Danger Room does some reporting on changed tactics because of Lebanon which confirms for me that they learned nothing other than to suppress the reporting of what they are doing.

Anyone who paid minimal attention to Israeli targeting in the Lebanon attack knows full well that they made almost no effort to avoid civilian casualties, because their definition of a combatant includes almost everyone.

The problem was they just weren’t as good as they had been. They haven’t had a real war in decades, and they still believe they can win with “shock and awe” from the skies.

I’m an Air Force supporter, and I don’t think you can win with air power alone. It didn’t work against Britain, so why assume it will work against anyone else. The record shows that it is most effective after your ground army has proved its ability to take and hold territory. If a country’s army is still able to put up a credible offense, the civilian population will not lose hope.

[Read more →]

Bill Richardson could not have hidden grand jury proceedings that took place in August 2008, so the Obama team would have known about them and went ahead anyway. Suggesting that Richardson is to blame for the problem, is the sort of thing the Shrubbery does.

Leon Panetta doesn’t have direct intel experience, but after the way that the Hedgemony has screwed around with the structure of the intel community, he doesn’t need it. All of the decisions that were once made by DirCIA/DCI and the National Security Advisor have been transferred to the Director of National Intelligence, so DirCIA is a bean counter.

Panetta is a budget and organization pro, so maybe he can straighten that mess out after the years of cronyism at the CIA. If the decision is made to restructure the intel community into something more effective and efficient, then you will need intel credentials for the job, but not now.

The complaints of Feinstein and Rockefeller would have a lot more relevance if they had been doing their jobs for the last 8 years instead of going alone to get along.

[Read more →]

С Рождеством Христовым to my Orthodox friends who are still waiting to see how the calendar reform works out.