re: "To the shame of us all"

Richard at EU Referendum ("To discuss issues related to the UK's position in Europe and the world") took notice.

Money quote(s):

"My own basic "take" on this is that the PMOI are being somewhat naïve if they believe that they can maintain a highly organised and disciplined camp, with 3,400 residents parked on the border of Iran. As a former terrorist organisation, but one which has now renounced violence, the existence of the camp is nevertheless provocative, and was bound to incite a reaction from the Iranians

Given the vulnerability of Iraq to Iranian intervention, and the damage they can do to the fragile and uncertain peace (if it can be called that), it is also unsurprising that Maliki is caving into pressure from the Iranians and moving in to close down the camp.

That said, the behaviour of the Americans – making pledges that they are clearly not honouring – is disgusting, and our own government has been supine over the whole affair." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Follow this link to the Dec. 29 State Dept. briefing on Camp Ashraft.

"Any which way this panned out was going to be unsatisfactory. There was never going to be a happy outcome. But the neglect is about to turn a tragedy into a human rights disaster. That could have been stopped. It should have been stopped. That it is being allowed to continue shames us all."

Aside from some intramural volleying between varous U.S. principals back during OIF 1, and the determination that the PMOI/MEK at Camp Ashraf qualified for Protected status under the Geneva Conventions (with which determination CAA concurs), U.S. policy for resolution of the situation seems to have been to kick the can down the road a little further.

With Amb. Fried tagged with this portfolio (thus some accountability assigned), CAA is hopeful that massacres and involuntary repatriations can be avoided.

12/18

re: "Doing the honest thing"

Richard at Defence of the Realm ("Defence news that matters") provides a British perspective on things.

Money quote(s):

"A splendidly indignant Peter Hitchens is fulminating about "Dave" doing the talking (telling the military to shut up and do the fighting), while the war dead from Afghanistan are to be sneaked out of the back gate of RAF Brize Norton when it takes over from Lyneham (a few weeks from now) as the arrival point for the fallen."

&

"All of this, however, has to be viewed in the context of the complete and utter failure of the Afghanistan campaign"

Individual mileage may vary.

re: "The march of Ruritania"

Richard at EU Referendum ("To discuss issues related to the UK's position in Europe and the world") relayed some Royal Wedding-related commentary.

Money quote(s):

" "The Edwardian braid and sashes worn by Princes and Dukes emphasised that our Armed Forces are shrunken remnants – lots of big hats, not many planes, ships or soldiers", writes Peter Hitchens. "Never have they looked so laughably Ruritanian".

And more or less the same point is made by Booker as he writes of politicians hiding their plans to put French jets on Royal Navy carriers. The Royal Navy won't be flying Anglo-US Joint Strike Fighters, but providing a platform for French Rafales as part of an EU force, he tells us."

I remarked to the Madame-at-Arms, when we watched some of the wedding pageantry (CAA is partial to all things protocol-y), that the two princes in their honorary colonels get-up looked like kids wearing their great-uncle's uniforms.

(Which is unfair to both of the gentlemen, being qualified and serving officers in their own rights.)

"Thus does Booker write that the magnificent military pageantry of the royal wedding coincided, sadly, with yet another humiliating instance of the precipitate decline in Britain's military power. Soon, all we will have is lots of big hats, as we hand over operational control over our few remaining assets to an Anglo-French consortium, where the one operational carrier that we will have will be used as a platform for French aircraft.

The point that must be emphasised again and again is that this has always been the plan, ever since 1996, under the last Tory government. The carriers have always been earmarked for a joint Anglo-French project. Their purpose has been to serve as the main Anglo-French contribution to the European Rapid Reaction Force, as agreed by Tony Blair at Helsinki in 1999.

That is what makes our pageantry and the military splendour a hollow charade. It had some meaning when it was a reflection of our power and status, but when we have more admirals than ships, more generals than battalions, and our sad little navee goes to sea with iPods and EU flags, earmarked to further EU grandiosity, then the splendour takes on a Ruritanian character. It is all show and no substance.

That is what it has come down to. That is why there can be no pride in watching a celebration of something that no longer exists - just overwhelming sadness. We have sold the substance of Great Britain on the altar of European integration."

Color me Euro-skeptical. And I like Europe. I've served there in and out of uniform as both soldier and diplomat. But I've always felt that the EU was a bit of a put-on, for show, and not really serious. Unfortunately, lots of European governments seem to feel the same way about NATO and defense in general.

re: "Why the surprise?"

Richard at EU Referendum ("To discuss issues related to the UK's position in Europe and the world") keys on some areas of perennial interest to those in the intelligence professions.

Money quote(s):

"Diplomats and intelligence agencies, the strap to his piece reads, often tell ministers what they want to hear – and overvalue secret sources of information.

Secret intelligence services, naturally enough, writes Norton-Taylor, want to emphasise secret intelligence – a product which only they, in their special and privileged role, can offer. As a result, they have seriously underestimated what can be gleaned from "open sources". "

Yes and no.

There's such a thing as "intelligence fusion." That's where information from many types of sources and collection methods gets "fused" into an "all-source" product. Army folks may recall the acronym "ASAS," which is the All-Source Analysis System.

But I digress.

"All Source" intelligence includes open sources or "OSINT."

So if your analysts are on the ball, this gets included into your final product.

Ideally.

"Britain's diplomats and spooks, in common with all western intelligence agencies, also spectacularly failed to foresee the fall of the Berlin wall. Thus, he says, they must in future pay much more attention to "open sources", what they can hear on the Arab street, and what they can read, notably on the internet."

As the man says, this is something we can do better.

Lastly:

"Anyone who relies merely – or even mainly – on the MSM for their "take" on what is happening in this country, or for their general news of events, would end up very seriously ill-informed. Yet it remains the case that the political "set" in this country rely for their information on such conventional sources, and are still unduly influenced by the MSM.

However, we cannot leave it there, without also referring to what could be called mindset myopia. Our "élites" very often do not realise what is happening because they already think they know, and therefore do not avail themselves of credible information sources, because they believe they know better. They don't look for information because they don't see the need for it. And that is what really catches them out.

Either way, when our revolution eventually arrives – in whatever form it finally takes – our politicians and other agencies will also be caught by surprise. If they had the ability to see it coming, they would also have the ability to head it off.

Almost by definition, therefore, revolutions must always come as a surprise to those at whom they are aimed. The happen because those people are so out of touch that they are capable of being surprised."

Richard hits very close to a recurring dilemma for intelligence professionals: how do you get your policy-maker to value your product when they are already relying on other, outside sources, the ones they've learned to value throughout their political lives?

The case of a decision-level official who already assumes they know all there is to know is just too nightmarish to comtemplate. One needs to watch World War II movies to appreciate just what that does for a nation.

re: "Let it fail"

Richard at EU Referendum ("To discuss issues relating to the UK's position in Europe and the world") takes the chief of Airbus to task over the A400M.

Money quote(s):

"(T)he heap of machinery he is trying to palm off as an aeroplane should be kept going because 40,000 jobs in Europe are directly linked to the project, including 15,000 in Spain. "You can't just look at the plane as a product," he says.

Notwithstanding that any aerospace manufacturer who calls an aircraft a "plane" should not be allowed to live, what this human garbage needs to understand is that the A400M is a product, a machine that is supposed to do things, very specific things, one of which is to fly. It is not a job creation scheme for euroweenies. Furthermore, it is a product that was promised by his dismal excuse for a company and one which it has singularly failed to deliver."

&

""Europe" is not an entity – it is a continent. The people who have the misfortune to be saddled with this overpriced, non-performing heap of junk are soldiers, and they need military airlift, not computer-generated pictures. If he can't deliver – and it is very clear that he cannot – then there are companies that can – on time, to price and to specification.

That is the crunch. It is about time the defence contracting industry woke up and smelt the coffee. The purpose of military equipment is to equip the military, for the sole purpose of enabling that said military to do its job. It is not there for any other purpose and, if the industry cannot deliver, on time, to price and to specification, then it needs to go to the wall."

re: "An honest politician"

Richard at EU Referendum ("To discuss issues related to the UK's position in Europe and the world") has praise for SecDef Gates.

Money quote(s):

"(T)he mettle of the man is tested when he gets a question on a very specific defence capability. The question does not matter so much as the answer. Gates says: "I think the honest answer to your question is I haven't addressed that yet. I don't know." It actually takes an enormous amount of courage and self-confidence for a politician to say, "I don't know", instead of delivering yards of pre-formed, extruded verbal material. And the point about this man is that, in due course, he will know, and when he does, he will tell people what he thinks."

re: "And the news is?"

Richard at EU Referendum ("To discuss issues related to the UK's position in Europe and the world") remarks on the formation of a European diplomatic corps.

Money quote(s):

"This is the EU's putative External Action Service (EEAS), with five hundred and thirty staff from the EU commission having already begun training to build a "shared diplomatic culture and an esprit de corps", ready to take over once the treaty has been bludgeoned into place."

&

"In December 2005, there was further evidence that the EU was implementing the constitutional treaty and, as we know from COM(2006)712 final, it has been actively plotting to take over embassy functions for some considerable time.This is simply the tip of the iceberg, just another step in the slow process of integration. There is no point in complaining about it – this is what the EU does."

re: "In the money"

Richard at EU Referendum ("To discuss issues related to the UK's position in Europe and the world") is a rather unwilling member, but will still have to foot his share of the dues.

Money quote(s):

"(T)he bill for membership of the European Union will increase by nearly £4 billion, because the collapse of the pound's value against the euro."

"This, of course, is real money. It has to be found by the UK taxpayer, if not now, through borrowing that will have to be paid-for sooner or later."

&

"The sum, incidentally, is about the same as we would eventually have to pay for our new carriers. Since these would be (and in fact already are) pencilled in to join the EU Navy, we might just as well cancel them and let the EU buy its own carriers."

re: "Two-faced Brits"

Richard at EU Referendum ("To discuss issues related to the UK's position in Europe and the world") responds to some criticism.

Money quote(s):

"(A)n American accused us Brits of being "two-faced." We complain "when YOUR troops are just sitting there when they are getting hit with rockets & mortars; but then you protest in the streets when Israel takes the VERY SAME action YOU demand that YOUR troops should have taken to halt the rockets and mortars.""

"(A)s we pointed out in an earlier post, there are parallels between the situation in al Amarah in the first half of 2006 and the present situation in Gaza. In the former, the British turned tail and ran, in the latter, of course, we see a robust response, reflecting a determination and commitment than no longer seems to exist in this country."

"The only good thing to come out of this horrible episode, therefore, is to see the Israelis – in contrast to their disarray in Lebanon in 2006 – reject the bleatings of the appeasers who seem to think that it is possible to negotiate with Hamas on the same basis that you would expect with a normal government."

&

"(T)he US is taking the only credible line, calling for a ceasefire "as soon as possible" but linking that to an absolute guarantee that Hamas ends its rocket fire. And there, Hamas could bring this trauma to an end right now. All it has to do is to stop firing rockets, surrender its arsenal and give that guarantee.

However, there is one final parallel with al Amarah. Although the British response to what is known as "indirect fire" was ineffective, that did not mean that it did nothing. It launched many raids into al Amarah, killing and wounding several hundred (or even more), Mahdi fighters, damaging and destroying hundreds of houses and killing many civilians. It also called in air strikes, many times.

These things it did in the exercise of its right to self defence, as an occupying power, under the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949, and the much older rules in the Hague Regulations of 1907. None of the precious "international community" so much as batted an eye when the UK exercised this right – much less called for a "cease fire" while the Mahdi Army was still rocketing the British base. Yet it seems that the UK, with its fellow travellers, would deny Israel exactly the same right."