Paging through Bob Woodward’s Obama’s Wars, I should not have been surprised that the index lacks any entry for "intelligence." The excerpts that dribbled out earlier this week had made unavoidably clear that there was, in fact, no entry for intelligence in the disorderly process last fall that got the Obama administration neck-deep in the Big Muddy — to borrow from Pete Seeger’s song from the Vietnam era.

Before reading through Woodward’s book, the excerpts already published had left doubts in my mind that the Obama White House could be host to such an amateurish decision-process-without-real-process. I had seen a lot of White House fecklessness in my 30 years in intelligence analysis, but it was, frankly, hard to believe that it could be so bad this time.

Could it be true that, after going from knee-deep to waist-deep in the Big Muddy by his early 2009 decision to insert 21,000 additional troops, the President would decide to plunge neck-deep without a comprehensive intelligence review of the impact of the earlier reinforcement and a formal estimate of the likely impact of further escalation?

A group of policy experts who want to end the war in Afghanistan - the Afghanistan Study Group - have unveiled a report calling for the U.S. to scale back its military operations in Afghanistan, and to promote power-sharing and political reconciliation in Afghanistan and diplomacy in the region to end the war.
Go to: Just Foreign Policy

The war on dissent, rather than terrorism, continued full steam with FBI SWAT teams breaking down doors at 7 am Friday (Sept 24) morning and raiding the homes of several anti-war leaders and activists in Minneapolis, Chicago and possibly a couple other Midwest cities. Members of the FBI's "Joint Terrorism Task Force" spent a few hours at each Minneapolis residence, seizing personal photographs and papers, computers and cell phones as well as serving Federal Grand Jury subpoenas on the various activists.

In May, Roger Noriega, former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs (2003-2005), acknowledged he conspired with James Cason, chief of the United States Interest Section in Cuba (2002-2005), to violate a declared U.S. government policy of promoting in Cuba “ a peaceful transition to a democratic system based on respect for rule of law, individual human rights and open economic and communication systems.” Noriega and Cason sought to promote chaos in the island.

Noriega did not refer to the chaos plan as coming from a secret decision of President Bush. Rather, Noriega and his cabal undertook their own initiative to foster instability. The effort led to the imprisonment of 75 Cuban citizens who followed the chaos-promotion instructions.

On May 20th, Noriega boasted on WQBA (Miami Univision station) about plotting with Cason to force the Cuban government to break its limited diplomatic relations with the United States. (Cason is running for mayor of Coral Gables, Florida).

It is hypocritical for the Dispatch, a consistent champion of open records and sunshine laws, to advocate for Issue 12, the ballot issue allowing closed City Council meetings (“Open Secrets,” Tues., Sept. 21 editorial). Tax-paying Columbus citizens do not need to be shielded from hearing varying opinions and disagreements between our elected representatives. In fact, some dissent would be a refreshing change from the homogenous and suspiciously “unanimous” votes we repeatedly witness.

The Dispatch editorial explained that most of Council business goes on “outside of public meetings” already, so why not give them our blessing to continue these backroom deals by changing the charter language. We don’t like the backroom deals going on now, and we certainly don’t want Council emboldened to hold sanctioned secret meetings. The Dispatch’s absurd claim that the “City charter change would provide public with more information” insults all Columbus citizens. With this logic, then, if the Dispatch stopped printing its newspaper, I’m sure we would all be more informed citizens.