Pentagon Seeks to Expand Role in Intelligence -NYT (Boykin's war plan)

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - The Pentagon is drawing up a plan that would give the military a more prominent role in intelligence-collection operations that have traditionally been the province of the Central Intelligence Agency, including missions aimed at terrorist groups and those involved in weapons proliferation, Defense Department officials say.

The proposal is being described by some intelligence officials as an effort by the Pentagon to expand its role in intelligence gathering at a time when legislation signed by President Bush on Friday sets in motion sweeping changes in the intelligence community, including the creation of a national intelligence director. The main purpose of that overhaul is to improve coordination among the country's 15 intelligence agencies, including those controlled by the Pentagon.

The details of the plan remain secret and are evolving, but indications of its scope and significance have begun to emerge in recent weeks. One part of the overall proposal is being drafted by a team led by Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, a deputy under secretary of defense.
Among the ideas cited by Defense Department officials is the idea of "fighting for intelligence," or commencing combat operations chiefly to obtain intelligence.
...
But General Thomas warned that one possible danger in bringing battle commanders and intelligence officials so close together to fight a common enemy was the risk that the intelligence could be skewed to fit the commander's war plan and not the reality on the ground........MORE.....

http://nytimes.com/2004/12/19/politics/19military.html?hp&ex=1103432400&en=0623190e8121e407&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Interesting to see, noted at the end of the article, that Rumsfeld has expressed reservations about this proposal. Who's running the Pentagon?

[punpirate]

1. This one smells....

"... fighting for intelligence...." In other words, attacking around the world in order to garner prisoners then to be declared "enemy combatants" and relegated to military prisons for the purposes of torturing information out of them. There's a self-justifying process if ever there was one.

I knew Boykin was crazy as a loon when I first heard of him. This would seem to confirm this suspicion.

[Rose Siding]

3. It's the Bush Doctrine on steroids

Got questions? Invade!

[SmileMaker]

2. Boykin's "Kingdom Warriors" Abu Ghraib & beyond

Extremely long, well docunented article that shows just how dangerous this regime is getting.

Infiltrating the U.S. Military



Gen. Boykin’s “Kingdom Warriors” On the Road to Abu Ghraib and Beyond



 



 



By Katherine Yurica



 



October 12, 2004



 



 



 



Since GOP leaders have tasted the heady stuff of unlimited power and watched the success of their bullying tactics, they seem to take pride in the fact that intimidation and coercion silences all opposition. They’ve begun to step more boldly toward the goal of taking control of the judiciary—and it appears that nothing can stop them from destroying the system of checks and balances built into our constitution. Americans don’t seem to mind. We love the swagger of the cowboys in charge.



 



We must love Tom DeLay’s boast, “I am the government!”<1> else voters would throw him out on his ears. So those of us who sit and observe are spectators in the GOP’s sport of dismantling American constitutional rule. The Bush administration quietly sends the names of religiously ideological judges down to the Senate for confirmation, while the House devises diabolical bills to rip the heart out of our nation’s jurisprudence. By submitting legislation that seeks to strip the Supreme Court of its jurisdictional power, the House leaders hope to delimit what cases the federal courts can or cannot review.<2>  The hard right House leaders have gone so far as to introduce a bill that will grant congress the ability to overturn a Supreme Court decision that finds a law passed by congress is unconstitutional.<3> It appears that the entire constitutional structure of our nation could be hanging in the balance in the 2004 election.







How has the Republican Party been so radicalized and transformed? The consequences that flow from the fact that a secret religious infiltration of the Republican Party took place over a period of years prior to the last two elections have simply been underreported in the press. Infiltration and control of the GOP has placed the religious hard right comfortably in control of the party, which in turn places our republic in danger of being controlled by a heretical religious core that began its program of dominance in the 1980’s.<4>



 



It’s not the first time the religious right has succeeded. Probably the most remarkable plan to takeover an institution began in 1967, when so called “fundamentalists” laid out the strategy to take control of the sixteen million-member Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).  According to a chronology posted on the web,<5> Page Patterson a seminary doctoral student and Judge Paul Pressler met at Café du Monde in New Orleans and discussed a long term strategy for “fundamentalist domination of the SBC.”



 



By 1979, Patterson, Pressler “and others ran a ‘get out the vote’ campaign in fifteen states prior to the Convention, urging a defeat of the moderates in the SBC.”<6> Voters were actually bussed to the convention in mass numbers and left after the vote for the president of the organization.



 
http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/InfiltratingTheUSMilitaryGenBoykinsWarriors.html

[BattyDem]

4. "... fighting for intelligence...."

Which means shoot first and ask questions later. :eyes:

On edit: Is anyone else getting worried? At some point the rest of the world is going to get enough of this shit and we're going to get hit ... hard!

[Rose Siding]

5. I wasn't sure before the election...

if we'd be able to ever regain some kind of respectable reputation- maybe as the lovable big, dumb new kid- but not as an engine for progress and achievement.

Now, I just don't see a way for anyone currently on the scene to correct the course. South America is organizing. China and Russia are doing deals. Who knows where it will come from, but the motivation will not be hidden. Bush policies demand that others protect themselves.

The Great Thinkers in the US Congress concerned themselves with renaming french fries and getting rich. Checks and balances were unbelievably weakened during the first 4 years. It's impossible to know what will remain they leave but the bushies are the provocateurs of our downfall.

[DeepModem Mom]

6. kick