Michael Scheuer

Reading...an article on independent.ie.com, where Michael Scheuer says he had 10 chances to kill bin laden and thus save "hundreds to thousands of lives and...1.3 trillion dollars". But in a archived story from Harpers Magazine he says that Al-Qeada is not just one man and the organize is able to usher in new people into leadership roles very well. Which begs the question: if bin laden was killed one of those 10 times before 911, wouldn't it still have happened? Or at least, another large scale terrorist attack would have occurred?

It still would have a taken a rather large scale operation to track, arrest, or kill al-Qaeda members...hopefully not $1.3 trillion worth of planning and operations, but then again, the CIA spends $56 billion/yr on its "on the books" ops; add that to cost of use of military assistance (and aid to Pakistan PLUS Afghanistan), yeah were looking still looking at about the same overall large number (even if ops only takes a few short years, compared to the 10yrs of GWOT)....

At the end of all this supposing, there are only 2 conclusions (however contradictory) to reach....

Boldly changing the political landscape...with no objective in mind

Curious to what U.S government's long term strategic goal is in/for Libya? Surely Obama is not wanting a regime change, because if so, this is a piss terrible way to go about it! Is this just a war of attrition? How long will the UN/US support the "rebels"? When will the rebels truly form a confederation or at least organize themselves into a ore coherent group? So far the as of June 16th 2011 the government has spent over $700 million on this excursion into Libya.

I predict whatever the outcome, that Libya will fall into the "failed state" category. It will mirror Algeria, its neighbor very similarly. There will be pockets of lawlessness across the nation, it will become a hot bed of fundamentalism; smelling blood in the water, jihading Muslims will seek to establish a theocracy in Libya; getting one step closer to dominating the political landscape of MENA. Obama may be a good basketball player but he sucks at risk...

More shame on our federal government...

The skinny: Under the order of then President Bush Jr, The Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) was granted veto authority, concerning disclosure decisions from the ISCAP, an appeal body who oversees FOIA requests that were denied initially.


How the hell can the DCI (or any public servant) veto a lawful order???? This is a representational democracy, not a dictatorship...plutocracy maybe, buy we are  above the rule of any ONE man! This subverts not only the will of the people but more importantly further establishes an environment of anti-democratic values and distrust in our political institution. It allows mad men (and women) to destroy our nation and world without recourse.