Soldiers' Data Still Being Downloaded Overseas, Firm Says – W.P.

In today’s Washington Post there is a disconcerting article about firms (or government agencies) in China and Pakistan downloading personal data on special forces and other American soldiers from DoD data banks.  This gives a whole new slant to the term "service connected disability". The story is here. 

The article states that sensitive information is found by using ‘Peer to Peer’ file-sharing software,  A contractor working for DoD found the breach.  Here is a quote from the article:

"Tiversa, which scours the Internet for sensitive data, discovered the data breaches while conducting research for private clients. The company found, as recently as this week, documents containing Social Security numbers, blood types, cellphone numbers, e-mail addresses, and the names of soldiers’ spouses and children."

This is spying in the 21st Century. It is never pretty, is it? How does the Department of Veterans Affairs compensate for an assassinated wife, murdered children or a demolished home at the hands of a national enemy either in a declared war or a sort of quasi-war footing like the one we have now? Has anybody in government thought of that aspect of this ugliness? 

In another article from the Post, we learn that General McChrystal flew from Afghanistan to meet President Obama in Denmark on Air Force One to discuss his request for more troops in Afghanistan.  Things do not look good for the fulfillment of that request. 

Basically the Democrats were never ‘onboard’ for the need for an Afghanistan War of the magnitude the general is suggesting.  The article is here.  As far as most Dems in the House and Senate are concerned, this was a GOP war. They won’t support it and do not see the rationale behind it. 

All kinds of back room manuevering is now going on in the Congress, the Pentagon and the White House to try and redefine the war in line with the fact that most Americans no longer support it, if in fact they ever did. There seems to be some background rumbling all over Washington that poll data may have been manipulated by DoD and the White House for several years in order to keep the war going.

To many professional pollsters, the recent dramatic turn in the polls away from supporting the war is a little too unusual to be accepted at face value.  It seems that quite a few professional statisticians are quietly talking about government data manipulation over a long period of time relative to war support in this country.

The American people appear to have just taken a sharp left turn relative to war support and generally speaking these things cannot be graphed with sharp turns like that. These changes in opinion almost always graph out with curves. They usually graph with a tendency to slowly move left or right, up or down. 

That did not happen with this recent poll.  A lot of people feel that something does not look right and a lot of professionals who work in statistics here are questioning the baseline polls that indicated majority American support from the outset.

It appears that the baseline data might have been manipulated from the beginning of the wars in western Asia.  If that is true, and it can be proven, we have government and media manipulation of raw data indicating majority support for a series of wars that simply had no popular support.

And if that is true, and it can be proven, a large slice of American government and the media lied to the American people deliberately and the government used their sons and daughters in a series of wars for the benefit of the incredibly few at the expense of the incredibly many.

But in my opinion it all can be looked at quite simply. And so I have a question. 

Why don’t we just bring the troops home?

In a related article in the Post writer Bruce Ackerman tells us of a lecture the general gave in London last week in which he appeared to publicly part ways with the Obama Administration on Afghan War strategy.  The story is here.

Here is a fairly large slice of that article.  It leaves me with an uneasy feeling. This is not how our government operates.  The quote starts here:

"In a speech in London on Thursday, Gen. Stanley McChrystal publicly intervened in the debate over Afghanistan. Vice President Biden has suggested that we focus on fighting al-Qaeda and refrain from using our troops to prop up the government of President Hamid Karzai. But when this strategic option was raised at his presentation, McChrystal said it was a formula for "Chaos-istan." When asked whether he would support it, he said, "The short answer is: No."

As commanding general in Afghanistan, McChrystal has no business making such public pronouncements. Under law, he doesn’t have the right to attend the National Security Council as it decides our strategy. To the contrary, the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 explicitly names the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the National Security Council’s exclusive military adviser. If the president wanted McChrystal’s advice, he was perfectly free to ask him to accompany Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, when the council held its first meeting on Afghanistan this week.

But Obama did not extend the invitation, even though McChrystal was leaving Kabul and could have gone to Washington easily. Instead, Obama asked the general to report to the council via a brief teleconference.

News of McChrystal’s position had been leaked to Bob Woodward and was published in The Post early last week. But it is one thing for some nameless Washington insider to engage in a characteristic power play; quite another for McChrystal to pressure the president in public to adopt his strategy. This is a plain violation of the principle of civilian control."

In the New York Times here is another article on Wanat that the writer claims is the reason we are having so much trouble agreeing on what to do in Afghanistan.  The article is here. This was seen as a major U.S. disaster in Afghanistan almost immediately.  It occured in June of 2008.  The Army covered its tracks and protected the generals apparently (of course, what else?).

And finally Scott Shane writes an opinion piece on the declining appeal of Al Qaeda among Muslims.  It seems that suicide bombings have turned any moderates that are left inside of the Muslim world against Al Qaeda.  The story is here.

As always, remember.  An informed veteran is a comfort to his friends and a threat to his adversaries.

Be an informed veteran.  Make your opinion count.

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)