{"id":30015,"date":"2012-05-18T08:16:37","date_gmt":"2012-05-18T12:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=30015"},"modified":"2012-05-18T15:22:45","modified_gmt":"2012-05-18T19:22:45","slug":"regarding-counterstrike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=30015","title":{"rendered":"Regarding Counterstrike . . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember the outcry after publication of the book about the bin Laden raid Counterstrike<\/strong><\/em>? That the authors had published operational information that could hamper future operations and endanger US lives?<\/p>\n

Well, according to the authors<\/a>, that information was given to them by the White House.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was stopped by a very senior officer in the special operations community who basically wanted to rip my lungs out,\u201d said Thom Shanker, who co-authored \u201cCounterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda,\u201d with Eric Schmitt.<\/p>\n

But, he revealed at a counter terrorism expo this week, the info came directly and officially from the White House, not some garbage can digging operation. \u201cI said to him, \u2018Sir, that information came officially to us from the podium at the White House,\u2019\u201d Shanker said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As CINC, it is the prerogative of the POTUS to authorize the release of military information.\u00a0 Often this is done for political purposes. Since Eisenhower, most US presidents have done that – either accurately or via lying through their teeth. Kennedy used the nonexistent “missile gap” as a candidate, and continued to use it as an excuse for increased defense spending. (He also famously lied when asked point-blank if American troops were in combat in Vietnam, answering:\u00a0 “No.”)\u00a0 LBJ exposed the existence of the SR-71 (and actually renamed the aircraft in doing so – the original designation was R\/S-71, for “Reconnaissance\/Strike”).\u00a0 Nixon’s credibility problems are legendary.\u00a0 Carter openly acknowledged US satellite reconnaissance, . Reagan <\/del> and also caught heat for announcing the existence of the B2<\/del> US stealth aircraft programs. Bush(43) was wrongly accused of lying about Iraqi WMD as an excuse to invade Iraq. And I’m sure that I could find other examples from most other presidencies if I tried.<\/p>\n

But I really wish the POTUS and his staff would think things thru better when it comes to talking publicly about US military capabilities and intentions. When it comes to divulging military capabilities, saying less is usually better than saying more.<\/p>\n

Because inadvertently saying too much can cost lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember the outcry after publication of the book about the bin Laden raid Counterstrike? That the … Regarding Counterstrike . . . .<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}