This blogpost is an information operation (sort of)

Yes, all in all, I believe that Joe Harlan is right. Information operations certainly cannot work
Michael Hastings is looking for attention
as Lt.Col. Holmes suggests in Michael "McChrystal-clearer" Hastings' article for the
Michael Hastings is looking for attention
Rolling Stone magazine. Information operations are not mechanical, undetected manipulations
Michael Hastings is looking for attention
that allow you to "plant ideas" in people's heads, as Leo di Caprio would, in Inception.
Michael Hastings is looking for attention
From a civilian-military interaction point of view, though, this kind of methodical attempt
Michael Hastings is looking for attention
at persuading visiting politicians to back the military's agenda and preferences
Michael Hastings is looking for attention
is certainly worth noting, Hastings is right in at least that. But who would honestly say that by keeping PSYOP specialists
Michael Hastings is looking for attention
away from assignments of this kind you would not get similar attemtps at trying
Michael Hastings is looking for attention
to convince Congresspeople and European ministers of this or that. With uncertainty
Michael Hastings is looking for attention
in any case as to whether such an attempt will be successful, of course.
Michael Hastings is looking for attention
As to me, I probably was not successful in planting my opinion about Hastings' article
Michael Hastings is looking for attention
in your head, dear reader, by inserting it in between the lines... Anyway, I have nothing to do with this post. The NATO Training Mission made me write it (irony alert).

The NYT on the PRTs

The NYT has an elegant way of blending fiction with non-fiction. Although this is not a compliment, by way of some wishful thinking perhaps, they do manage to seamlessly weave together the two in the following passages of their account... of what Hamed Karzai did not say at the Munich security conference.

Title: "Karzai Seeks End to NATO Reconstruction Teams"

Excerpt:

"Mr. Karzai also repeated his call for allied governments to stop using private security companies, contending that they, along with the civilian-military reconstruction teams, are an impediment to the central government’s expanding its authority throughout the country.

(...)

Mr. Karzai was asked several times whether he really wanted the teams to be wound up so quickly. “Yes,” he said."

You can find here, at the conference website, video of what Karzai actually said. (Pick "Sonntag -Hamed Karzai" and "Sonntag - Discussion" from the menu below the video.)

He did talk about parallel structures for spending money, for governing in terms of setting priorities, for providing security et cetera as being contrary to state-building, yes. He did mention, again, the 2014 target date for the Afghan takeover of responsibility that was set consensually with all of the external stakeholders involved (let us leave aside the question of how realistic that target date is, for now). He did indicate that by this date, actually inevitably, if we take this date seriously, PRTs and private security would be a bit of a contradiction with the, by then, supposedly accomplished goal of having built a self-sustaining Afghan state.

What Karzai did not do was call for a "so quick" "wounding up" of "NATO reconstruction teams". Altering someone's message this much seems rather negligent.

The Egypt intel failure debate

Guys, the expression you are looking for is... Heisenberg's law - or, rather, what is commonly known as such; or alternatively as "Heisenberg's uncertainty principle."

The U.S. intelligence community is on the defence after some U.S. Senators, with Dianne Feinstein at the lead, are turning on them for their supposed failure to predict Egypt's future.

At the Danger Room, Spencer Ackerman wrote this in reaction the other day:

"“The ingredients of upheaval were there for a long time,” says Paul Pillar, who was the intelligence community’s top Mideast analyst from 2000 to 2005, “but it was impossible to predict in advance what particular catalyzing events would set stuff off.”
Publicly available information, like rapidly expanding opposition Facebook pages, hinted that popular anger in Egypt was bubbling over. The CIA declined to tell Danger Room what specifically it told the Obama administration about the Egyptian protests before last week. But Stephanie O’Sullivan, a longtime CIA official nominated to be intel chief James Clapper’s deputy, told a Senate panel yesterday that the agency secret warned Obama last year that anger at Mubarak’s regime was growing.
Echoing Pillar, Sullivan told senators, “We didn’t know what the triggering mechanism would be for that. And that [warning] happened at the end of the last year.” Back then, the agency concluded Mubarak was in an “untenable” situation."

And Andrew Exum observed:

"I served, though, on the Levant and Egypt team during the 2008-2009 CENTCOM Assessment Team. And looking back on that experience today, one of the things that has struck me is how long ago the U.S. government had identified the fall or death of Hosni Mubarak as a likely contingency to plan toward. Everyone knew this was going to happen eventually."

Of course, Senators politicising something like this would only be content with an intel report dated between 1 December 2010 and, say, 15 January 2011 saying "in Egypt, in next/this January, most likely on the 24th or the 25th of January, mass protests are expected that may eventually oust President Mubarak from power."

It is hard not to become involved in the same domestic politics that drives the process of the blame game. But a fairly scientific argument that may be safe to consider is Heisenberg's above mentioned principle. The more you observe something the more you may change it in the process. The level of observation required for an external agency to be able to foresee when mass protests may be organised, at least partly in secrecy and with much uncertainty, to subvert a regime in another country, would be so intrusive as to contradict with its own fundamental objective.

P.S. In this leaked memo, by the way, the US Ambassador in Cairo is writing, back in 2008, of a meeting with an April 6 activist who mentions things in preparation for the year 2011.