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Wednesday, January 26, 2005 |
 IHT. Iraq. ...electricity on the national grid began plummeting from a peak of about 5,300 megawatts, or a million watts, in September. By November the number had fallen below the politically sensitive benchmark of 4,500 megawatts, the level before American-led forces invaded Iraq, and bottomed out in mid-January at about 3,500 megawatts... Alsammarae (the minister of electricity) said that, try as he might, he had not been able to stay above his rock-bottom goal of 4,000 megawatts as insurgents hit transmission lines and the fuel lines feeding the generating plants.
"Why should vote for this government when I can't see any of the basic services available?" said an angry Baghdad resident, Muhammed Ali. He was speaking on Sunday, more than a week after a bomb ruptured a water main running from the city's principal supply, leaving most citizens without enough water for drinking, laundry and bathing.
4:18:20 PM 
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Scenario: Chechen Independence (Part I) A fictional scenario given current trends. This bare bones scenario will be fleshed out with details and color, but you can get the basics right now.
4:11:01 PM
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WP. SNAFU.
Col. George Waldroup, an Army reserve officer who commands the Defense Intelligence Agency's Strategic Support Branch, is described by associates as a colorful Texan who refers to himself in the third person, as "GW." "They arrived with shiny black kneepads and elbow pads, shiny black helmets," said one special forces officer who served with Waldroup's men in Iraq. "They brought M-4 rifles with all the accoutrements, scopes and high-end [satellite equipment] they didn't know how to use." An older member of Waldroup's staff "became an anchor because of his physical conditioning and his lack of knowledge of our tactics, techniques and procedures. The guy actually put us in danger." Another special forces officer, who served with the augmentation team members in Afghanistan, said some of the intelligence officers deployed with his unit were reluctant to leave their base and spoke only to local residents who ventured inside. "These guys can't set up networks and run agents and recruit tribal elders," he said.
9:50:03 AM
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An interesting item in the Defense Science Board's statement of work: Loss of national treasure?? Signs of life? Probably not. Of course, this will be conventional analysis and likely to totally miss the development of global guerrillas. Good luck!
Specifically, the Task Force's foci will be to evaluate force protection in the context of post major combat operations that have been conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the operations, loss of national treasure-- military and civilian, U.S. and other nations--has resulted from actions executed by non-state and rogue actors. The threat and capabilities these insurgent, terrorist and criminal actions present post a most serious challenge to our ability to achieve unified action.
8:39:45 AM
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Kevin Maney, a tech columnist that finds himself totally outgunned by amazing tech blogs, tells us that blogs are derived from Martin Luther and Thomas Paine. I will take that. However, he does leave out an important implication of the analogy. Both men published in response to the corruption of the established media (or at the very least, a media that was under the direct control of a corrupt power structure).
8:33:36 AM
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Bill Lind is working on a 4GW manual that he post online. Hope he puts it into a Wiki and uses weblogs for project teams. If he doesn't know how to do this, he should ask me. Once it gets close to final form, it should be packaged as a PDF for easy printing and dissemination via e-mail (since the site will likely be blocked by the US military).
8:20:58 AM
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© Copyright 2005 John Robb.
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