Monday, July 11, 2016

FAKE OFFICERS AND FUBAR IN THE PENTAGON

Fake Officers & FUBAR in the Pentagon


 There is a malignant growth in the Pentagon of several generations and many administrations that has effectively neutralized the combat power of at least the Army.  And weakened the links between it and the other services, to the point that after its most successful land operation in its history, failed to defeat a fractious but rabid irregular foe, and failed to stand up effective governance in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Something it had done successfully in Japan and Germany.  And the entire misadventure has been managed by fake officers not confirmed by the Senate as Officers of the United States.

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The Transformed by the Fake
(The President) shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The fact that these fake officers have not been confirmed by the Senate breaks the Constitutional limits and controls over the military, judiciary, and executive personnel in critical positions considered expressions of the sovereignty of these United States.  All such “Officers of the United States” include ambassadors, consuls, cabinet members, federal judges, and all military officers down to Butter Bar.  As such, each Officers’ word is law, enforceable in court as such. 

Survival Imperatives Differ - Officers vs Civil Servants

The survival imperatives of Civil Servants vs military officers differ dramatically between the Job Description vs the Efficiency Report (OER) on file.  The Personnel File, once called the 201 File, contains the list of assignments and schools together with associated OER.  One slip, and late in one’s career it can end under the Up or Out policy.   This hits usually in the Second Decade of service with odds as low as fifty percent for survival, depending upon the current SWAG.  Been there, done that. 
The Officer’s career assignments are determined on a competitive and centrally controlled process.  The end result is the selection of officers in senior grades, usually O-6 (Colonel and Navy Captain) who has the expected preparation and performance.
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The Civil Service Job Description and table of organization gives authority and territory upon which continued employment is grounded. This is dependent upon connections, favors, and a strangle hold over processes.  The assignments of Civil Servants are principally under the control of the Servant, with the selection and promotion process subject to compromise and manufacture. It is rigged, and with few external set of standards applied to selections for promotion or assignment.  Been there, done that.  

This lack of objective standards of performance or experience, taken collectively and protectively, mandates that military expertise by the military becomes a clear and present danger to civil service survival.  Complementing this banality is that the officers caught up in Civil Service traps must play the part of a puppet on a string.  This is how we lost the Middle East. 

WE KNEW THE CULTURE BEFORE
The current flap over ISIS, and of the diminished capacity of Iraq and Afghanistan to dealing with irregular and peer enemy forces, despite over fifteen years of US military effort and trillions of dollars, were preventable had the effort been fought by Officers of the United States, without the fatal influence of Fake Officers of the SES and their crony contractors.

The post mortems posted about the prewar estimates and post war operations has been laid at the door of cultural arrogance and incompetence at the level where the difference between Shia and Sunni was dismissed, in favor of a turnkey Kansas under the baleful gaze of Neo-Conservatives.  The blame has been shifted in-house to denounce stability (nation building) as a righteous military mission.

The problem with that assessment is that it ignores that the US Army had trained for decades in Rear Area Combat Operations (RACO), Civil Affairs and Military Government, and Psychological Operations all of which I had extensive exposure to during that training effort which filled the time between Vietnam and 9-11.   Likewise, the capacity to operate at Field Army level with multiple corps and divisions was destroyed. 

In order for an officer to get his or her Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) prior to 9-11 approved in CA and PSYOPS, one had to submit a PSYOP or Civil Affairs Estimate of the Situation that necessarily covered such niceties as Shia and Sunni.  Or Pashtunwali.  Where did these estimates go?
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Draft of What Was Known in CA and PSYOP


Why were the capacities to fix and administer devastated and/or conquered territories for which preparations long precede D-day, H-Hour deleted?  Instead of Civil Affairs brigades and PSYOP groups prepping the battlefield, only a handful of Army Reserve Officers were given a back seat at the briefing. 

TENURED (SES) AND THE TEMPORARY (Officers)

Rumsfeld has long left the Pentagon, but the programs that he advanced had been long in the plotting, going back to, at least, Desert Storm.  It occurred to a number of my fellow veterans that the “Regular Army” was at fault proceeding with policies that guaranteed their promotions in a competitive fashion, over the necessities of actually winning in war.  Military officers’ tenure in the Pentagon, however, rarely exceed four years, and usually run three.  It is not possible for a decades long military doctrine run from inside the Pentagon be done with the connivance of commissioned officers of the United States.  They then are the hand puppets of those permanent employees (Civil Service) welded to their desks.

COMBAT SERVICE SUPORT
The glue that held Field Army and Corps operations together was the force structure in the US Army Reserve, and to a large extent the Army National Guard with counterparts in the Air Force and other services.  The glue came about due to the unglamorous role that glue, as in logistics and service support did not facilitate competitive promotions in the Active Components.  The result was the massive transfer of unglamorous activities (service support and combat service support) to the Reserve Components. 

Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait brought a sudden and traumatic shock to the Pentagon that the US Army, nor other services, could go to war without the Reserve Components. 
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ARFORGEN


Once Baghdad had been secured, however, the glue was dissolved as was the corps along with the core of logistics, combat service support, which was banished from the Army dictionary as defunct and obsolete.  Since then, large scale maneuvers became problematic at best with maneuver replaced by rotation under ARFORGEN (Army Force Generation) designed to provide equitable opportunity to participate in combat for promotion and career development purposes. 
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Likewise, while all units in the Armed Forces had been aligned to war time plans, the new “transformation” mandate under Rumsfeld, replaced any coherent defense strategy with blizzards of “snowflakes” from his imperial orifice.   Rumsfeld had taken the measure to transfer senior military officers to the field where they could be more useful, and replaced them with senior civil servants aka Senior Executive Service aka SES.  Then abolished the field commands these military officers might have been assigned to.  
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Under Transformation, the Corps was abolished and along with it the well-oiled close air support system was broken from the days when a request for an airstrike was monitored by the Air Force and silence was approval.  Too many Medals for Valor including the Medal of Honor have been awarded due to a failure of approval of immediate airstrikes due to the abolition of the Corps.
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PREPLANNED  AND IMMEDIATE AIR SUPPORT

Such was the case of the “transformation” process that proceeded to create a collection of “units of action” (instead of companies, battalions, regiments and brigades) that would be perfectly suited for future combat, the shape of which was to be determined by magic crystal ball.  Said crystal ball being ensconced in the Office of Net Assessments, which was designed to destroy the Services’ pet projects.  And “verified” by war gaming but not validated by the Schools or the Field.
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Any policy that has a life of over three years is not likely from a military staff in the Pentagon. In previous years, the Army was divided into “branches” (Armor, Artillery, Military Intelligence, etc) which branches governed doctrine and training and was active in procurement.  Branches have been abolished, and the dominance of doctrine and equipment has been sucked up into the Pentagon, and away from the Service Schools that melded field experience with national requirements.  The operative model for Transformation was to turn the Army into modular units like ships in the Navy. 
Rummy was Navy. 
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TASK ORGANIZATION TOO COMPLICATED FOR REMFS


The Senior Executive Service (SES) which operates as if it were consisting of Generals and Colonels, are not “officers of the United States”, and their directives should not be considered “orders” in the military sense as they do not convey the sovereignty of these United States.  The oath of enlistment or office for service members requires obedience to the “officers” appointed over them, which Civil Servants are not.
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TRANSFORMED INTO TABLES FROM ON HIGH


While a purge of those fake officers is not practical, the severance of the malignancy from the chain of command is easily obtained by the Senate saying that it will not consider any efficiency of fitness report by other than an Officer of the United States” in the process of confirming the promotions of military officers.  This will instantly produce a REMF stampede from the Pentagon of officers seeking real units to serve in.  These can be readily funded by the shredding of the payrolls of the SES. 
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If need be, those whose services are essential can be presented to the Senate for approval and concurrence.  In that manner, the Senate regains control over a Pentagon run wild. In addition, lateral entry of personnel and units as has been the wartime custom since before George Washington, can be set up.  

A UNIFORMED GENERAL STAFF CORPS!

And, finally, the Army needs a General Staff Corps trained to run things from the top, to provide the linkage between brass and field.  After WW 1, the concept of a General Staff was denounced as too Germanic.
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In addition, and foremost, the present efforts of the Army to reconstitute itself must be supported in defiance of those whose payroll depends upon its demise. Corps and divisions are being reassembled along with the necessary combat service support (logistics).  

Gordon S Fowkes, LTC USA RET, KCTJ




Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Pork, Fake Pork, Hogwash and the Politically Powerful


Parole Officer on Earth in Elysium

The purpose of life is to live, for the individual and the family.  That depends upon Feeding and Breeding, neither of which is much good without bringing home the bacon as in Pork. 
Pork is some concrete benefit to the voter’s district, job, family, and community.  Pork is honest, something useful in the cultural survivability strategy from Food & Family by Roles to Nurture and Protect, in accordance with Rules regarding Social Status and Tools to make it happen, leading back to dinner and a date, feeding and breeding, or not.  There is a direct link between survival and the pork.  Pork is honest.  The question is, always, whose pork is this? And where’s the Pork?
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Absent real pork, the resources of the policy, tribe, or chamber of commerce eventually cannot sustain the numbers and die off, or dissipate.  It takes, a critical mass, not the uniform efforts of the polity to sustain the numbers.  The Simba and the Stallion have exclusive fornication rights in their pride or herd. The lone stallion of legend is an outsider.  Humans provide an alternate method of gaining political dominance, food, and sex.

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The Roles, Rules and Tools:
The biologically driven roles of survival goes to the XX/XY exchange of precious bodily fluids giving rise to the Children who must be Nurtured and Protected.  Psychologically this works out to three favorite roles played by people both sick and healthy, that of Rescuing and Protecting the Victim.  People get off playing one or more of these roles, regardless of if Pork is involved.  All is necessary to activate the trilogy is the appearance or creation of the Villain (real, fake, hogwash) in order to activate the fears and ambitions of the Victim, Rescuer, and/or Protector.

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Precious body fluids…Dr Stranglove.

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From Dr Strangelove

Villains, in fact, are someone else’s trilogy of nurture and protect their young.  Except we invoke nasty motives to activate the survival instincts of the innocent. 
And Jodie Foster in Elysium as Secretary of Defense, “Do you have children?”

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From the movie "Elysium" with Matt Damon and Jodie Foster

Pork Technical definitions:

2.       Hogwash favors someone else’s Pork.  Anti-fracking, drilling and oil exploration favors Russian E&P. 

3.       Fake Pork denies Pork for others, without a pork payback.  Anti-immigration policies deny pork to immigrants without pork for the locals.  It is a zero-sum game in which someone gains if someone else loses.  Like at the dinner table. 

4.       Make believe pork is Fake Pork without a real winner or loser.  No food, no dinner table.  The present convulsions of the Islamacate* world of Islamdom in violent extremism is fake pork, as is most of the Western response.  Oil is Pork.

DNA, CULTURE and SURVIVAL

* All of these are normal reactions in the quest to nurture and protect the family and community.  In the Animal Kingdom, the selection and control of what female gets the Y (XY) chromosome from the male to enhance the survivability of the female’s progeny.  The males’ priority protective strategy of his Y goes to denial of any other’s Y into his harem.  

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In-breeding and Adultery
Adultery is nature’s way to prevent in-breeding with both male and female seeking to enrich the blood line.  Fake Pork is the other males and female need to prevent such cross breeding which may alter the balance of power in the tribe.  Fake Pork and Hogwash have important roles in the Psychological Role, Sociological Rules, and Technological Tools to make up the survival culture of the polity, tribe, family or battalion.  Thus the biological basis for troubling times, stresses, and bloody war is a necessary part of preventing in-breeding. And for breeding healthy offspring. 

Stamp Collecting in Drama
At present, the public mind is consumed with the introduction of a New Villain to replace the Red Menace, and that is “Islamic Extremism”.  The Red menace was set on stealing the Pork and running the polity, while Islamic Extremism is merely to create the illusion that the Pork will walk away.  The biggest fool in this tragedy is the Islamic extremist or terrorist is that there is no pork in the equation for the Umma. Only fake pork and hogwash.

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Consider the role of the protection of XX/XY swap of precious bodily fluids in Islamdom in the veil and robes found in many Islamicate* societies is a collective women’s fake pork effort to keep out the competition.  Or maybe an elaborate hogwash.

*ISLAMICATE AND ISLAMDOM
*Islamacate is the term used by Daniel Pipes to distinguish between a society that in part runs on Islamic rules and regulations, and in part with other influences to mollify and adapt where Islam lacks the necessary flexibility and profit.
The Qur'an and the Hadith Reports nowhere prescribe mosque decorations or attitudes toward rulers, yet these did typically resemble each other across Islamdom. Lacking a term for what is characteristic of the Muslim experience but not required by the Islamic faith or law, Marshall G. S. Hodgson coined the term "Islamicate."
At the time of this writing there is a mass movement underway to keep the US free of the Sharia XY chromosome as if by insidious inclusion, the republic would convert to Islam, instead of the default Protestant mindset.  This Protestant mindset, so closely tied to the greatness of America, has always felt threatened by foreign religious XY or XX chromosomes such as Catholicism. It wasn’t until a Soviet sniper sainted JFK with a bullet that the furor over Papist influence in America dissipated.
That’s how serious it gets,

Hogwash, Washing Someone Else’s Pork
By way of contrast, Hogwash is washing someone else’s pork which leverages the roles of rescuer, victim, protector vs villainy, even when there is no pork benefit from the Hogwash.   Sometimes hogwash is often bullshit. 
 
Communist Activists in Action
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By way of example in the current political imbroglio starting with the Democrats (liberals, progressives) with their demands for student loan deferments, schooling and medical care for the less fortunate constitute pork for the less fortunate, but hogwash for the affluent advocates seeking to play rescuer and protector to the stupid and unwashed. 

The latter Democratic Hogwash campaigns against fracking, offshore drilling, nuclear power and the Polar Ice Melt are camouflage for someone else’s pork, which is to say the Russian Energy and Defense Industries.  Long standing linkages back to the days of the Comintern of the Thirties theoretically in line with Communist World Conquest, but now are acting in the corporate interests of Gasprom, Lukoil and  Uralvagonzavod. 

The flap over depleted uranium rounds in Leftish Academia after Russian built tanks were shredded by uranium depleted rounds from relatively small cannon. 

Inverse Attribution.
What simplifies the confusion is the application of the Law of the Inverse Attribution Reflex (LIAR). Inverse Attribution (Bragging & Blaming).
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Accusations by the Left of Corporate Greed, Wall Street Avarice and Capitalist Excess fall under the category of inverse attribution (blaming with one’s strongest vice) as greed, avarice and excess are inherent in the offensive nature of the defense of pork.   Likewise, the Right’s accusation of the Liberal’s Class Warfare, is an example of the Right’s War against the “welfare cheat” and losers, and in favor of the protection of wealthy welfare (tax breaks, contracts, etc).

GREAT AMERICA
Before there was a Buchanan, or a Trump, there were the isolationists and the elite culminating in WW 2 and the Cold War.  Well illustrated in the movie, the Good Shepherd

As Matt Damon put in in The Good Shepherd “The rest of you just visiting” in response to Joe Pesci’s comment concerning what Jews, Blacks, Catholics, and Italians had in their cultures, asking what did “youse guys have”

“The United States of America.  The rest of you are just visiting”
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Matt Damon in the Good Shepherd


 Not long after “Mother” left the agency, the collective repression and control of the normal irrepressible American spirit, failed and the demons of chaos, revolution, and psychedelic tie died non conformity were let slip resulting in the first major defeat of US forces in war.  That was the Pork of the Sixties and Seventies, hogwash and fake pork. 

Great music, terrible clothes, and the counter counter-revolutionary restriction of the law enforcement capabilities of the nation were trimmed to protect future treasonous endeavors of the pro-Soviet kind.   Communism has now morphed into Russian imperial capitalism and the Celestial Empire of China have been restored to what was before the age of Steam powered ships. 

Inversely Constitutional
The Conservative side  of the political scramble this current election cycle is heavy into hogwash with links to pork not so clear.  Save to sanctify in protect the top one percent. Certain themes made by alleged Conservative punditry, if taken seriously, would call for the violent overthrow of the Constitution to be replaced by a designated dictator subject of back room manipulation.   These are some of the popular arguments:

1.       Courts are supposed to interpret the law, not make it. Since the Anglo-American legal and political systems are based on precedent, case law, and the Common Law which cases go back before the Magna Carta.  The term is “stare decisis”, let the decision stand, all cases with same facts and law should be treated the same. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law  

2.       Judicial Review is not in the Constitution despite Case Law going back to Marbury vs Madison in 1803.  Statutory law generally over rides case law except when the case law involves a Constitutional precedent such as due process of law, or when the law is arbitrary and capricious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison

3.       The Founders were Demi-Gods whose godly pronouncements have been blasphemed by all Amendments after the 12th (The loser in Presidential Elections would not be VP). In fact, the Founders were brilliant and practical men who had just defeated one of the largest empires in the world, and knew the tragic history of abuses and misuses of political power as evidenced during the course of English history, particularly from the Tudors to the Stuarts with the English Civil Wars in between.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War

4.       Congress is irremediably corrupt, and should be purged of the politically correct. The essence of a republican form of government (guaranteed in the Constitution) is a legislature.  Anglo-American political systems are built around protecting the legislative function, Federal and State. This goes back to Queen Elizabeth’s barring the bishops during consideration of the Book of Common Prayer, and Cromwell’s purge of Parliament in 1648.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride%27s_Purge

5.       The poor, displaced and unfortunate are a clear and present danger to the successful “doers”.  Denial of basic services is in the best interests of keeping the poor in their places. As in the past, some frustrated lawyer will rise up and arouse the “masses” as they ineptly describe those down on their luck.  

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Marianne, symbol of French Liberty



What is difficult in the case of Conservative Right Wing propaganda is the nature of the Pork of interest to the Right.   In part, the war over Pork is treated as a zero sum game, someone else’s loss is automatically your gain.  It is difficult, however, to see how a collapse of civil and criminal law benefits the Conservative base.  In short, the four points of how to do a coup should not be taken seriously, as such a coup would destroy the one percent even if the downtrodden stayed in their place.

Geography
The Geography Japan, Britain, and the US have idyllic geographical circumstances, the rest of the world usually have borders that can be crossed in force.  Present technology does not provide anyone else the avenues of approach to the US and its key terrain to present a credible invasion threat.

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 Regardless of any terrain or population objective, the defense of the US is defined in law as the defense of the Constitution which can be revised only by three quarters of the State legislatures concurring.  This the geographic control of all but thirteen states (one quarter), frustrates any attempt domestic or foreign to overthrow the United States.

Not long ago, we thought that Global Thermonuclear Warfare was an existential threat to the US.  As such the radioactive remains of our enemies would still have to negotiate the formidable geography of the US.     A rule of thumb based on the last full mobilization of the US in WW2 is that ten percent of the total population wing up in uniform and another forty percent are in defense production.  Right now that would 32,000,000 in uniform using the same factors.  And doable in four years.

The important pork is here, with additional pork necessary to sustain our pork by way of trade. Hence the defense of the nation involves pork export and import capabilities by sea and air, plus whatever land forces are necessary overseas to hold and defend the necessary facilities and locations.  

The Gini Index - Who’s Got the Pork?

The Gini Index measures income inequalities with a simple set of numbers and graphs.  It comes as no big surprise that income inequalities have skyrocketed in the last few decades.  Of revolutionary importance, is the poor people don’t revolt, it is the recently disposed that do.  This was the case of the French after Louis XVI impoverished the nation by supporting the US revolution, plus the failure of the wheat crops.  And in Russia during WW 1, the Russians had been improving their economy after the fashion of Western Europe and the US, but it failed due to incompetent leadership, resulted in more incompetence under the Bolsheviks who denounced free markets and human ingenuity. 

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Where’s the Pork?
People, Pork and Geography

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