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Where the Puck
Will Be...
In Thomas Barnett's 2005 presentation
of
Military in the 21st Century, he said:
"I
differentiate between tactical speed that is an obvious good because
it gets our service men and women home at the end of the day, alive
in one piece. Differentiate from that and operational
speed which I like to call net-centric warfare’s Wayne Gretsky
speed. Wayne Gretsky, greatest hockey player in history in the NHL.
He was asked, why are you so good, you’re not the fastest skater. He
said, “I don’t skate to where the puck is, I skate to where it will
be”. That’s common operational picture. That’s speed of command.
That’s synchronicity. That’s moving bytes more than bullets."
On Sunday night when I settled in to
watch the local news and the first story was about the takedown of Osama
Bin Laden in Pakistan by a Seal Team - and then the camera switch to
Times Square with the news reader talking about the celebration taking
place - but all I saw was Sunday night traffic returning to Manhattan, I
knew it was "Showtime". The next day's images with the munchkins
gathered singing, 'Ding Dong the Witch is Dead', my thought was where
the puck are they going with this bit of absurdity.
The 'ah ha' came when I heard a brief
comment from Leon Panetta on the subject of waterboarding. Leon
Panetta is one of those people who for the most part, slithers through
life without being noticed very much - but who seems to be connected to
power despite his luster lack on all fronts. That is - until
this game scenario began. If you go to the
Washington Post and do a search on 'Panetta', the paper is filled
with stories of Panetta as the new John Wayne of the CIA.
One of the stories, "A
Raid Reconstructed: Highly rehearsed, Team Six finds itself
improvising in Bin Laden's lair" said this:
WASHINGTON
— So much could have gone wrong as SEAL
Team Six swept over Pakistan’s dark
landscape, dropped down ropes into a
compound lined by wall after wall,
exchanged gunfire and confronted
“Geronimo” face to face. The vital
things went right.
Just about
every contingency the 25 commandos
trained for came at them, rapidly,
chaotically and dangerously, in their
lunge for Osama bin Laden.
... [gotta love the drama - like the
old west dime novels]
In short,
the U.S. had no direct evidence that bin
Laden would be there during the assault
— or indeed had ever been there.
President Barack Obama put the raiders
in motion on the “pretty good chance”
they would find their man, as CIA
Director Leon Panetta, who was
overseeing the operation back in
Washington, put it.
In another article...
Bin Laden raid shows blur between military and intelligence: Who’s a
soldier, who's a spy?
WASHINGTON
— Navy SEALs carried out what those
involved call a textbook military
operation that killed the world’s most
wanted man, Osama bin Laden.
Yet the
man in charge was CIA Director Leon
Panetta — not Defense Secretary Robert
Gates.
That speaks volumes about the government’s rarely noticed post-9/11
melding of military might with intelligence craft.
It’s gotten a lot harder lately to distinguish between soldier and
spy. The blending of the two missions can blur the definition of an
act of war, raise questions about oversight and accountability and
create a clash of military and intelligence cultures.
In the bin Laden mission, the chain of command extended from Obama
to Panetta to Navy Adm. William H. McRaven, himself a SEAL. McRaven
is commander of the military’s Joint Special Operations Command.
That is the secretive outfit in charge of SEAL Team Six and the
military’s other specialized counterterrorism units.
Panetta’s order to McRaven was, “Find Osama bin Laden.” And if the
al-Qaida leader could not be found at Abbottabad compound, the CIA
chief directed, “Get out quickly and safely.”
Gates,
the second-in-command to President Barack Obama, has made no comment
on the raid, though the top-flight SEALs, officially called the Navy
Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU, and their parent
organization, JSOC, answer to the Pentagon.
Wait.. wait... I'm getting a vision...
I see stovepipes. I see
Al Gore.
I see
David Osborne,
Elaine Kamarck,
IBM and Haavaard...Haavaard...Haavaard. It's a
Vision of "Governance in the 21st Century" - reinvention
of government - privatization, consolidation of power, fascism and
police state implemented through the fiber and the "partnership between
DOJ and DOD". That's where this puck is going.
Leon Panetta was the
Director of the OMB when the "Reinvention of Government" project
began - and then was appointed to be the White House Chief of Staff
replacing Mack McLarty.
He
served as White House Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton from
1993 until 1994. In 1994, the President asked his OMB Director, Leon
Panetta, what was wrong with his administration and was told about
the lack of order in the White House. McLarty was out. According to
author Nigel Hamilton, "Panetta replaced McLarty for the rest of
Clinton's first term—and the rest is history. To be a great leader,
a modern president must have a great chief of staff—and in Leon
Panetta, Clinton got the enforcer he deserved."[3]
Title: Briefing by OMB Director Panetta 1993-10-26
DIRECTOR PANETTA: What I would like to
do is to present a brief summary of the elements of the package that
we will be presenting and forwarding to the Congress later today.
We have
Elaine Kamarck and Al Burman speak to the procurement issues. Also
present is Colleen Preston from DOD, and she's familiar with
particular issues that relate to DOD with regards to procurement.
Let me again emphasize that the primary effort of this package is
really making an effort to try to make government work better and to
try to achieve savings in that process. But the main
focus is really on government reforms. We're trying to do a number
of efforts at streamlining that I'll describe, at eliminating
programs, at consolidating programs. We're also doing a major reform
with regards to the whole collection process within government, to
try to expedite the ability to make these collections on outstanding
debts; also to try to provide incentives for efficiency
competitiveness, as well as the procurement reform that both the
President and the Vice President spoke to.
Let me mention the key elements that are in the package. Hopefully,
you all have a briefing packet on that. It's basically tied to the
four areas that were described in the National
Performance Review -- cutting back to basics, cutting red tape,
putting customers first, and empowering employees to get results.
I won't drag this out. Don't need
to. The following really tells you what you need to know
about Leon Panetta:
Numbers Runner, 1994
"Just six or seven insiders"
guided the selection process that ultimately put
Panetta in charge of OMB, according to a White
House source. Warren M. Christopher, who led the
transition effort, had clear instructions that
he was to find a team player. Although it is
widely held that the President-elect and Panetta
had an immediate rapport, Panetta also got a
strong boost from the House leadership.
At an
evening affair in Arkansas soon after the
election, Speaker Thomas S. Foley, D-Wash.,
Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, D-Mo., and
Ways and Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski,
D-Ill., cornered Clinton to push Panetta for the
job.
That link was from this blog
on Government Executive website...
More Thoughts on Panetta
So Panetta is connected to the Chicago
Political Machine despite the fact that he is from California and
Panetta was recently appointed to be the Secretary of Defense.
I don't remember exactly what it was that
put Leon Panetta on my radar screen - I think it was a piece of
legislation on Thomas, but when I searched on him, I found this most
interesting story:
True Tale of the Twin Towers
Vicky Davis
May 6, 2011
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