Posted on 05/20/2015 12:38:23 PM PDT by Kaslin
Determining actionable intelligence, assessing threats (current and emerging), implementing lines of operation to counter threats and forestalling damaging surprise (a process that includes accounting for enemy deception operations) are persistent national security challenges every presidential administration, from George Washington's to Barack Obama's, has confronted.
Some administrations have confronted them more effectively than others. Effectively addressing these challenges demands many things from a commander in chief, but steady leadership is foremost.
Steady leadership eludes checklist definition, but its key traits are sound judgment, morale-sustaining presence in crisis and the ability to focus on essential goals. Abraham Lincoln is a case study in steady.
You can bet your life the next president will confront these challenges, as well. In fact, you do bet your life. Sept. 11's damaging surprise demonstrated America has violent enemies. Because intelligence gathering and analysis are imprecise arts, assessing a threat and organizing resources to counter it are imperfect endeavors.
Betting your life is a good reason to demand more from media than "knowing what we know now" gotcha questions regarding past national security decisions.
The worst gotchas are framed to elicit a simplistic answer that reinforces or advances a political narrative. To do this, the talking head must either drastically simplify the past (a relatively benign act) or erase the inconvenient past (a deceitful act).
False premises shape the gotchas I'm deploring. Decision-makers in the past cannot know what we know now. These gotchas usually imply that an alternative decision would have produced a more benign alternative history. They may also presume a shared "enlightened crowd" viewpoint of current knowledge -- which may indicate political or social bias.
The most recent spate of these candidate gotchas involves alternative histories for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
To illustrate, let's ask a current candidate, "Knowing what we know now about the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Iranian regime, its nuclear weapon quest and its support for terrorism, would you have fought like heck to keep the Shah of Iran in power in 1979 instead of doing what Jimmy Carter did and hustling him off to the Bahamas?"
If the candidate said "no," would that mean he or she supports Iran's dictatorship? And a "yes" answer would not change the Iranian conundrum we confront in 2015.
My "what if" question connects to Iraq 2003 what-ifs. Saddam Hussein used the shah's fall as an opportunity to invade Iran and seize the oil province of Khuzistan. His 1980 invasion failed. The Iran-Iraq War's eight years of trench warfare bled both nations physically and economically. In 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait, to loot it, spike oil prices and perhaps topple the Saudis. Invading Kuwait brought him into direct conflict with the civilized world. Operation Desert Storm drove Saddam from Kuwait. "Mr. or Mrs. Candidate, knowing what we know now, should George H.W. Bush have toppled Saddam in 1991?"
One inconvenient past frequently erased from the Iraq 2003 gotcha is the broad, bipartisan consensus that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. He used poison gas on the Kurds. In 1998, the Clinton administration concluded it had actionable intelligence and bombed Iraqi WMD sites. Sept. 11 changed how America assessed threats emanating from the Muslim world. The deceptive questioner says or implies George W. Bush lied about Saddam's WMD. No, our intel was wrong.
After the August 1998 terror attacks on U.S. East African embassies, President Bill Clinton ordered an attack on Sudan's Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant. Clinton's secretary of defense at the time, Bill Cohen, later testified that U.S. intel had had evidence of the nerve agent VX. The intel was wrong, but Cohen defended Clinton's decision. Consider the immediate context. Sudan was a terrorist haven; Osama bin Laden had lived there. The embassy bombings, Sudan's terror reputation and the likely presence of a nerve agent became sufficient reasons to act militarily. Cohen said he would have made the same decision, given what he knew at the time.
What questions would benefit U.S. citizens? "What, for you, Sen. Rubio, constitutes actionable intelligence? What about for you, Sen. Cruz?" "What emerging threats worry you, Mrs. Clinton, and what operations would you consider to counter them?" "Sen. Paul, what intelligence surveillance operations would you support in order to forestall another 9/11?"
Those are good starters.
Why is it that all the gotchas focus on Republicans?
Why aren’t there any questions about Benghazi? (to name just one recent example out of many that have been ignored by the media)
Since it’s a “challenge” for Odungo to even pay attention to his SECURITY BRIEFINGS it all falls into place.........leading from behind
Could the government misuse this? Well Yes, just like the government could misuse any law, and by any law I mean
I will NEVER support the collection of total data of American citizens. There is no way that does not eventually lead to tyranny. And the IRS use of their position for political power is just a recent example.
If they have total data, then someone will eventually mine individual accounts when it is politically expedient to do so. There is evidence the NSA has already done that to assist an investigation.
Rand Paul is right on this one. We fight to preserve the 4th amendment. However, we must be willing to engage in preemption and reprisal for enemies who think to take advantage of our freedom.
Your Phone Bill?
About a hundred bucks
About a hundred bucks
What Is Metadata...how is it used....Why I say there is enough BS about this program from certain people (with their own agenda) to fertilizer half of Iowa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdQiz0Vavmc
Power corrupts.
The NSA is building a facility in Colorado that will have the memory capacity to store NOW 100 years of every bit of data currently produced in our entire world. I'm talking content of communications and not just numbers. Every email, text, phone conversation, etc.
The estimated power of those computing resources in Utah is so massive it requires use of a little-known unit of storage space: the zettabyte. Cisco quantifies a zettabyte as the amount of data that would fill 250 billion DVDs.The NSA's Utah Data Center will be able to handle and process five zettabytes of data, according to William Binney, a former NSA technical director turned whistleblower. Binney's calculation is an estimate. An NSA spokeswoman says the actual data capacity of the center is classified.
"They would have plenty of space with five zettabytes to store at least something on the order of 100 years worth of the worldwide communications, phones and emails and stuff like that," Binney asserts, "and then have plenty of space left over to do any kind of parallel processing to try to break codes." http://www.npr.org/2013/06/10/190160772/amid-data-controversy-nsa-builds-its-biggest-data-farm
Why do they need that capacity if they aren't planning on using it?
A Much longer vid with Mike Hayden Because if you don’t really understand what the program/s are how can you criticize it?
Inside the NSA: An Evening with General Michael Hayden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ESGBPmf0mc
Oct 28, 2014
After the attacks, at the request of the White House, Hayden intensified and expanded NSA wiretapping operations of various communications between Americans and terrorist suspects abroad in hopes of detecting and preventing another terrorist attack. These initial efforts were executed without a court order and after being revealed by The New York Times, were subsequently placed under judicial review. Over time, the NSA’s efforts grew into the multidimensional programs exposed by Edward Snowden, including the collection and storage of phone and email metadata covering billions of calls and messages between American citizens.
In conversation with Amy Zegart, General Hayden provides an insider’s account about the origins and development of the NSA programs. He discusses the directives and mechanisms to control them, and the disagreements within the Bush administration about the extent of the wiretapping. He offers his views on the justification, legal status, scale, and effectiveness of the NSA monitoring.
I don’t believe them. The IRS isn’t supposed to use their records for political purposes. They did. They’re not supposed to target political opponents of an administration. They did.
Power corrupts.
A couple of points
1. The NAS & The IRS are 2 different agencies. They have two different jobs, recruit from 2 different pools, have different agency cultures. Once you get past the fact they are both part of the executive branch of the federal government very little in common.
2. Yes power corrupts. Now here’s the thing, EVERY law/regulation..etc can be misused...abused, everything from local zoning laws to the NAS metadata program. So what we are doing is having a national debate about where that line is. So there are 2 small simple questions (Pat. Pend. :-)) we have to ask, What Do You Want? And Then What Happens? In order to have a rational reasonable discussion we have to know just what the the NSA is doing...ie collecting your/my Phone Bill.
Now it is understandable the concerns being expressed over this. (NEWS FLASH) The federal government is to big, to intrusive! So it is always a good idea to keep an eye on the SOB’s, but (for me and others) your Phone Bill being collected and stored is not a major worry.
As for NSA’s Utah Data Center, all that information is already being gathered are held already....your bank..ISP...credit card company...your employer...etc...etc. Can this be abused? Well Hello! Anything can be misused.
Welcome to the XXIst century.
If we have another mass casualty attack and it is found out terrorist were communicating over Telephone/E-Mails many of the same people who are screaming about this today, will be screaming for heads to roll at NSA.
Obozo isn't stupid... HE"S ONE of THEM!... and America elected him TWICE.
Gee, wonder what that means? /s
1. "Phone bill collected". There is evidence that more than just the phone bill is collected. And there is evidence that everything can be collected.
2. "Anything can be abused". Not everything involves a God-given expectation of privacy except between you and your God. It is such a self-evident expectation that the Founders gave it its own amendment.
The candidate should just say: “Ha, a gotcha question! If I say ‘no’, then....; if I say ‘Yes’, then....”
GOP should point out what the lib media does - quick & to the point..right there on the spot. Don’t wait til tomorrow
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