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Two Congressional reports have found that CENTCOM manipulated intelligence reports related to the Islamic State, including altering reports that questioned the effectiveness of airstrikes:
Senior officials at U.S. Central Command manipulated intelligence reports, press statements, and congressional testimony to present a more positive outlook on the war against the Islamic State, a House Republican task force concluded in a damning report released Thursday. The report, written by the members of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees and the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, confirmed more than a year of reporting by The Daily Beast about problems with CENTCOM analysis of the war against ISIS. House Democrats, who conducted their own separate investigation, reached a similar conclusion as their Republican colleagues, finding that CENTCOM "insufficiently accommodated dissenting views," Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement [link].
The altering of intelligence reports, which included information that made its way into briefings to President Obama, was systematic, lawmakers found. "There was a consistent trend that across four specific campaigns against [ISIS] in Iraq throughout 2014 and 2015, assessments approved by the J2 [CENTCOM's Joint Intelligence Center] or leadership were consistently more positive than those presented by the [intelligence community]," the report found.
Also at The Washington Post, Tampa Bay Times, and NYT.
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Saturday August 13 2016, @05:03AM
The real enemy of the state is and has always been the people.
Be that the people of a foreign country you are terrorizing or your own people who would hold you to account should they ever wake up long enough to realize what you are doing. The biggest threat is always your own people but they are typically much more easily manipulated.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday August 13 2016, @09:11AM
The real enemy of the state is and has always been the people.
No, this is wrong. The State is the People. Just take a look at the US Constitution, says "We the people" right up front! Or SPQR, Senātus Populusque Rōmānus : The Senate and the People of Rome. Now the issue is that states, according the Gilles and Deleuze, capture and attempt to tame a decidedly non-state organism, a nomad invention they call the "War Machine". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Thousand_Plateaus [wikipedia.org] Miltiaries are anti-state, they are designed to destroy the polis, to return the striated controlled spaces of city to the chaos of the open steppe, to raze the polis. Cities end up co-opting the war machine to defend themselves against the nomads that range against them (or, we could build a wall? a Trump wall? A Huang-di Trump Wall), but soon learn to turn their war machine against other states. But once the polis, the state, has admitted the war machine inside its borders, the seeds of its destruction have already been sown. No state ever falls because of external agression. It falls from its own inability to restrain the destructive forces it unleashes itself.
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Saturday August 13 2016, @10:03AM
You are confusing ideals and textbooks with reality. So I am afraid I am right. Also, reference to an anecdote about Rome is not evidence...
The "state" is that which wields state power. Recent research on attitudes versus policy in the US has shown unequivocally that the majority views are mostly ignored overall.
The masses ARE fully capable of taking that power back any time they collectively choose - but mostly they don't. Your point would be the equivalent of saying that slaves on a cotton farm were the plantation. They might be PART of it, but...
Hence my original point: the people are the enemy.
"No state ever falls because of external agression. " (sp.)
This is just patently untrue. It is not even worth giving examples...
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday August 13 2016, @06:01PM
reference to an anecdote about Rome
Anecdote? Anecdote? Do you know what an anecdote is? Do you know where Rome is, and what Rome was? Do you know who always carried banners proclaiming SPOR for at least a millennium? Do you know that reality without textbooks is really nothing at all, but what it is, and since we are completely uneducated, we don't know what it is, besides "reality"? O, Tempores! O, Mores! You are not wrong, you just have no idea what I was talking about.
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Saturday August 13 2016, @08:58PM
Anecdote: a short amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person.
Yes, I admit I stretched the meaning a bit because I am considering roman history to be the single "incident", but my points still stand and are in no way harmed by this.
I have read a lot about roman history. In fact Roman history demonstrates my point exceptionally well since the senate's fight to control the unwashed masses while enriching themselves versus various popular emperors was well documented.
I am suggesting your points are only weakly relevant to mine and do nothing to contradict my point - in fact they help prove it. You may disagree, that is ok with me.
Let me make it simpler:
Powerful people seek to concentrate power and wealth into the hands of the few. This is a morally reprehensible act that the people never allow if they were AWARE and thought they were able to CHANGE. Thus the powerful have always, throughout history, sought to prevent those too things.
Methods:
- Brutality. Fear prevents action. Torturing dissenters sends a message to others. etc.
- Propaganda. Nuff said.
- Illegitimate appeals to authority. Kings/emperors are "ordained by god". Its the "natural order". The wealthy deserve it for their "hard work". My father was rich and thus I am "by right". etc
And there are many others. It always amuses me when I hear people defend all the above as if it does not exist or somehow too hard to believe.
It is not sophisticated at all. Chimps do it. Chickens do it. (Singing: let's fall in love?)
The Romans were MASTERS of it for their time.
The biological urge to acquire, grow, procreate and dominate is fundamental to our psyche. Even to the extent it is now reducing our chances of long term survival rapidly.
And thus the people ARE the real enemy. When conquering other nations as the Romans did, it is the people of another country as well. But it is always your own people.