Eideard

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground…

I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.

From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.

Much of what I saw during my deployment, let alone read or wrote in official reports, I can’t talk about; the information remains classified. But I can say that such reports — mine and others’ — serve to illuminate the gulf between conditions on the ground and official statements of progress…

In all of the places I visited, the tactical situation was bad to abysmal. If the events I have described — and many, many more I could mention — had been in the first year of war, or even the third or fourth, one might be willing to believe that Afghanistan was just a hard fight, and we should stick it out. Yet these incidents all happened in the 10th year of war.

As the numbers depicting casualties and enemy violence indicate the absence of progress, so too did my observations of the tactical situation all over Afghanistan…

How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding and behind an array of more than seven years of optimistic statements by U.S. senior leaders in Afghanistan? No one expects our leaders to always have a successful plan. But we do expect — and the men who do the living, fighting and dying deserve — to have our leaders tell us the truth about what’s going on…

If Americans were able to compare the public statements many of our leaders have made with classified data, this credibility gulf would be immediately observable. Naturally, I am not authorized to divulge classified material to the public. But I am legally able to share it with members of Congress. I have accordingly provided a much fuller accounting in a classified report to several members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, senators and House members…

RTFA. Follow Colonel Davis’ relation of what he saw and has reported – both in classified detail to Congress and the Pentagon and unclassified open publication. The following is the final statement made by ARMED FORCES JOURNAL which published this report.

When it comes to deciding what matters are worth plunging our nation into war and which are not, our senior leaders owe it to the nation and to the uniformed members to be candid — graphically, if necessary — in telling them what’s at stake and how expensive potential success is likely to be. U.S. citizens and their elected representatives can decide if the risk to blood and treasure is worth it.

Likewise when having to decide whether to continue a war, alter its aims or to close off a campaign that cannot be won at an acceptable price, our senior leaders have an obligation to tell Congress and American people the unvarnished truth and let the people decide what course of action to choose. That is the very essence of civilian control of the military. The American people deserve better than what they’ve gotten from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start. AFJ

The Illinois Supreme Court’s recent decision to permit the televising of trials in the state’s circuit courts brings to mind another question of television in a court: the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court will soon hear oral argument — the fascinating, highly informative back-and-forth between the justices and the lawyers before them — in a monumental case that will determine the constitutionality of the government’s new health care plan.

Everyone is interested. C-SPAN has asked the justices for permission to televise the extraordinary five-and-a-half hours of oral argument (most cases get just one hour) scheduled for March 26 through 28. But the Supreme Court, despite numerous requests and even proposed congressional action extending over several decades, has never permitted television.

The justices fear the presence of cameras would tarnish the court’s dignified proceedings. But bear in mind that the Supreme Court doesn’t try cases, so there’s no danger of uncorking sensational trials like those of O.J. Simpson, Casey Anthony or Michael Jackson’s doctor. That’s not the issue.

Chief Justice John Roberts — offered the usual crap arguments politicians always come up with about undue influence, blah, blah.

In fact, there’s lots of experience to point to, and the precedents are clear: television would not impair the Supreme Court’s dignity or its proceedings.

Two-thirds of the state supreme courts admit cameras to their oral arguments. Two federal appellate courts have allowed them. They’re standard in the Supreme Court of Canada. Most of these courts have welcomed cameras for years without adverse consequences, effectively dispelling the vague worries of the justices in Washington…

In Canada the proceedings of the nation’s Supreme Court have been televised since the mid-1990s. Four fixed cameras, mounted high on the walls of the courtroom in Ottawa, face the bench and the counsel’s podium. When a judge asks a question, she pushes a button that both opens her microphone and focuses a camera on her.

“Our judges are proud of it,” said Andres Garin, executive legal officer of the Supreme Court of Canada. “There’s no downside. It has not been disruptive. There’s no playing to the camera.”

Of course, if the U.S. Supreme Court should allow television, but then finds that its presence is deleterious, the justices could always reverse their own decision. They’ve done it before.

Political cowards are usually political hypocrites. Please, let’s don’t ascribe legitimate motives to the hacks in black robes who oppose transparency. There are members of the court who support the broadcasts. They’re the one who weren’t appointed by Republicans.

…The Obama administration is poised to require drug companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment. Many researchers have found evidence that such payments can influence doctors’ treatment decisions and contribute to higher costs by encouraging the use of more expensive drugs and medical devices…

The Times has found that doctors who take money from drug makers often practice medicine differently from those who do not and that they are more willing to prescribe drugs in risky and unapproved ways, such as prescribing powerful antipsychotic medicines for children.

Under the new standards, if a company has just one product covered by Medicare or Medicaid, it will have to disclose all its payments to doctors other than its own employees. The federal government will post the payment data on a Web site where it will be available to the public.

Manufacturers of prescription drugs and devices will have to report if they pay a doctor to help develop, assess and promote new products…Royalty payments to doctors, for inventions or discoveries, and payments to teaching hospitals for research or other activities will also have to be reported…

Allan J. Coukell, a pharmacist and consumer advocate at the Pew Charitable Trusts, said: “Patients want to know they are getting treatment based on medical evidence, not a lunch or a financial relationship. They want to know if their doctor has a financial relationship with a pharmaceutical company, but they are often uncomfortable asking the doctor directly…”

Although the Congressional Budget Office does not predict immediate savings, it has said that, “over time, disclosure has the potential to reduce spending,” by reducing instances of overprescribing.

The law also requires drug and device companies to report the amount of “any ownership or investment interest” held by doctors or their immediate family members, other than holdings of publicly traded stocks.

The administration intends to apply the same disclosure requirements to doctor-owned companies that distribute medical devices. Such companies allow doctors to benefit financially from sales of devices they use in surgery.

The same political Sluggos who refused to support oversight of investment banks and sleazy sub-prime investments want us to presume that the ethics missing from Wall Street – are completely in place among millionaire doctors. Frankly, if you walk through their country clubs, I think you would have a hard time telling one from the other. Maybe the doctors have cleaner hands because it’s required of their craft.

But, corporate payoffs and kickbacks are not the sort of business practices that have ever inspired confidence in honesty in my lifetime.

Who holds the keys to the Treasury?

The Greek Orthodox Church owns more land than anyone except the state, employs thousands on the public payroll, has a stake in the nation’s biggest bank, but campaigners say its tax payments are derisory.

The Church vehemently denies accusations it is one of Greece’s biggest tax dodgers and says it is playing a vital social, economic and spiritual role in this time of hardship…

The Greek Orthodox Church has long enjoyed a privileged, some would say cozy, status when it comes to taxes in a country where it is responsible for the sole official religion, with one critic calling its complex finances at best opaque.

But the sovereign debt crisis that has rocked the Greek state, thrown hundreds of thousands of people out of work, and forced painful cuts in salaries, pensions and benefits, has raised fresh questions about the Church’s tax position.

More than 100,000 people have joined a Greek Facebook page “Tax The Church,” and 29,000 have so far signed an online petition urging the state to harness “the huge fortune of churches” to reduce Greece’s crushing budget deficit.

“The Church must pay its share of the tax burden,” said former finance minister Yannos Papantoniou. “It is totally unreasonable in this situation that they contribute so little…”

Church finances, lands and other concerns are so labyrinthine they are hard to penetrate, analysts said. The Church’s total tax payment is not made public, and Father Timotheos said churches are responsible for their own taxes…

The state at the moment pays the salaries of about 9,000 black-robed priests, including about 100 metropolitans who run the Church, as well as the pensions of retired clergy…

“It’s the third rail of Greek politics. If you touch it, you die,” the adviser to Papandreou said, comparing the issue to the high voltage electrified rail on some train tracks.

RTFA. Detailed in what history it presents. The Orthodox Church executives have always been smart enough to behave like a modern-day mafia. Keep up sufficient charitable works to maintain public political indebtedness.

Given the corruption of Greece’s political institutions, nepotism, cronyism – which is more public than identical DNA in the Orthodox Church – it hasn’t been especially difficult to appear as a force at least as capable as the government at providing assistance. Although the sum of taxes which never makes it to good works is certainly greater than a single delivery system would ever require.

Differences? Well, Mueller prefers a .40 calibre Glock

Private information about Google users was demanded by governments or police a total of 14,201 times in 26 developed countries in the last six months of last year, according to figures released for the first time by the internet giant…

In an effort to highlight the amount of online censorship that exists, Google disclosed that it had received more requests from the United States than anywhere else – and that it complied with anywhere from three-quarters to more than 90% of the requests depending on which country they were made in…

Google began releasing its half-yearly Transparency Report in April 2010 as a way to highlight state censorship of the internet. “For the first time, we’re disclosing the reasons behind requests for content removal and the percentages of user data requests we comply with, in whole or in part,” a Google spokesman said…

The figures show that Brazil still leads the way in requesting that Google removes content from its services, with 263 orders, ahead of South Korea, Germany, Libya and India…

Google also, for the first time, revealed that it had received no content removal requests from Chinese authorities in the latter part of 2010. Google began redirecting Chinese users to its uncensored Hong Kong site in June 2010 amid allegations of state spying.

No surprises here for me. Considering it’s been 47 years since the first time I had a couple of FBI agents show up where I worked in an attempt to scare me off from continued opposition to the VietNam War.

Over the years you develop a bit of a callus on the bits of your freedom that stick out and are abraded by hypocrites in and out of government who prattle about this land of liberty. The Patriot Act is only something new and threatening to those who’ve never gotten off their rusty dusty and offered public dissent to American bigotry, foreign policy and snoops in general.

Gov. Bill Haslam on Monday defended his first executive act: eliminating the requirements for the governor and top aides to disclose how much they earn in outside income.

Mr. Haslam…told The Commercial Appeal newspaper of Memphis that while he did think the public should know the sources of income and investments for public officials, the amount was not important.

During the governor’s race last year, Mr. Haslam, a Republican, refused to say how much he earned from Pilot, a family-owned national truck stop chain with annual revenues of about $20 billion.

He overturned an executive order signed by his immediate predecessor, Phil Bredesen, a Democrat.

When a core value of your politics is aiding corporate goals at the expense of the electorate an executive order like this makes perfect sense. Ethics has nothing to do with it. Access to knowledge of the hacks running your state isn’t needed for voters who only require ideology telling them how to vote.

Israel has been gripped by a guessing game over the identity of a mysterious prisoner being held in such secrecy that even his guards do not know his name.

The elusive “Mr X” is being held for unspecified crimes and confined in total seclusion within a private wing of the maximum-security Ayalon prison.

No one knew of his existence until the shroud of secrecy was briefly lifted after a story appeared on the website of Israel’s leading Hebrew-language newspaper Yediot Ahronot.

Quoting unidentified officials within the Israeli penitentiary service, it disclosed that Mr X was being held in Unit 15, a wing of Ayalon prison that contains a single cell.

He is not though to receive any visitors and his wing is cut off from the rest of the prison by double iron doors. So hermetic are the conditions in which he is held that other prisoners can neither see nor hear him.

“He is simply a person without a name and without an identity who has been placed in total and utter isolation from the outside world,” a prison official was quoted as saying.

Within hours, the story had vanished from the newspaper’s website, allegedly after Israel’s domestic intelligence service won a gagging order banning all media coverage of the case…

But one Israeli security expert said that the secrecy suggested espionage rather than terrorism is likely to lie at the heart of the mystery.

In 1983, Marcus Klingberg, a leading Israeli scientist, was jailed for 20 years for passing secrets about the country’s biological warfare programme to the Soviets. But it was only after he had been in prison for a decade that Israelis heard for the first time about Klingberg’s existence, arrest and conviction.

Always heartwarming to learn of the standards developed by our loyal allies in the War on Terror. Even as our own government is perfectly capable of adopting every aspect of fascist megalomaniac rule.

Fellow freedom-fighters.

The White House and leading Democrats in Congress are close to proposing legislation that would force private companies and groups to disclose their behind-the-scenes financial involvement in political campaigns and advertising…

The legislation is being developed in response to a major Supreme Court decision in January that found that the government could not ban corporations from spending in political campaigns.

The decision, a break from precedent, drew strong personal protest from President Obama. White House and Congressional leaders have been working for the last three months to find a way to stem what they predict will be a flood of corporate money flowing into November’s midterm elections.

Democrats say they think the debate gives them an attractive political issue. It allows them to position themselves against Wall Street and corporate money in politics while railing against what they view as the Supreme Court’s pro-business stance just as a new vacancy has opened on the court…

As one example of the types of spending they want disclosed, officials pointed to the millions of dollars some of the nation’s biggest insurance companies gave to the Chamber of Commerce to help underwrite advertisements attacking the Obama administration’s health care plan.

The Democrats’ proposal would require corporations or groups like labor unions, advocacy groups and so-called 527 organizations that are involved in political expenditures to identify all their financial donors or set up separate accounts to handle political spending and identify the donors to that account…

To counter the Republican-owned Supreme Court decision on campaign funding, it looks as if there really will be proposals for transparency, revealing who the big money supports.

Anyone hazard a guess on what the vote will be from the Party of NO?

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Intelligence activities across the U.S. government and military cost a total of $75 billion a year, the nation’s top intelligence official has disclosed, revealing publicly for the first time an overall number long shrouded in secrecy.

The disclosure by Dennis Blair, President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence, put a spotlight on the sharp growth in intelligence spending as well as on the huge and long obscured role of military intelligence programs, which, based on previous disclosures, would account for roughly $25 billion to $30 billion of the $75 billion total.

In comparison, when total intelligence spending was accidentally published in a congressional document in 1994, it totaled about $26 billion, including $10 billion for military intelligence programs, according to Steven Aftergood, an expert on intelligence spending with the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy.

Blair cited the $75 billion figure in releasing a four-year strategic blueprint for the sprawling, 200,000-person intelligence community…

The $75 billion figure incorporated spending by the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies, referred to collectively as the national intelligence program (NIP), as well as amounts spent by the Pentagon on so-called military intelligence program (MIP) activities in support of troops in the field in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, officials said.

Aftergood said there was “no good reason” to keep information about those military programs secret.

“Its disclosure does not reveal any sensitive sources, methods or operations,” he said, adding that Blair’s disclosure “suggests that a more rational approach to intelligence secrecy may be around the corner. And it’s about time.”

Pay attention!

I know folks who have been battling the Capitol bureaucrats for this info for a half-century.

Daylife/Getty Images

At 12:01 p.m. on Jan. 20 — the precise moment Barack Obama became president of the United States — a new White House Web site sprang to electronic life with a pledge to “provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government.” The next day, Mr. Obama issued a memorandum on transparency, promising to make it one of “the touchstones of this presidency.”

But on issue after issue — a raucous internal debate over whether to release memorandums detailing harsh interrogation techniques used during the Bush years, for example, or publicizing financial information about high-level administration appointees — Mr. Obama has discovered that fulfilling his pledge is easier said than done.

He has bumped up against technological hurdles, privacy concerns and the entrenched culture of secrecy that has flourished for decades in Washington and culminated under his predecessor, President George W. Bush. Mr. Obama has vowed a break with the past, but he has not broken completely.

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