, with Hasan being a member of the armed forces, the victims being soldiers or army civilian employees and the incident occurring at Fort Hood, the case would seem to fall squarely under the mantle of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). From a prosecutorial perspective, a homicide trial under the UCMJ should be very tidy and could be quickly concluded. It will not involve all the potential loose ends that could pop up in a federal terrorism trial, especially when those loose ends involve what the FBI and CIA knew about Hasan, when they learned it and who they told. Also, politically, there are some who would like to see the Hasan case remain a criminal matter rather than a case of terrorism. Following the shooting death of Luqman Ameen Abdullah and considering the delicate relationship between Muslim advocacy groups and the U.S. government, some people would rather see Hasan portrayed as a mentally disturbed criminal than as an ideologically driven lone wolf.
Despite the CID taking the lead in prosecuting the case, the classified national security investigation by the CIA and FBI into Hasan and his possible connections to jihadist elements is undoubtedly continuing. Senior members of the government will certainly demand to know if Hasan had any confederates, if he was part of a bigger plot and if there are more attacks to come. Several congressmen and senators are also calling for hearings into the case, and if such hearings occur, they will certainly produce an abundance of interesting information pertaining to Hasan and the national security investigation of his activities.
George
The Hasan Case: Overt Clues and Tactical Challenges
November 11, 2009 | 1841 GMT
By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton
In last week’s global security and intelligence report, we discussed the recent call by the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasir al-Wahayshi, for jihadists to conduct simple attacks against a variety of targets in the Muslim world and the West. We also noted how it is relatively simple to conduct such attacks against soft targets using improvised explosive devices, guns or even knives and clubs.
The next day, a lone gunman, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, opened fire on a group of soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas. The victims were in the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, a facility on the base where troops are prepared for deployment and where they take care of certain processing tasks such as completing insurance paperwork and receiving medical examinations and vaccinations.
Even though the targets of Hasan’s attack were soldiers, they represented a very soft target in this environment. Most soldiers on bases inside the United States are normally not armed and are only provided weapons for training. The only personnel who regularly carry weapons are the military police and the base civilian police officers. In addition to being unarmed, the soldiers at the center were closely packed together in the facility as they waited to proceed from station to station. The unarmed, densely packed mass of people allowed Hasan to kill 13 (12 soldiers and one civilian employee of the center) and wound 42 others when he opened fire.
Hasan is a U.S.-born Muslim who, according to STRATFOR sources and media accounts, has had past contact with jihadists, including the radical Imam Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki is a U.S.-born imam who espouses a jihadist ideology and who was discussed at some length in the 9/11 commission report for his links to 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Al-Awlaki, who is currently living in Yemen and reportedly has contacts with al Qaeda, posted a message on his Web site Nov. 9 praising Hasan’s actions. Despite Hasan’s connections to al-Awlaki and other jihadists, it is unknown at this point if he was even aware of al-Wahayshi’s recent message calling for simple attacks, and therefore it is impossible to tell if his attack was in response to it.
However, one thing that is certain is that investigators examining Hasan’s computer hard drive, e-mail traffic and Internet history will be looking into that possibility, along with other indications that Hasan was linked to radicals.
We noted last week that by their very nature, individual actors and small cells are very difficult for the government to detect. They must somehow identify themselves by contacting a government informant or another person who reports them to the authorities, attend a militant training camp or conduct correspondence with a person or organization under government scrutiny. In the Hasan case, it now appears that Hasan did self-identify by making radical statements to people he worked with, who reported him to the authorities. It also appears that he had correspondence with people such as al-Awlaki, whom the government was monitoring. Because of this behavior, Hasan brought himself to the attention of the Department of Defense, the FBI and the CIA.
The fact that Hasan was able to commit this attack after bringing government attention to himself could be due to a number of factors. Chief among them is the fact that it is tactically impossible for a government to identify every aspiring militant actor and to pre-empt every act of violence. The degree of difficulty is increased greatly if an actor does indeed act alone and does not give any overt clues through his actions or his communications of his intent to attack. Because of this, the Hasan case provides an excellent opportunity to examine national security investigations and their utility and limitations.
The Nature of Intelligence Investigations
The FBI will typically open up an intelligence investigation (usually referred to as a national security investigation) in any case where there is an indication or allegation that a person is involved in terrorist activity but there is no evidence that a specific law has been broken. Many times these investigations are opened up due to a lead passed by the CIA, National Security Agency or a foreign liaison intelligence service. Other times an FBI investigation can come as a spin-off from another FBI counterterrorism investigation already under way or be prompted by a piece of information collected by an FBI informant or even by a tip from a concerned citizen — like the flight instructors who alerted the FBI to the suspicious behavior of some foreign flight students prior to the 9/11 attacks. In such a case, the FBI case agent in charge of the investigation will open a preliminary inquiry, which gives the agent a limited window of time to look into the matter. If no indication of criminal activity is found, the preliminary inquiry must be closed unless the agent receives authorization from the special agent in charge of his division and FBI headquarters to extend it.
If, during the preliminary inquiry, the investigating agents find probable cause that a crime has been committed, the FBI will open a full-fledged criminal investigation into the case, similar to what we saw in the case of Luqman Ameen Abdullah and his followers in Detroit.
One of the large problems in national security investigations is separating the wheat from the chaff. Many leads are based on erroneous information or a misidentification of the suspect — there is a huge issue associated with the confusion caused by the transliteration of Arabic names and the fact that there are many people bearing the same names. Jihadists also have the tendency to use multiple names and identities. And there are many cases in which people will falsely report a person to the FBI out of malice. Because of these factors, national security investigations proceed slowly and usually do not involve much (if any) contact with the suspect and his close associates. If the suspect is a real militant planning a terrorist attack, investigators do not want to tip him off, and if he is innocent, they do not want to sully his reputation by showing up and overtly interviewing everyone he knows. Due to its controversial history of domestic intelligence activities, the FBI has become acutely aware of its responsibility to protect privacy rights and civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and other laws.
And the rights guaranteed under the Constitution do complicate these national security investigations. It is not illegal for someone to say that Muslims should attack U.S. troops due to their operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, or that more Muslims should conduct attacks like the June 1 shooting at a recruiting center in Little Rock, Ark. — things that Hasan is reported to have said. Radical statements and convictions are not illegal — although they certainly would appear to be conduct unbecoming a U.S. Army officer. (We will leave to others the discussion of the difficulties in dealing with problem officers who are minorities and doctors and who owe several years of service in return for their education.)
There are also many officers and enlisted soldiers in the U.S. Army who own personal weapons and who use them for self-defense, target shooting or hunting. There is nothing extraordinary or illegal about a U.S. Army major owning personal weapons. With no articulable violation of U.S. law, the FBI would have very little to act upon in a case like Hasan’s. Instead, even if they found cause to extend their preliminary inquiry, they would be pretty much limited to monitoring his activities (and perhaps his communications, with a court order) and waiting for a law to be violated. In the Hasan case, it would appear that the FBI did not find probable cause that a law had been violated before he opened fire at Fort Hood. Although perhaps if the FBI had been watching his activities closely and with an eye toward “the how” of terrorist attacks, they might have noticed him conducting preoperational surveillance of the readiness center and even a dry run of the attack.
Of course, in addition to just looking for violations of the law, the other main thrust of a national security investigation is to determine whom the suspect is connected to and whom he is talking to or planning with. In past cases, such investigations have uncovered networks of jihadist actors working together in the United States, Canada, Europe and elsewhere. However, if all Hasan did in his correspondence with people such as al-Awlaki was exercise his First Amendment right to hold radical convictions, and if he did not engage in any type of conspiracy to conduct an attack, he did not break the law.
Another issue that complicates national security cases is that they are almost always classified at the secret level or above. This is understandable, considering they are often opened based upon intelligence produced by sensitive intelligence programs. However, this classification means that only those people with the proper clearance and an established need to know can be briefed on the case. It is not at all unusual for the FBI to visit a high-ranking official at another agency to brief the official on the fact that the FBI is conducting a classified national security investigation involving a person working for the official’s agency. The rub is that they will frequently tell the official that he or she is not at liberty to share details of the investigation with other individuals in the agency because they do not have a clear need to know. The FBI agent will also usually ask the person briefed not to take any action against the target of the investigation, so that the investigation is not compromised. While some people will disagree with the FBI’s determination of who really needs to know about the investigation and go on to brief a wider audience, many officials are cowed by the FBI and sit on the information.
Of course, the size of an organization is also a factor in the dissemination of information. The Department of Defense and the U.S. Army are large organizations, and it is possible that officials at the Pentagon or the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command (still known by its old acronym CID) headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Va., were briefed on the case and that local officials at Fort Hood were not. The Associated Press is now reporting that the FBI had alerted a Defense Criminal Investigative Service agent assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Washington about Hasan’s contacts with al-Awlaki, and ABC reports that the Defense Department is denying the FBI notified them. It would appear that the finger-pointing and bureaucratic blame-shifting normally associated with such cases has begun.
Even more severe problems would have plagued the dissemination of information from the CIA to local commanders and CID officers at Fort Hood. Despite the intelligence reforms put in place after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government still faces large obstacles when it comes to sharing intelligence information with law enforcement personnel.
Criminal Acts vs. Terrorism
So far, the Hasan shooting investigation is being run by the Army CID, and the FBI has been noticeably — and uncharacteristically — absent from the scene. As the premier law enforcement agency in the United States, the FBI will often assume authority over investigations where there is even a hint of terrorism. Since 9/11, the number of FBI/JTTF offices across the country has been dramatically increased, and the JTTFs are specifically charged with investigating cases that may involve terrorism. Therefore, we find the FBI’s absence in this case to be quite out of the ordinary.
However, with Hasan being a member of the armed forces, the victims being soldiers or army civilian employees and the incident occurring at Fort Hood, the case would seem to fall squarely under the mantle of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). From a prosecutorial perspective, a homicide trial under the UCMJ should be very tidy and could be quickly concluded. It will not involve all the potential loose ends that could pop up in a federal terrorism trial, especially when those loose ends involve what the FBI and CIA knew about Hasan, when they learned it and who they told. Also, politically, there are some who would like to see the Hasan case remain a criminal matter rather than a case of terrorism. Following the shooting death of Luqman Ameen Abdullah and considering the delicate relationship between Muslim advocacy groups and the U.S. government, some people would rather see Hasan portrayed as a mentally disturbed criminal than as an ideologically driven lone wolf.
Despite the CID taking the lead in prosecuting the case, the classified national security investigation by the CIA and FBI into Hasan and his possible connections to jihadist elements is undoubtedly continuing. Senior members of the government will certainly demand to know if Hasan had any confederates, if he was part of a bigger plot and if there are more attacks to come. Several congressmen and senators are also calling for hearings into the case, and if such hearings occur, they will certainly produce an abundance of interesting information pertaining to Hasan and the national security investigation of his activities.
Friday, December 11, 2009
The Real Threat to Healthcare
I recently received this e-mail from MOAA and thought I would pass it along. If you are eligible to join MOAA and haven't, please consider it since they do so much for us. If you haven't written to your senators and representative, I hope you will. As veterans, you are entitled to care--this just isn't about career military personnel.
George
Dear Captain Harris,
Previously, I told you that, while we respect members’ strong opinions on both sides of the national health care reform argument, MOAA would refrain from taking a position on the social and political aspects and devote our limited resources to safeguarding military/VA beneficiaries’ health care benefits, protecting against taxation of those benefits, improving access to providers, and ensuring long-term sustainment of Medicare and TRICARE For Life (TFL).
MOAA members have generated more than 130,000 messages to Congress in support of these goals, and legislators of both parties have responded by including provisions aimed at holding military and VA beneficiaries harmless.
That said, there’s never any guarantee that Congress won’t change something about Medicare, TRICARE, TFL, or VA coverage, and we fully expect such changes could come in the future.
In that context, it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees.
It’s the next round of “adjustments” that poses the greatest concern – the ones that will be required to address the problem of the millions of baby boomers about to become eligible for Medicare, which the current legislation doesn’t address at all.
Most Medicare cuts in the pending legislation are the relatively less painful ones – $118 billion from eliminating the extra subsidy to the Medicare Advantage HMO program (which was sold to Congress as a cost-saver, but actually costs 14% more per person than Standard Medicare; DoD is cutting back on its TRICARE Prime HMO system for the same reason), cutting about $150 billion from non-rural hospitals (which the hospital associations say they can handle because expanding insurance coverage to most Americans will mean they won’t have to eat the cost of serving the uninsured), and cutting back abuses in medical equipment (under current systems, Medicare will buy you a wheelchair you might only need a few months, or allow a company to rent you one for life for a permanent condition).
These are things most of us would probably push to consider if it were our own money paying for them (which it actually is).
The real issue under national health care reform is that the money from these Medicare savings will be used to fund expansion of health insurance coverage to those who don’t have it now. It’s hard to argue that reducing the number of uninsureds would be a bad thing. But using the relatively “easy” Medicare savings initiatives to fund that means that when the baby boomers start swamping Medicare and Social Security in the next few years, Congress will be forced to look at more painful ways to fund that need.
Some in government already are pushing for a new entitlements commission to recommend ways to rein in entitlement spending. The last such commission, in 1994-95, considered a swath of changes – not just for Social Security and Medicare, but also for military and federal civilian health care, retired pay, VA disability compensation, and more.
It took years of tough battles, but we dodged most of those bullets, though we had to suffer COLA delays for several years until we won them back. We expect those reviews and threats to be renewed again – with even more force – within the next few years.
MOAA is already preparing for a major battle on those topics, to make sure our government leaders in both the Executive and Legislative Branches understand the important distinction between social insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security and earned compensation for a career of arduous military service and sacrifice.
One hundred thirty thousand messages will not be enough to win that battle. It will take millions, and that starts with one person – you. If you know someone who is not an MOAA member, please make it clear to them that MOAA is the lead organization looking out for them (there’s a reason MOAA has been named the top military or veterans lobbying association for three years in a row by The Hill). Tell them that we need all hands on deck – and we need to count them in our membership ranks now.
Having a strong, active membership equates to clout, and clout is what we will need to protect our health care entitlement. So, if you know someone who is not yet an MOAA member, forward them this e-mail and have them call our Member Service Center at (866) 739-7106 and mention this message to receive a special introductory one-year membership price of only $15.
Thank you for your continuing support.
All the best,
VADM Norb Ryan Jr., USN (Ret)
President
George
Dear Captain Harris,
Previously, I told you that, while we respect members’ strong opinions on both sides of the national health care reform argument, MOAA would refrain from taking a position on the social and political aspects and devote our limited resources to safeguarding military/VA beneficiaries’ health care benefits, protecting against taxation of those benefits, improving access to providers, and ensuring long-term sustainment of Medicare and TRICARE For Life (TFL).
MOAA members have generated more than 130,000 messages to Congress in support of these goals, and legislators of both parties have responded by including provisions aimed at holding military and VA beneficiaries harmless.
That said, there’s never any guarantee that Congress won’t change something about Medicare, TRICARE, TFL, or VA coverage, and we fully expect such changes could come in the future.
In that context, it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees.
It’s the next round of “adjustments” that poses the greatest concern – the ones that will be required to address the problem of the millions of baby boomers about to become eligible for Medicare, which the current legislation doesn’t address at all.
Most Medicare cuts in the pending legislation are the relatively less painful ones – $118 billion from eliminating the extra subsidy to the Medicare Advantage HMO program (which was sold to Congress as a cost-saver, but actually costs 14% more per person than Standard Medicare; DoD is cutting back on its TRICARE Prime HMO system for the same reason), cutting about $150 billion from non-rural hospitals (which the hospital associations say they can handle because expanding insurance coverage to most Americans will mean they won’t have to eat the cost of serving the uninsured), and cutting back abuses in medical equipment (under current systems, Medicare will buy you a wheelchair you might only need a few months, or allow a company to rent you one for life for a permanent condition).
These are things most of us would probably push to consider if it were our own money paying for them (which it actually is).
The real issue under national health care reform is that the money from these Medicare savings will be used to fund expansion of health insurance coverage to those who don’t have it now. It’s hard to argue that reducing the number of uninsureds would be a bad thing. But using the relatively “easy” Medicare savings initiatives to fund that means that when the baby boomers start swamping Medicare and Social Security in the next few years, Congress will be forced to look at more painful ways to fund that need.
Some in government already are pushing for a new entitlements commission to recommend ways to rein in entitlement spending. The last such commission, in 1994-95, considered a swath of changes – not just for Social Security and Medicare, but also for military and federal civilian health care, retired pay, VA disability compensation, and more.
It took years of tough battles, but we dodged most of those bullets, though we had to suffer COLA delays for several years until we won them back. We expect those reviews and threats to be renewed again – with even more force – within the next few years.
MOAA is already preparing for a major battle on those topics, to make sure our government leaders in both the Executive and Legislative Branches understand the important distinction between social insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security and earned compensation for a career of arduous military service and sacrifice.
One hundred thirty thousand messages will not be enough to win that battle. It will take millions, and that starts with one person – you. If you know someone who is not an MOAA member, please make it clear to them that MOAA is the lead organization looking out for them (there’s a reason MOAA has been named the top military or veterans lobbying association for three years in a row by The Hill). Tell them that we need all hands on deck – and we need to count them in our membership ranks now.
Having a strong, active membership equates to clout, and clout is what we will need to protect our health care entitlement. So, if you know someone who is not yet an MOAA member, forward them this e-mail and have them call our Member Service Center at (866) 739-7106 and mention this message to receive a special introductory one-year membership price of only $15.
Thank you for your continuing support.
All the best,
VADM Norb Ryan Jr., USN (Ret)
President
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
The Power of Ten
A few days ago I was watching the evening news when they ran a story about a group calling themselves “Secret Santas. It is not they are so “secret”, but they do go around giving gifts of at least one hundred dollars to people they feel are in need of a helping hand from a Secret Santa. They look for recipients in thrift shops, Salvation Army stores, senior centers, etc. and they are presented an unconditional gift. In one instance last night, an elderly woman who could not always afford to buy heating oil was given $400.
As I watched, I thought this was a wonderful idea, but why limit it to the holiday season? What if people would take a small amount of money and multiply it by ten and present that money to some deserving soul? What if they did this every month of the year?
The idea of The Power of Ten has been playing around in my head. What if you and nine of your friends got together and each of you gave $10. Well, you would have $100—The Power of Ten. If you did this once a month, your group could give away $1,000 in ten months—The Power of Ten. Now think about this, if each member of your group formed another group of ten, now these ten groups can provide $1,000 a month—The Power of Ten. Now a hundred dollars doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but if you don’t have enough to provide for life’s simple necessities, a hundred dollars is a fortune.
And so there is the possibility of exponential giving for a very small investment on your part. Maybe I am being a silly, but I would be interested in your feedback. If enough people agree, I would like to flesh out this idea, form a group of ten and start.
My e-mail: sailorguy@comcast.net
As I watched, I thought this was a wonderful idea, but why limit it to the holiday season? What if people would take a small amount of money and multiply it by ten and present that money to some deserving soul? What if they did this every month of the year?
The idea of The Power of Ten has been playing around in my head. What if you and nine of your friends got together and each of you gave $10. Well, you would have $100—The Power of Ten. If you did this once a month, your group could give away $1,000 in ten months—The Power of Ten. Now think about this, if each member of your group formed another group of ten, now these ten groups can provide $1,000 a month—The Power of Ten. Now a hundred dollars doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but if you don’t have enough to provide for life’s simple necessities, a hundred dollars is a fortune.
And so there is the possibility of exponential giving for a very small investment on your part. Maybe I am being a silly, but I would be interested in your feedback. If enough people agree, I would like to flesh out this idea, form a group of ten and start.
My e-mail: sailorguy@comcast.net
Monday, December 7, 2009
The High Cost of War
The following article is from McClatchy News. It has been said that the late Senator Everett Dirksen once said, "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money."
Well that seems to be the case here. After President Obama spoke at West Point, the media preported that this "surge" would cost $30 billion the first year. I guess by Senator Dirksen's standard, we are talking about real money. On a national scale, $30 billion is not a lot of money, but when you are in a situation where the nation is $12 TRILLION in debt, it is significant. The old Will Rogers adage that, "If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. " applies here. We have spent nearly $90 billion in Afghanistan and Iraq and have practically nothing to show for it--a corrupt government in Afghanistan that has little or not credibility with the Afghan people and a smoldering political /religious mess in Iraq that will more than likely explode once we are gone.
While I don't know what the answers are, I am pretty sure it is time to put the shovel down.
Posted on Sunday, December 6, 2009
By David Lightman McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama insisted last week that as the nation confronts record government debt and pressing economic needs at home, it cannot afford a lengthy, ambitious nation-building effort in Afghanistan — but limiting U. S. involvement is unlikely to make much of a dent in the record federal debt.
Liberals complain that the war has been a big contributor to the nation's budget problems, and are insisting that some way be found to pay for the buildup.
But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, though they've virtually all been funded by deficit spending, are not the main reason why the publicly held national debt has more than doubled — from $3.339 trillion to $7.709 trillion — since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
"It's a small part of the deficit," said Todd Harrison, fellow in defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington research group.
That's not to say the war costs don't matter.
"Over the short term, we are certainly spending a large chunk of money of the wars, money that could be devoted to other priorities or for deficit reduction, at least once the economy improves," noted Josh Gordon, policy director at the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan research group devoted to fiscal discipline.
But over the long term, he stressed, "Our fiscal challenges are substantially larger, and just ending the wars would not change those projections — because they all assume peacetime budgets."
Obama last week said that he'd deploy an additional 30,000 to 35,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. This year's expected $30 billion to $40 billion price tag for that should boost the total cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan past $1 trillion over the last nine years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
That spending accounts for only about one-fifth of publicly held debt accumulated in that time.
National defense spending accounted for 20.7 percent of the federal budget last year. While that's higher than peacetime lows of around 16 percent in the late 1990s, it's less than the 26-28 percent annual shares between 1975, when U.S. involvement in Vietnam ended, and 1992, when first the Cold War and then the 1991 Gulf War ended.
What's driven the bulk of this decade's deficit boom has been spending growth in programs such as Medicare and Social Security. Human resources, which include those and other domestic programs, consumed 63.8 percent of the budget last year, compared to only 49 percent as recently as 1990.
The antidote to high deficits, say independent experts, is making tough choices on domestic spending and taxes.
"The purpose of a budget is to set priorities and make tradeoffs," said Susan Tanaka, director of citizen education and engagement at the Peterson Foundation, a New York-based fiscal watchdog group.
Since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks, CBO estimates that the U.S. has spent $943.8 billion through Sept. 30, 2009, to meet war and war-related needs, and could spend another $1.6 trillion over the next decade — no small sum, indeed.
About $891 billion has been spent on military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Iraq share, 85 percent of 2007 spending, accounted for an estimated 74 percent last year.
Most of the rest has been allocated for diplomatic operations and foreign aid to Iraq, Afghanistan and other allies in the war on terror. About $16 billion has gone to the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund.
Other estimates put the cost higher; a 2008 study by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes dubbed the conflicts the "$3 trillion war."
That figure appears consistent with current spending levels, since it assumes that the U.S. will continue to spend on the war and related activities through 2019, a mission CBO estimates could cost $1.6 trillion.
Also adding to the cost is interest on war-related debt; that's totaled at least $100 billion. Interest on future debt and other indirect costs are difficult to calculate, such as the cost of replacing equipment and providing benefits and health care to military veterans and families.
Direct war costs dropped in 2009, to about $154 billion, after reaching $187 billion in 2008. The administration had sought $130 billion in fiscal 2010; the defense spending legislation is still pending in Congress; that figure is now likely to grow by at least $30 billion.
A small band of congressional liberals insists that too much is being spent on the war, and that it's driving up the national debt.
War spending "has contributed to our economic crisis, exploded the lid off our national debt, and diverted funds from desperately needed domestic priorities," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.
"We believe that if this war is to be fought, it's only fair that everyone share the burden," said House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., who had pushed for a war surtax.
The surtax effort was seen as more a political than a fiscal initiative.
"Look at who's pushing this. It's people opposed to the war," said Roberton Williams, budget analyst at the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., sensing scant support for the surtax, effectively killed the idea on Thursday.
The war cost will help boost a federal deficit that CBO estimates will reach $1.4 trillion this year, roughly the same as last year, and add to a total national debt that now tops $12 trillion when including debt held in government accounts. But Obama's extra $30 billion is only a drop in the $1 trillion, $400 billion deficit bucket.
CBO sees huge deficits ahead. Its latest projections show that even with stricter fiscal policies and a reviving economy, federal deficits are expected to total $7.1 trillion over the next decade, still reaching $722 billion in fiscal 2019 alone.
Those projections assume a continuation of current war policies. Should troop levels decline "significantly" over a three year period, as Obama hopes, the cost would drop to about $1.1 trillion over 10 years, or roughly $140 billion a year, which would still leave large deficits.
Democratic leaders lament that until the economy stabilizes, it could be hard to significantly dent those deficits.
"I am for paying for things that we do," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. But, he said, trying to offset spending "is complicated by the economic crisis."
Well that seems to be the case here. After President Obama spoke at West Point, the media preported that this "surge" would cost $30 billion the first year. I guess by Senator Dirksen's standard, we are talking about real money. On a national scale, $30 billion is not a lot of money, but when you are in a situation where the nation is $12 TRILLION in debt, it is significant. The old Will Rogers adage that, "If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. " applies here. We have spent nearly $90 billion in Afghanistan and Iraq and have practically nothing to show for it--a corrupt government in Afghanistan that has little or not credibility with the Afghan people and a smoldering political /religious mess in Iraq that will more than likely explode once we are gone.
While I don't know what the answers are, I am pretty sure it is time to put the shovel down.
Posted on Sunday, December 6, 2009
By David Lightman McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama insisted last week that as the nation confronts record government debt and pressing economic needs at home, it cannot afford a lengthy, ambitious nation-building effort in Afghanistan — but limiting U. S. involvement is unlikely to make much of a dent in the record federal debt.
Liberals complain that the war has been a big contributor to the nation's budget problems, and are insisting that some way be found to pay for the buildup.
But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, though they've virtually all been funded by deficit spending, are not the main reason why the publicly held national debt has more than doubled — from $3.339 trillion to $7.709 trillion — since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
"It's a small part of the deficit," said Todd Harrison, fellow in defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington research group.
That's not to say the war costs don't matter.
"Over the short term, we are certainly spending a large chunk of money of the wars, money that could be devoted to other priorities or for deficit reduction, at least once the economy improves," noted Josh Gordon, policy director at the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan research group devoted to fiscal discipline.
But over the long term, he stressed, "Our fiscal challenges are substantially larger, and just ending the wars would not change those projections — because they all assume peacetime budgets."
Obama last week said that he'd deploy an additional 30,000 to 35,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. This year's expected $30 billion to $40 billion price tag for that should boost the total cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan past $1 trillion over the last nine years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
That spending accounts for only about one-fifth of publicly held debt accumulated in that time.
National defense spending accounted for 20.7 percent of the federal budget last year. While that's higher than peacetime lows of around 16 percent in the late 1990s, it's less than the 26-28 percent annual shares between 1975, when U.S. involvement in Vietnam ended, and 1992, when first the Cold War and then the 1991 Gulf War ended.
What's driven the bulk of this decade's deficit boom has been spending growth in programs such as Medicare and Social Security. Human resources, which include those and other domestic programs, consumed 63.8 percent of the budget last year, compared to only 49 percent as recently as 1990.
The antidote to high deficits, say independent experts, is making tough choices on domestic spending and taxes.
"The purpose of a budget is to set priorities and make tradeoffs," said Susan Tanaka, director of citizen education and engagement at the Peterson Foundation, a New York-based fiscal watchdog group.
Since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks, CBO estimates that the U.S. has spent $943.8 billion through Sept. 30, 2009, to meet war and war-related needs, and could spend another $1.6 trillion over the next decade — no small sum, indeed.
About $891 billion has been spent on military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Iraq share, 85 percent of 2007 spending, accounted for an estimated 74 percent last year.
Most of the rest has been allocated for diplomatic operations and foreign aid to Iraq, Afghanistan and other allies in the war on terror. About $16 billion has gone to the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund.
Other estimates put the cost higher; a 2008 study by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes dubbed the conflicts the "$3 trillion war."
That figure appears consistent with current spending levels, since it assumes that the U.S. will continue to spend on the war and related activities through 2019, a mission CBO estimates could cost $1.6 trillion.
Also adding to the cost is interest on war-related debt; that's totaled at least $100 billion. Interest on future debt and other indirect costs are difficult to calculate, such as the cost of replacing equipment and providing benefits and health care to military veterans and families.
Direct war costs dropped in 2009, to about $154 billion, after reaching $187 billion in 2008. The administration had sought $130 billion in fiscal 2010; the defense spending legislation is still pending in Congress; that figure is now likely to grow by at least $30 billion.
A small band of congressional liberals insists that too much is being spent on the war, and that it's driving up the national debt.
War spending "has contributed to our economic crisis, exploded the lid off our national debt, and diverted funds from desperately needed domestic priorities," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.
"We believe that if this war is to be fought, it's only fair that everyone share the burden," said House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., who had pushed for a war surtax.
The surtax effort was seen as more a political than a fiscal initiative.
"Look at who's pushing this. It's people opposed to the war," said Roberton Williams, budget analyst at the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., sensing scant support for the surtax, effectively killed the idea on Thursday.
The war cost will help boost a federal deficit that CBO estimates will reach $1.4 trillion this year, roughly the same as last year, and add to a total national debt that now tops $12 trillion when including debt held in government accounts. But Obama's extra $30 billion is only a drop in the $1 trillion, $400 billion deficit bucket.
CBO sees huge deficits ahead. Its latest projections show that even with stricter fiscal policies and a reviving economy, federal deficits are expected to total $7.1 trillion over the next decade, still reaching $722 billion in fiscal 2019 alone.
Those projections assume a continuation of current war policies. Should troop levels decline "significantly" over a three year period, as Obama hopes, the cost would drop to about $1.1 trillion over 10 years, or roughly $140 billion a year, which would still leave large deficits.
Democratic leaders lament that until the economy stabilizes, it could be hard to significantly dent those deficits.
"I am for paying for things that we do," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. But, he said, trying to offset spending "is complicated by the economic crisis."
Sunday, December 6, 2009
How President Obama Reached His Decision
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/world/asia/06reconstruct.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
This is a long read but very well worth it. I was skeptical about the President's decision but I am beginning to come around to seeing that he does not intend this to be another Vietnam. I still have some doubts since we have been there eight years and have not been able to bring this war to a successful close. Our Nation has many serious financial burdens and these wars are adding to that burden. At $30 billion dollars a year, this money could solve many of our problems and make funding health care much easier. Although I say this, it seems odd that money spent on wars does not always translate to money available for other things when the wars end. At some point,the American public is going to rebel. It may happen at next year's mid-term election or it may come at the next presidential election. Only time will tell if this new war effort was the right choice...
This is a long read but very well worth it. I was skeptical about the President's decision but I am beginning to come around to seeing that he does not intend this to be another Vietnam. I still have some doubts since we have been there eight years and have not been able to bring this war to a successful close. Our Nation has many serious financial burdens and these wars are adding to that burden. At $30 billion dollars a year, this money could solve many of our problems and make funding health care much easier. Although I say this, it seems odd that money spent on wars does not always translate to money available for other things when the wars end. At some point,the American public is going to rebel. It may happen at next year's mid-term election or it may come at the next presidential election. Only time will tell if this new war effort was the right choice...
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