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Failed Launch of Russian Rocket Carrying Advanced GPS Satellites No Accident

June 13, 2014 Last Minute Survival News and Intelligence Comments Off

Understanding geopolitical maneuvers implies recognition that timing of events globally are not coincidental. The latest example is the failure of the latest Russian rocket launch carry highly advanced satellites to bolster Russia’s own GPS array so that it does not have to rely on US military satellites and infrastructure. This failure of a proven Russian rocket system only days after Russia announced it was ceasing space based cooperation with the USA is not accidental. Instead, this was the latest take down in a growing number of high profile cyber attacks launched by the US and perhaps the first major military strike against Russian in a new era of warfare.

Ominously, the Russia’s cyber capability is advanced and capable of significant attacks on a large scale against targets inside the US unlike countries such as Syria and Iran. One should expect Russia to see the launch failure as a clandestine military attack regardless of whether or not it actually was. Again, perception is reality and Putin cannot afford the public perception that Russia’s vaunted space program is incompetent. In retaliation, Russia will strike back. Whether Russia uses cyber warfare or not is yet to be seen, but Russia will exact a price for the loss. As I have warned, Russia recognizes that Afghanistan is an easy place to exact revenge and bleed the US so the US military should not expect a smooth retreat this year. Further, our military space launches and vulnerable satellites may become logical targets for Russian retaliation so don’t be surprised if months from now our satellites experience failure or a new NGA satellite being launched fails to make it to orbit.

Washington is playing a dangerous game with Russia but fails to recognize the US has far more to lose. Even more disturbing is the fact that the White House has repeatedly been outmaneuvered and beaten by Russia on every foreign policy initiative and appears paralyzed under Obama’s leadership to decisively act. US policy makers have shown no ability to differentiate between the capability threat of countries like Iraq and Iran and those possessed by Russia. The White House appears drunk on hubris and forgets that it cannot bully everyone on the playground. Historically, this hubris has led to strategic miscalculations of massive proportions leading to events like World War I. Even in the best case scenario, the US gets beat geopolitically and another chunk of America’s little remaining influence and prestige is eroded away. As such, expect to see a continued resurgent Russia and a waning US.

Truth Trickles Out: Afghanistan troop cuts will likely lead to Taliban surge, study warns (Surprise…exactly as we predicted)

March 3, 2014 Last Minute Survival Al Qaeda, Terrorism Comments Off

March 3, 2014: Our track record continues its pristine record of accurately cutting through the lies and deception and correctly forecasting the impact of United States’ policy. In one of the most recent reveals, it took a gold star panel of overpaid, retired bureaucrats and generals (forgive me if I am redundant) to “discover” that NATO’s optimistic predictions for Afghanistan’s future, contrived at its 2012 Chicago summit, were ridiculously flawed. The study conducted by the “nonpartisan” think tank CNA concluded that stability in Afghanistan will require tens of thousands more troops costing billions more dollars than NATO envisioned at its 2012 summit. The review,conducted at the behest of the Pentagon’s policy directorate, found that the Taliban insurgency is likely to swell in the years following the upcoming US and NATO military withdrawal, which contradicts the expectations set at NATO’s May 2012 summit. The review also saw widespread deficiencies in NATO’s planning for Afghanistan manpower, logistics, air support and ministerial strength.

As we reported previously, it was readily apparent to anyone willing to take an unbiased look at the situation in Afghanistan that our counterinsurgency strategy “coined” (pun intended) by strategic snake oil salesmen like disgraced General David Petraeus, Australian “fiction author” David Kilcullen, and RAND Associate Director/Mental Incompetent Seth Jones was an abject failure. In particular, sealing the border connecting Afghanistan to Pakistan, the single most critical element required to win in Afghanistan, was not even attempted and discounted by the brain trust listed above. Further, the brain trust relied nearly exclusively on financial aid (bribes which ultimately funded the Taliban) and training of the Afghan police and military (soon to just be a well trained and equipped Taliban army), which has again proven to have no historical precedent for success in warfare. The damning Government Accountability Office (GAO) study (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d1166.pdf) sums up this situation succinctly stating: “The Afghan government and international community have set an objective of having the Afghan army and police lead and conduct security operations in all Afghan provinces by the end of 2014. As of September 2010, no ANA unit was assessed as capable of conducting its mission independent of coalition assistance.” After a decade and almost a trillion dollars of direct and indirect spending the US had effectively trained a whopping 0% of the Afghan Army to operate on its own! Anyone that thought just a few hundred billion more dollars and a couple more years would change this was stupid or lying…perhaps both. I am honestly sick of listening to these idiots create policy after policy on how to “win” in Afghanistan when none of them have a lick of sense, have been in an actual firefight firsthand, or can show that a single policy they recommended led to a decisive US victory. Of course many excuses were put forth, but the reality was something much deeper as those with functional brains recognized. The fact was that victory was impossible without the will to actually fight a war to decisive ends, which required the US to have a coherent strategy, competent leadership, the ability to unilaterally run the Afghan government, and the “US” military (not the Afghan enemy) to prosecute a war of attrition across the border into Pakistan and wipe out millions of Pashtuns. None of these necessary conditions were in place, which created an insurmountable situation in Afghanistan in respect to achieving a decisive victory.

Not so ironically, the review comes as the US policy makers realize they must retreat out of Afghanistan in defeat and will need an alibi to cloak their failure. Dusting off the Iraq playbook, it should come as no surprise the US, after “exhausting all options with an intractable President Karzai,” will have to pull its troops out of Afghanistan because he won’t sign a status of forces agreement (SOFA). The spin will be used to justify Bush and now Obama’s military defeats, but don’t expect anyone to question Jay Carney about why after invading, occupying, killing over a hundred thousand people, and placing our puppet in charge that we somehow are now unable to stay because of minor bureaucratic red tape. The weakness of the public mind knows no bottom.

The CNA review panel at least is correct in recognizing the persistent Taliban insurgency will mount an increased threat to the Afghan government for years after the envisaged NATO withdrawal. The CNA team’s prediction of an increased Taliban threat to Afghanistan through 2018, supported by a recent US intelligence assessment, “stands in direct contradiction to the assumption of a reduced insurgent threat made at the Chicago Summit,” the report states. This is about as much credit as I can give the CNA team. Beyond this, their analysis becomes pure garbage and it is nauseating to think how many tax dollars were spent on this trash.

The problem with the study is the CNA panel falls short on accurately getting the present facts right and thus, utterly blows their long term forecasted endstate, which predicts a stalemate. “We conclude that this force is not likely to defeat the Taliban militarily, but that if it can hold against the Taliban insurgency through 2018, the likelihood of a negotiated settlement to the war will increase,” the CNA review found. The reality is that every province that has been turned over to the Afghan military has effectively been turned over to Taliban control. The Taliban have outlasted the US, NATO, and the Afghan military for over a decade. The Taliban will make short work of the Afghan military one on one. To think they will be looking for a “negotiated settlement” is utter insanity. The Taliban will defeat and absorb the Afghan army rapidly. As the last US forces pull out of Afghanistan the Taliban will mount a full scale assault on Kabul to retake the country. This will leave the situation on the ground almost the same as the US found it in 2001 with the difference being the Taliban are far more numerous, better trained, better armed, better organized, and with an earned hatred of the US. In a laughable twist to counter this, the CNA team advises (remember, the team is made of “senior” policy makers and generals) the Pentagon to keep international military advisers in the Afghanistan ministries of defense and interior through “at least” 2018 to mitigate long-term problems, including corruption and incompetence. After reading this, I was left with zero doubt why the Taliban have outlasted the US military. Our leaders are idiots. It is a joke to propose that a few advisors will save the day. Equally blind is the notion that corruption and incompetence, not a viable enemy at the gates will be the big problem for the encircled Karzai regime. Even with a large number of troops and advisors in country right now, the US has failed to accomplish defeating the military or rooting out corruption. After thousands of Americans have been killed in this useless war, there still is not even the slightest spark of logic or integrity within the senior echelon and the apathetic public remains in a mute, trance like state when it comes to calling out President Obama and his mob of derelict morons driving the US off a policy cliff.

To conclude, make no mistake of these facts and further predictions. One, the US suffered a strategic defeat in Afghanistan. Two, the US will use the failure, albeit an intentional failure, to sign a SOFA (agreement) as a means to save face as it retreats. Three, the Taliban will retake the country and will be more powerful than they ever could have been if the US did not invade back in 2001. Four, the Karzai puppet regime will not last to 2018 and Karzai will most likely be killed or flee back to Europe where he hid billions of US aid in complicit Swiss and Dubai banks. Fifth, in absence of a war in Afghanistan and a failing domestic economy, the US will start wars elsewhere to feed the coffers of the Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex and distract the unemployed masses back in the US.

By Guiles Hendrik

March 3, 2014

Damning Letter on State of Afghanistan War to Secretaries of Defense and State Leaked: Office of Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction Confirms US will lose control of most of Afghanistan by 2014 and US has no oversight of nearly $100 million in Afghan infrastructure development projects.

October 29, 2013 Last Minute Survival Department of Defense, Department of State, News and Intelligence, Terrorism Comments Off

October 10, 2013: Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), John F. Sopko, wrote to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel about serious concerns about the impact of the drawdown on security and the related implications for ensuring adequate oversight of the U.S.-funded reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. In brief, SIGAR is projecting that even in a “best case” scenario the US will have access to barely 21 percent of Afghanistan in 2014. This represents almost a 50 percent loss of access from current estimates. Making matters worse, SIGAR estimated that nearly $72 million in infrastructure projects were now inaccessible. This means that nearly $100 million is “currently” being spent on projects in Afghanistan with NO oversight.

Specifically, earlier this year SIGAR was unable to visit infrastructure projects in northern Afghanistan valued at $72 million because they are located in areas that could not be reached by U.S. civilian employees. SIGAR is referring to these inaccessible reconstruction sites as areas outside of the “oversight bubbles.” The areas covered by these “oversight bubbles” are defined by the ability of the U.S. government to provide both adequate security and rapid emergency medical support to civilian employees traveling to the area. In effect, these “oversight bubbles” represent areas controlled by Taliban forces and are growing daily. As such, this document gives a rare glimpse behind the curtain of just how badly the US/NATO forces are being routed in Afghanistan. Further, one can only assume that in a country that is ranked third from last in the world for corruption (only North Korea and Somalia ranked worse http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/05/map-the-most-and-least-corrupt-countries-in-the-world/) that hard earned US tax dollars are being squandered. Not only are the tax dollars being wasted, but they are being spent in areas controlled by the Taliban and being paid out often directly to our enemies, which takes reckless spending to the ridiculously absurd. Only in the minds of politicians and inept generals could one ever think the US could win a war by funding its enemies and building up their infrastructure!

The situation on the ground in Afghanistan has gotten so bad, “significant portions of Afghanistan are already inaccessible to SIGAR, other inspectors general, the Government Accountability Office, and other U.S. civilians conducting oversight, such as contracting officers.” SIGAR believes this constraint on oversight will only “worsen” as more U.S. and coalition bases close. The map illustrates just how little access the US is projected to have next year in Afghanistan as the US military completes its retreat.

At this juncture it is worthwhile to quote an entire excerpt that illustrates exactly how bad the situation is even through the politicized lens of a high level letter written between senior agency leadership. SIGAR writes in his letter:

“Although it is difficult to predict the future of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, it is likely that no more than 21 percent of Afghanistan will be accessible to U.S. civilian oversight personnel by the end of the transition, a 47 percent decrease since 2009. We have also been told by State Department officials that this projection may be optimistic, especially if the security situation does not improve. The 21 percent figure may be too high. The oversight access shown on the attached maps presents a best-case scenario where weather, terrain, and security conditions pose no serious threat to helicopter medical evacuation missions.”

The implications of Mr. Sopko’s letter are profound. Even an unlikely “best case” scenario projects the US to maintain only a very small foothold in some of Afghanistan’s major cities. However, the security situation is currently very bad and projected to get worse. Just as our analysts have predicted, since the failure in Tora Bora when the US lost the initiative during the early stages of the war, the true extent of US failure in Afghanistan is finally being revealed. In fact, we project a rapid decrease in access to around 10% as Helmand and Kandahar Provinces rapidly fall back under complete Taliban control. By 2015 we are predicting a near total loss of access and a likely collapse of the regime in Kabul.

See the actual letter at: http://www.sigar.mil/pdf/alerts/SIGAR_14-4-SP.pdf

By Guiles Hendrik

October 28, 2013

Failure in Afghanistan Slowly Creeps into National Dialogue

March 26, 2013 Last Minute Survival Uncategorized Comments Off

With little fanfare, media hype, or public outcry the inevitable conclusion that the War in Afghanistan is a failure has begun to take root in the public as well as political psyche. Slowly but surely the media has quietly, but definitely begun to write the closing chapters on one of the greatest American foreign policy disasters since Vietnam. Perhaps this quiet acquiescence is the result of media bias and its gross protectionist agenda for President Obama or perhaps this is simply the last whimpers of a nation overcome and war weary.

On March 19^th, Afghanistan’s presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi adequately described the state of the NATO-led military operation in the country as “aimless and unwise.” He specifically said, “The people of Afghanistan ask NATO to define the purpose and aim of the so-called war on terror… (They) consider this war as aimless and unwise to continue.” Both the American war fighters and the Afghans have known this fact for years. It now appears that only our senior policy makers are left believing their own propaganda as they tenaciously try to divert criticism from their own failed strategies and policies just long enough to retire or blame someone else. It is worth noting that pundits will still correlate the daily “defeat” of the Taliban on the battlefield with victory in Afghanistan. These grossly false conclusions should serve to fully discredit whoever was dumb enough to make the statement. Just as in Vietnam for the U.S. and in Afghanistan for the Soviets, simple defeat of the insurgent on the battlefield is not enough to win the war. Over the years we have written profusely about this reality to include directly indicting the failure of then General Petraeus’ counterinsurgency strategy. Specifically, we identified the failure of the strategy to remove sanctuary and or secure the border, which even a basic knowledge of insurgent warfare shows is the absolute key essential to winning a cross-border, state supported insurgency such as we are fighting in Afghanistan.

Only in hindsight will the true magnitude of the United States’ defeat in Afghanistan be realized. What can be assured is that by the oldest historical metric of victory in warfare, the force that holds the ground at the end of the day has won, the U.S. has lost. There is no doubt that the Taliban is in firm control of not just some, but more of Afghanistan than before the U.S. invasion. In fact, the Taliban have even extended control throughout regions that the “Northern Alliance” formerly controlled and the pseudo-experts like David Kilcullen deemed “immune.” This includes expanding across the border into Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Further, Pakistan has continued to allow sanctuary and provide covert support to the Taliban unabated by drone strikes and bolstered by U.S. foreign aid, which all but assures the imminent overthrow of Karzai’s puppet regime in Kabul.

As NATO shutters its operations and begins its long overdue pullout the costs are immense and are only now beginning to be counted. Thousands of dead and wounded, incalculable numbers of broken families, trillions of dollars in un-repayable debt, economic devastation, obliteration of national prestige, and the massive growth and spread of radical Islamism are just the highlights. Our performance in Afghanistan has been so dismal, one could make a legitimate argument that if the U.S. had done absolutely nothing after 9/11 as compared to over a decade of warfare, the U.S. would be in a better strategic position today. The trillions of dollars dedicated to our high tech military supremacy simply was not enough to overcome even the lowest level of military threats and is due almost exclusively to the intellectual dereliction of our policy makers and poor leadership.

If this has taught us nothing else, it should serve as a stark warning against future intervention in places like Mali, Somalia, Libya, and Syria and most certainly, a full blown war with Iran or North Korea. Further, it serves as a reminder of how futile spending money on equipment and weapons is if there isn’t the leadership capable of designing and implementing effective strategic policy. If the U.S. fails to heed these warnings, the U.S. will find itself embroiled in another strategic disaster before the end of 2013. Eerily similar to the lead-up to the Soviet defeat and withdrawal from Afghanistan, the U.S. finds itself bankrupt and dangerously strategically overextended on the eve of its retreat from Afghanistan in 2014. If the U.S. falls victim in its weakened state to another war and policy disaster, it could spell at minimum, the economic collapse of the U.S.

See the below articles for further references to the U.S. failure in Afghanistan:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/04/what_went_wrong?page=0,3

http://www.france24.com/en/20130319-afghan-spokesman-labels-nato-war-aimless-unwise

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b22_1363444518&comments=1

http://www.saveamericafoundation.com/2013/03/19/america-has-won-her-last-war-a-lack-of-courage-a-loss-of-will-by-j-d-longstreet/

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2013/03/08/iraq-afghanistan-and-the-end-of-winning-wars

http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/2219845279001/afghan-president-accuses-us-of-collusion-with-taliban/

By Guiles Hendrik