[–]exproject 0 points1 point2 points (5 children)
[–][deleted] (4 children)
[deleted]
[–]exproject 0 points1 point2 points (3 children)
[–]borismkv 0 points1 point2 points (2 children)
[–]brkdncr 0 points1 point2 points (0 children)
[–]borismkv 0 points1 point2 points (2 children)
[–]borismkv 0 points1 point2 points (0 children)
[–]exproject 0 points1 point2 points (0 children)
Operation Noble Lance: Barack Obama has authorized up to 300 Special Operations Forces to be deployed to Syria. It was not clear if the Americans accompanying the Turkish military had been re-assigned from other locations in northern Syria or were part of a new contingent. More here.
*** Getty Images
Getty Images
State Department Daily Briefing Secretary of State John Kerry made brief remarks to reporters on the agreement between the U.S. and Russia to bring about a ceasefire in Syria. Spokesman John Kirby then continued the daily briefing. Secretary Kerry said that if Syria did not comply with the cease-fire agreement, then the arrangement would “not go forward.” He acknowledged the doubts that still existed regarding the agreement and said he expected challenges in the days to come. He also said the plan had a chance to work. He later said that Syria was one of the “most complicated places in the world” and responded to a news report that said the U.S.-Russia plan was “flawed and full of caveats.” He concluded his statement saying he had “never seen a more complicated or entangled political, and military, sectarian, somewhat religiously over-toned issue than what exists in Syria today.
****
Fighting steadily escalating in Syria – reports of heavy combat around Damascus, Hama and Aleppo. Aid still being blocked by regime too. US Special Ops forces in Tell Abyad Syria put up US flag to show identity as they came under fire.
NYT/WASHINGTON — American Special Operations forces have arrived in northern Syria to work alongside Turkish troops fighting the Islamic State, the Pentagon said on Friday, stressing that the approximately three dozen Americans would serve in an “advise and assist” capacity.
Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said in an email that the American Special Operations forces “are accompanying Turkish and vetted Syrian opposition forces as they continue to clear territory” from the Islamic State near Jarabulus and al-Rai.
The decision to send the American forces into northern Syria with the Turkish military came last week, one American official said, shortly after a meeting between Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and President Obama during the G-20 summit meeting in China.
American officials described details of the deployment on the condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic and national security sensitivities of the mission.
****
Bloomberg: “Denying ISIL access to this critical border cuts off critical supply routes in and out of Iraq and Syria,” Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Defense Department spokesman, said in a statement, using an alternate acronym for Islamic State. There are about 40 special operations troops in the operation, said a U.S. official who asked to remain anonymous because the details aren’t public.
Earlier Friday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned his Russian counterpart that the U.S. was prepared to walk away from plans to coordinate strikes unless delays in aid deliveries are resolved. The United Nations is ready to deliver the aid but says it hasn’t received the necessary permission from the Syrian government to proceed.
“Secretary Kerry expressed concerns about the repeated and unacceptable delays of humanitarian aid,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement Friday after Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by phone. Russia must “use its influence on the Assad regime to allow UN humanitarian convoys to reach Aleppo and other areas in need,” Kirby said.
“The Secretary made clear that the United States will not establish the Joint Implementation Center with Russia unless and until the agreed terms for humanitarian access are met,” he added.
****
CBS: The fighting has stopped in Aleppo, but Syrian troops are still holding up on humanitarian aid that the city desperately needs, said United Nations officials.
Samantha Power, United States ambassador to the United Nations, blamed the Syrian regime.
But she also added that Russians had a “significant” influence and that it was “incumbent” on Moscow to deliver on Syria. The war-torn country is now in its fourth day of the U.S.-Russian cease-fire, which Secretary of State John Kerry called “a last chance to be able to hold Syria together.” Power emphasized the significance and potential impact of the deal — one she said was the first of its kind –with “this level of granularity and specificity.”
“It can be a very important deal because it can prevent the regime from flying over opposition areas, it can prevent barrel bombing, chemical attacks, the kinds of things we’ve seen the regime do for so long. It can also turn the Russians to doing what they were supposed to do all along, which was actually fight terrorists instead of civilians,” Power said.
“Don’t you believe that’s what’s happening again today in Syria?” O’Donnell asked. “Well, Syria is a very complex picture,” Power answered. “There are thousands of armed groups. The question again of what military intervention would achieve, where you would do it, how you would do it in a way where the terrorists wouldn’t be the ones to take advantage of it — this has been extremely challenging. But the idea that we have not been doing quote anything in Syria seems absurd. We’ve done everything short of waging war against the Assad regime and we are – I should note – having significant success against ISIL on the ground.”
Appreciate Checks and Balances on Constitution Day
This Constitution Day marks 229 years since the Framers signed the U.S. Constitution following more than four months of debate, votes, and revisions in Philadelphia.
The Constitution deserves celebration.
Civil rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights ensure numerous freedoms absent in other parts of the world. We are not kidnapped and detained without cause. We are free to practice our faith, and wear religious garments as suits our conscience. And we are free to group together and participate in political debate.
But we often overlook the benefit of a checked and balanced government. The Constitution prescribed a three-branched government to ensure that no faction could unaccountably overstep its authority. As children learn, the legislative branch makes law, taxes, and spends (Article I), the executive branch enforces law (Article II), and the judicial branch resolves cases and controversies before it (Article III).
For most of the our history, the Constitution has limited the federal government’s capacity to create law, tax, regulate, and criminalize. The three branches have the power to check each other, and the ballot box ultimately holds politicians accountable.
But the Framers could not foresee the emergence of the regulatory state, which has effectively become the fourth branch of U.S. government.
Congress abdicated its lawmaking powers to literally countless agencies from the New Deal era to the present day. Agency bureaucrats can and do generate regulations autonomously. In 1946, Congress passed the Administrative Procedures Act, which prescribed the “notice-and-comment” process to constrain agency rulemaking, but this is a poor substitute for the accountable and divided government framed by the Constitution. While the public may comment on proposed regulations before enactment, regulators may ignore opposition to costly new rules, or even fabricate public support in favor of regulation.
Agencies increasingly avoid notice-and-comment rulemaking altogether using what Clyde Wayne Crews calls “regulatory dark matter”: industry guidance, opinions, and interpretations. Because many agencies have enforcement power, guidance and opinion letters—even blog posts—may effectively impose new requirements and certainly new compliance costs of businesses. Through new “interpretations,” agencies take advantage of the deference courts give them. Interpretations can effectively announce new rules by decree, as when the Department of Labor unexpectedly decided that a 1938 law makes certain independent contractors into employees.
Some agencies have also become adept at usurping legislative and judicial powers by settling lawsuits with non-government organizations, which creates de facto law without formal rulemaking or appropriation. For example, the EPA currently hopes to expand its authority by imposing clean fuel standards on Volkswagen to settle unrelated diesel fraud claims. The EPA has a track record of setting policy though settled litigation.
While the three canonical branches of government counterbalance each other, the “fourth branch” simply accumulates regulations and dark matter rules over time. Layers accumulate like debris in a neglected gutter. Regulations fossilize over time, as once-burdensome rules become the expectations of industry, deterring competition and hindering innovation. Volumes of code can block the flow of economic development indefinitely.
But there is hope: the Framer’s original design is still intact. Congress and the President can scrape off regulatory debris, banish regulatory dark matter, and prevent more from accumulating.
It would be a fitting tribute to the Constitution.
Edward Snowden, Defending His Patriotism, Says Disclosures Helped Privacy
UNCLASSIFIED
In June 2013, former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden
perpetrated the largest and most damaging Public release of classified information in U.S.
intelligence history. In August 2014, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) directed Committee staff to carry out a
comprehensive review of the unauthorized disclosures. The aim of the review was to allow the
Committee to explain to other Members of Congress-and, where possible, the American
people-how this breach occurred, what the U.S. Government knows about the man who
committed it, and whether the security shortfalls it highlighted had been remedied.
Over the next two years, Committee staffrequested hundreds ofdocuments from the
Intelligence Community (IC), participated in dozens ofbriefings and meetings with IC
personnel, conducted several interviews with key individuals with knowledge of Snowden’s
background and actions, and traveled to NSA Hawaii to visit Snowden’s last two work locations.
The review focused on Snowden’s background, how he was able to remove more than 1.5
million classifled documents from secure NSA networks, what the 1.5 million documents
contained, and the damage their removal caused to national security.
The Committee’s review was careful not to disturb any criminal investigation or future
prosecution of Snowden, who has remained in Russia since he fled there on June 23, 2013.
Accordingly, the Committee did not interview individuals whom the Depatment of Justice
identified as possible witnesses at Snowden’s trial, including Snowden himself, nor did the
Committee request any matters that may have occurred before a grand jury. Instead, the IC
provided the Committee with access to other individuals who possessed substantively similar
knowledge as the possible witnesses. Similarly, rather than interview Snowden’s NSA
coworkers and supervisors directly, Committee staffinterviewed IC personnel who had reviewed
reports o finterviews with Snowden’s co-workers and supervisors. The Committee remains
hopeful that Snowden will retum to the United States to face justice.
The bulk of the Committee’s 36-page review, which includes 230 footnotes, must remain
classified to avoid causing further harm to national security; however, the Committee has made
a number of unclassified findings. These findings demonstrate that the public narrative
popularized by Snowden and his allies is rife with falsehoods, exaggerations, and crucial
omissions, a pattem that began befiore he stole 1.5 million sensitive documents.
First, Snowden caused tremendous damage to national security, and the vast
majority of the documents he stole have nothing to do with programs impacting individual
privacy interests-they instead pertain to military, defense? and intelligence programs of
great interest to America,s adversaries. A review ofthe materials Snowden compromised
makes clear that he handed over secrets that protect American troops overseas and secrets that
provide vital defienses against terrorists and nation-states. Some of Snowden’s disclosures
exacerbated and accelerated existing trends that diminished the IC’s capabilities to collect
against legitimate foreign intelligence targets, while others resulted in the loss of intelligence
streams that had saved American lives. Snowden insists he has not shared the full cache of 1.5
million classified documents with anyone; however, in June 2016, the deputy chairman of the
Russian parliaments defense and security committee publicly conceded that “Snowden did
share intelligence” with his govemment. Additionally, although Snowden’s professed objective
may have been to inform the general public, the infiormation he released is also available to
Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and North Korean govemment intelligence services; any terrorist
with Internet access; and many others who wish to do harm to the United States.
The full scope ofthe damage inflicted by Snowden remains unknown. Over the past
three years, the IC and the Department ofDefiense (DOD) have carried out separate
reviews with differing methodologies-fthe damage Snowden caused. Out of an abundance of
caution, DOD reviewed all 1.5 million documents Snowden removed. The IC, by contrast, has
carried out a damage assessment fior only a small subset ofthe documents. The Committee is
concerned that the IC does not plan to assess the damage ofthe vast majority of documents
Snowden removed. Nevertheless, even by a conservative estimate, the U.S. Govemment has
spent hundreds of millions of dollars, and will eventually spend billions, to attempt to mitigate
the damage Snowden caused. These dollars would have been better spent on combating
America’s adversaries in an increasingly dangerous world.
Second, Snowden was not a whistleblower. Under the law, publicly revealing
classifled information does not qualify someone as a whistleblower. However, disclosing
classified information that Shows fraud, Waste, Abuse, Or Other illegal activity to the
appropriate law enforcement or oversight personnel-including to Congressuloes make someone
a whistleblower and affords them with critical protections. Contrary to his public claims that he
notified numerous NSA officials about what he believed to be illegal intelligence collection, the
Committee found no evidence that Snowden took any official effort to express concems about
U.S. intelligence activities-legal, moral, or otherwise-to any oversight officials Within the
U.S. Govemment, despite numerous avenues for him to do so. Snowden was aware of these
avenues. His only attempt to contact an NSA attomey revolved around a question about the
legal precedence ofexecutive orders, and his only contact to the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) Inspector General (IG) revolved around his disagreements with his managers about
training and retention ofinfiormation technology specialists.
Despite Snowden’s later public claim that he would have faced retribution for voicing
concems about intelligence activities, the Committee found that laws and regulations in effect at
the time of Snowden’s actions afforded him protection. The Committee routinely receives
disclosures from IC contractors pursuant to the Intelligence Community Whistleblower
Protection Act of 1998 (IC WPA). If Snowden had been worried about possible retaliation for
voicing concerns about NSA activities, he could have made a disclosure to the Committee. He
did not. Nor did Snowden remain in the United States to flee the legal consequences of his
actions, contrary to the tradition of civil disobedience he professes to embrace. Instead, he fled
to China and Russia, two countries whose governments place scant value on their citizens’
privacy or civil liberties-and whose intelligence services aggressively collect information on
both the United States and their own citizens.
To gather the files he took with him when he left the country for Hong Kong, Snowden
infringed on the privacy of thousands of govemment employees and contractors. He obtained
his colleagues, security credentials through misleading means, abused his access as a systems
administrator to search his co-workers, personal drives, and removed the personally
identifiable information of thousands of IC employees and contractors. From Hong Kong he
went to Russia, where he remains a guest of the Kremlin to this day.
It is also not clear Snowden understood the numerous privacy protections that govern the
activities of the IC. He failed basic annual training for NSA employees on Section 702 of the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and complained the training was rigged to be
overly difficult. This training included explanations of the privacy protections related to the
PRISM program that Snowden would later disclose.
Third, two weeks before Snowden began mass downloads of classified documents,
he was reprimanded after engaging in a workplace spat with NSA managers. Snowden was
repeatedly counseled by his managers regarding his behavior at work. For example, in June
2012, Snowden became involved in a fiery e-mail argument With a Supervisor about how
computer updates should be managed. Snowden added an NSA senior executive several levels
above the supervisor to the e-mail thread, an action that earned him a swift reprimand from his
contracting officer for failing to follow the proper protocol for raising grievances through the
chain of command. Two weeks later, Snowden began his mass downloads of classified
information from NSA networks. Despite Snowden’s later claim that the March 2013
congressional testimony of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was a “breaking
point” for him, these mass downloads predated Director Clapper’s testimony by eight months.
Fourth, Snowden was, and remains) a serial exaggerator and fabricator. A close
review of Snowden’s official employment records and submissions reveals a pattern of
intentional lying. He claimed to have left Army basic training because of broken legs when in
fact he washed out because of shin splints. He claimed to have obtained a high school degree
equivalent when in fact he never did. He claimed to have worked for the CIA as a “senior
advisor,” which was a gross exaggeration of his entry-level duties as a computer technician. He
also doctored his performance evaluations and obtained new positions at NSA by exaggerating
his resume and stealing the answers to an employment test. In May 2013, Snowden informed
his supervisor that he would be out of the office receive treatment for worsening epilepsy. In
reality, he was on his way to Hong Kong with stolen secrets.
Finally, the Committee remains concerned that more than three years after the start
of the unauthorized disclosures, NSA, and the IC as a whole, have not done enough to
minimize the risk of another massive unauthorized disclosure. Although it is impossible to
reduce the chance of another Snowden to zero, more work can and should be done to improve
the security of the people and computer networks that keep America’s most closely held secrets.
For instance, a recent DOD Inspector General report directed by the Committee found that NSA
has yet to effectively implement its post-Snowden security improvements. The Committee has
taken actions to improve IC information security in the Intelligence Authorization Acts for
Fiscal Years 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017, and looks forward to working with the IC to continue
to improve security.
Hat-tip to Michael L. ValentiMajor, USMC
Mattis believed in delegating responsibility to the lowest capable level. He stated, “Most Marine units and most Marines can do more than they are asked to do. It’s how you unleash that, delegate the decision making to the lowest capable level so that units can maneuver swiftly and aggressively based on exercising initiative. A sense of co-equal ownership of the mission between generals and 18 year olds.”
Mattis asserted that “by reading, you learn through others’ experiences—generally a better way to do business—especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.”36 This alluded to a responsibility that is inherent to commanders and leaders: honest and detailed preparation for the task. It went far beyond just concentrating study on tactics, techniques, and procedures, for that will never be enough for “those who must adapt to overcoming an independent enemy’s will are not allowed the luxury of ignorance of their profession.”37
Mattis gave guidance on the construction of his staff. He wanted “a small staff comprised of aggressive officers who were able to act with initiative, make rapid decisions and recommendations, and exercise good judgment.”14 Due to the small size of the staff and few enlisted Marines to support it, General Mattis made it clear that everyone had to “fill sandbags.”15 The initial tempo of planning was intense and as new members arrived to fill positions, they had to be caught up to speed quickly and start working quickly. In order to expedite this process the creation of a “Brain Book” was implemented. The book consisted of various references and orders that were needed to get new members ready to operate quickly. The Brain Book by itself would not be enough. Instead, professionalism, willingness, and doctrinal foundation of the new members of the staff would carry them the rest of the way.16
General Mattis’s personal feelings:
War is a human endeavor and as such, warriors must be comfortable operating on and within the scopes of human terrain.38 An object in war is to impose our will upon the enemy.39 It is critical in professional study to include the study of the human dimension that is the study of decision-making, group interaction, leadership, etc. When the enemy votes, a study of these topics will enable the warrior to beat him to the polls.
A Marine from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit moves to a security position at Forward Operating Base Rhino, Afghanistan, 25 November 2001. Photo by Sgt. Joseph R. Chenelly. (DVIC DM-SD-06-03033).
Mattis asserts that a commander must “be ready to embrace allied elements without necessarily having TACON/OPCON over them—use HANDCON.”54 Bringing allied elements into the planning process early with an emphasis on information sharing a commander can gain battlefield harmony through trust building.55 His bottom line is that “you will have little formal authority yet expectations for tactical achievements will not be diminished just because you lack formal command authority.”56
The greatest attribute a field grade officer can have according to Mattis is anticipation.57 General Mattis anticipated his lack of resources, capabilities, and authorities and actively sought measures to correct them by forming relationships and exchanging liaison officers.
For a full read and inspiring summary, go here.
Related reading: Task Force 58: A Higher Level of Naval Operation
![In this file photo, American whistleblower Edward Snowden delivers remarks via video link from Moscow to attendees at a discussion regarding an International Treaty on the Right to Privacy, Protection Against Improper Surveillance and Protection of Whistleblowers in New York City on Sept. 24, 2015.]({"default":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBwetVc.img?h=522&w=874&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=568&y=442","dpi":1.4} "snowden - REUTERS/Andrew Kelly")
© 
Judge blasts State Dept for slow-walking Hillary emails
SMOKING GUN: “BleachBit” Paul Combetta ASKED TO STRIP OR REPLACE VIP’s EMAIL ADDRESS! https://redd.it/2bmm4l
#MAGAThe electronic exchange as noted here.
[–]GateheaD 1 point2 points3 points (0 children)