Have you thanked a Veteran for the Freedoms you enjoy Today?
Thank you to all of you for your service to our country, for signing that check that devoted life, limb, well being....
SOCIAL SECURITY NOW CALLED 'FEDERAL BENEFIT PAYMENT/ENTITLEMENT
If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both amounts from you and your employers at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved. This is your personal invested money.
Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.
That’s almost three times more than today’s average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration (Google it. This is a fact.)
Your retirement fund would last more than 33 years, until you are 98 if you retire at age 65.
I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts. Yet, the federal governments sends billions of our dollars around the world as "foreign aid". Are we being screwed, or what?
Just because they “borrowed” the money, doesn't mean that our investments are a charity. Let’s take a stand.
We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare. Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government. Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going, for the sake of that 92% of our population who need it.
Here’s a novel idea: Reduce "foreign aid" to support our own population.
Get out of the countries who do ot want us there. Bring our soldiers home and invest some of the $700B+ in giving them new careers building roads and parks, teaching our children, creating new technologies; discovering cures for illness.
Take the balance to begin paying back Social Security, and call it what it is:
Our Earned Retirement Income.
Your Social Security check is now referred to as a "Federal Benefit Payment".
It is actually Our Earned Retirement Income.
"Benefit Payment"?
This is not a benefit. It Is money taken from us and our employers.
Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did, too.
It totaled 15% of our income before taxes. If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that's close to $180,000 you invested in the Social Security fund. This is not a benefit. It Is money taken from us and our employers.
Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did, too.
If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both amounts from you and your employers at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved. This is your personal invested money.
Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.
That’s almost three times more than today’s average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration (Google it. This is a fact.)
Your retirement fund would last more than 33 years, until you are 98 if you retire at age 65.
I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts. Yet, the federal governments sends billions of our dollars around the world as "foreign aid". Are we being screwed, or what?
Instead, the crooks in Washington on our payrolls pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever did, they took our money and used it elsewhere. They forgot that it is OUR money they steal. They did not have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend or give our money away.
And they did not pay interest on the debt they assumed.
Recently, they told us that the money will not support us for very much longer.
Is it our fault they misused our investment money?
To add insult to injury, they are now calling our money a “benefit” as if we never worked to earn every penny of it.Recently, they told us that the money will not support us for very much longer.
Is it our fault they misused our investment money?
Just because they “borrowed” the money, doesn't mean that our investments are a charity. Let’s take a stand.
We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare. Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government. Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going, for the sake of that 92% of our population who need it.
Here’s a novel idea: Reduce "foreign aid" to support our own population.
Get out of the countries who do ot want us there. Bring our soldiers home and invest some of the $700B+ in giving them new careers building roads and parks, teaching our children, creating new technologies; discovering cures for illness.
Take the balance to begin paying back Social Security, and call it what it is:
Our Earned Retirement Income.
YOU NEED TO SHARE THIS INFORMATION.
US Court Fines Iran $813M for 1983 Lebanon Attack
Jul 07, 2012
Agence France-Presse
A US federal judge has ordered Iran to pay more than $813 million in damages and interest to the families of 241 US soldiers killed in the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Lebanon.
"After this opinion, this court will have issued over $8.8 billion in judgments against Iran as a result of the 1983 Beirut bombing," Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in a ruling this week, a copy of which was seen Friday by AFP.
"Iran is racking up quite a bill from its sponsorship of terrorism," the Washington judge added, noting that "a number of other Beirut bombing cases remain pending, and their completion will surely increase this amount."
On October 23, 1983, 241 American soldiers, including 220 Marines, were killed in Beirut when a truck packed with explosives rammed through barricades and detonated in front of the US barracks near Beirut's international airport.
The attack was one of the deadliest ever against Americans.
The same day, in a coordinated attack, 58 French paratroopers were killed by a truck bomb at the French barracks in Beirut.
The twin bombings have been blamed on Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran.
Lamberth, whose ruling was delivered Tuesday, wrote that "no award -- however many billions it contained -- could accurately reflect the countless lives that have been changed by Iran's dastardly acts."
The nearly $813.77 million verdict is the eighth against Iran resulting from the 1983 bombing.
In 2007, under a law allowing foreign governments to be sued in US courts, the same judge ordered Iran to pay $2.65 billion to victims' families, an amount he wrote at the time "may be the largest ever entered by a court of the United States against a foreign nation."
"The court applauds plaintiffs' persistent efforts to hold Iran accountable for its cowardly support of terrorism," Lamberth wrote in this week's ruling.
"The court concludes that defendant Iran must be punished to the fullest extent legally possible for the bombing in Beirut on October 23, 1983. This horrific act impacted countless individuals and their families, a number of whom receive awards in this lawsuit," the federal court in Washington added.
NATO: Boost Number of Women Troops
Jul 10, 2012
Agence France-Presse
NATO countries should raise the number of women soldiers and improve promotion opportunities for its female security and defense chiefs, alliance officials agreed at a conference in Sofia on Tuesday.
"Whether it is ending a conflict, managing a transition or rebuilding a country, the world can no longer afford to continue ignoring half of the population," U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, Marie Yovanovitch said at the forum.
Over 90 top-rank defence and security officials from 21 NATO members and partners joined the conference, which highlighted the practical contributions women can make in the military, both as soldiers and as decision-makers.
Yovanovitch especially noted the unique role of women in peace negotiations and in resolving gender-related conflicts or problems linked to abuse of marginalised groups.
The U.S. official warned that as the number of women soldiers grew, it was important to open their way to decision-making positions by providing them with training and better promotion opportunities.
"Prejudices still exist among armed forces commanders about the number of women in their ranks and the positions they should be allowed to take," Bulgarian Defence Minister Anyu Angelov said, insisting that promotions should instead be based on merit.
Before starting talk about female commanders, NATO countries should first make an effort to overcome a trend for "stagnating" numbers of female soldiers in their armed forces' ranks, NATO Chief of Office on Gender Perspectives Hilde Segers said.
"It is a very, very slow evolution. Without further action I do not think it is going to change," Segers told AFP on the sidelines of the forum.
Data by her office showed that the current number of women in the armies of NATO member states ranged between 20 percent in Hungary and 2.1 percent in Poland.
"I do not want to use that dirty word 'quotas'. But we need targets and this is not the case today," Segers said, adding that gender equality was still a "very sensitive topic" in the military.
Agence France-Presse
A US federal judge has ordered Iran to pay more than $813 million in damages and interest to the families of 241 US soldiers killed in the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Lebanon.
"After this opinion, this court will have issued over $8.8 billion in judgments against Iran as a result of the 1983 Beirut bombing," Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in a ruling this week, a copy of which was seen Friday by AFP.
"Iran is racking up quite a bill from its sponsorship of terrorism," the Washington judge added, noting that "a number of other Beirut bombing cases remain pending, and their completion will surely increase this amount."
On October 23, 1983, 241 American soldiers, including 220 Marines, were killed in Beirut when a truck packed with explosives rammed through barricades and detonated in front of the US barracks near Beirut's international airport.
The attack was one of the deadliest ever against Americans.
The same day, in a coordinated attack, 58 French paratroopers were killed by a truck bomb at the French barracks in Beirut.
The twin bombings have been blamed on Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran.
Lamberth, whose ruling was delivered Tuesday, wrote that "no award -- however many billions it contained -- could accurately reflect the countless lives that have been changed by Iran's dastardly acts."
The nearly $813.77 million verdict is the eighth against Iran resulting from the 1983 bombing.
In 2007, under a law allowing foreign governments to be sued in US courts, the same judge ordered Iran to pay $2.65 billion to victims' families, an amount he wrote at the time "may be the largest ever entered by a court of the United States against a foreign nation."
"The court applauds plaintiffs' persistent efforts to hold Iran accountable for its cowardly support of terrorism," Lamberth wrote in this week's ruling.
"The court concludes that defendant Iran must be punished to the fullest extent legally possible for the bombing in Beirut on October 23, 1983. This horrific act impacted countless individuals and their families, a number of whom receive awards in this lawsuit," the federal court in Washington added.
Jul 10, 2012
Agence France-Presse
NATO countries should raise the number of women soldiers and improve promotion opportunities for its female security and defense chiefs, alliance officials agreed at a conference in Sofia on Tuesday.
"Whether it is ending a conflict, managing a transition or rebuilding a country, the world can no longer afford to continue ignoring half of the population," U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, Marie Yovanovitch said at the forum.
Over 90 top-rank defence and security officials from 21 NATO members and partners joined the conference, which highlighted the practical contributions women can make in the military, both as soldiers and as decision-makers.
Yovanovitch especially noted the unique role of women in peace negotiations and in resolving gender-related conflicts or problems linked to abuse of marginalised groups.
The U.S. official warned that as the number of women soldiers grew, it was important to open their way to decision-making positions by providing them with training and better promotion opportunities.
"Prejudices still exist among armed forces commanders about the number of women in their ranks and the positions they should be allowed to take," Bulgarian Defence Minister Anyu Angelov said, insisting that promotions should instead be based on merit.
Before starting talk about female commanders, NATO countries should first make an effort to overcome a trend for "stagnating" numbers of female soldiers in their armed forces' ranks, NATO Chief of Office on Gender Perspectives Hilde Segers said.
"It is a very, very slow evolution. Without further action I do not think it is going to change," Segers told AFP on the sidelines of the forum.
Data by her office showed that the current number of women in the armies of NATO member states ranged between 20 percent in Hungary and 2.1 percent in Poland.
"I do not want to use that dirty word 'quotas'. But we need targets and this is not the case today," Segers said, adding that gender equality was still a "very sensitive topic" in the military.
UPDATE: July 23, 2012
AMERICANS ACCOUNTED-FOR: There are still 1,664 Americans listed by the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) as missing and unaccounted-for from the Vietnam War. Most recently announced are LT Dennis W. Peterson, USN, NJ, listed as KIA/BNR in North Vietnam on July 19, 1967, and SFC Gunther H. Wald, USA, CA, listed as MIA in South Vietnam on November 3, 1969. The remains of LT Peterson were recovered on November 20, 2000, and identified October 21, 2011. SFC Wald’s remains were recovered April 13, 2010, and identified January 6, 2011. The number of Americans announced as returned and identified since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 is now 919. Another 63 US personnel, recovered post-incident by the US and identified before the end of the war, bring the official total recovered and identified from the Vietnam War to 982. Of the unaccounted-for 1,664 personnel, 90% were lost in Vietnam or in areas of Laos and Cambodia under Vietnam’s wartime control: Vietnam–1,282 (VN-470, VS-812); Laos–318; Cambodia–57; PRC territorial waters–7; more than 450 were over-water losses.
MOVEMENT ON ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS: Vietnam turned over long-requested archival documents during Technical Talks held May 4th in Hanoi. This has been a League priority for decades during which appeals have been made for unilateral provision of such archival records. Lists prepared and updated by DPMO’s Research Analysis Directorate (RA) and JPAC’s Intelligence Directorate (J2) were repeatedly raised by US and League officials to all levels of Vietnamese officials. This recent responsiveness is encouraging, reflecting a decision by Vietnam’s leaders that is most welcome and deeply appreciated. The current political and security regional environment is prompting expanded military-to-military relations between the US and Vietnam, with increases in cooperation on matters pertaining to bilateral interests. Vietnam has long recognized the important role that the POW/MIA issue played as their “bridge” to expanding and broadening bilateral relations.
SECRETARY CLLINTON VISITS LAOS, VIETNAM & CAMBODIA: Embarking July 5th on a trip that encompasses Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, this is the first time in 57 years that a US Secretary of State has visited Laos. Bilateral US-Lao relations were not severed during the war and have steadily improved since 1982, after a hiatus of about seven years during which there was minimal dialogue and no cooperation. Although fairly imprecise, AFP (Agence France Press) reporting on the State Department’s announcement indicated that Secretary Clinton would likely focus on the Lower Mekong Initiative, a multilateral program to settle controversies that arise related to electrical power-generating dams on the Mekong River, efforts to fight drug trafficking and “may also seek to give fresh impetus to American hopes to recover the remains of US troops killed there during the Vietnam War.”
Information just in is that the Lao have agreed to permit base-camping in proximity to excavation sites and ground transportation to sites accessible by road, two specific areas of concern to US officials seeking to conduct field operations in Laos as efficiently, effectively and safely as possible. These are steps the League had sought and, though much remains to be done, including reissuing of a license to do business in Laos for Helicopters New Zealand, this is important progress. The League extends sincere appreciation to senior Lao officials for their favorable decisions and to Secretary of State Clinton for supporting these reasonable, necessary steps to enable greater accounting cooperation.
Comment: Department of State has been most helpful over the last two-three years in advancing the POW/MIA accounting agenda, advocated in large measure by Assistant Secretary of State for Asian Affairs Kurt Campbell, his Principle Deputy Joseph Yun, keynote speaker at the League’s 43rd Annual Meeting and the professional staff at the Department of State’s Mainland Southeast Asia Office. The visit to Laos was especially important as it has been a long time coming and drew significant attention to Laos and to the issue. Since our US Ambassadors to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are all very engaged and strongly support accounting objectives, the League is confident that the Secretary raised the issue in ways helpful to increasing the pace and scope of the overall effort. Secretary Clinton had already been to Vietnam on two occasions and will next be in Phnom Penh for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum (ASEAN Regional Forum or ARF) and related ministerial and post-ministerial conferences.
SECRETARY OF DEFENSE VISITS CAM RANH BAY: In mid-June, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta met with his counterpart, Minister of Defense general Phung Quang Thanh, another significant step to expand military ties between the US and Vietnam during which Vietnam announced agreement to longstanding US requests to permit US personnel into previously restricted areas to conduct excavations. Just prior to the Secretary’s visit and, very importantly, Vietnam turned over long-requested archival documents that are still being analyzed for usefulness to achieving accounting objectives.
OBAMA ADMINISTRATION PLEDGES SUPPORT: On Memorial Day, May 28th, at the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the President and Secretary of Defense made very specific commitments to sustain priority on the accounting effort, drawing attention to the need for answers during remarks kicking off the 50th Anniversary Commemorative Celebration of the Vietnam War. In the course of his remarks, the President stated, “And when an American does not come back -- including the 1,666 Americans still missing from the Vietnam War -- let us resolve to do everything in our power to bring them home. This is our solemn promise to mothers like Sarah Shay who joins us today, 93 years old, who has honored her son, Major Donald Shay, Jr., missing in action for 42 years. There she is. Sarah, thank you for your courage. God bless you.” (The huge audience rose to give longstanding League member Sara Frances Shay a standing ovation in recognition of dedication and service.) Secretary Panetta also made specific commitments, stating, “Today, Department of Defense personnel are working diligently to identify and locate the remains of fallen service members missing in action in Vietnam. Let me assure you: this sacred mission will continue until all of our troops come home and are accounted for. It reflects the determination of our military and our country to leave no man or woman behind, and to honor those who have honored us with their service, valor, and sacrifice.”
CHANGES IN DPMO: MG W. Montague “Q” Winfield, USA (Ret) arrived in the office on May 21st as the new Deputy Assistant Secretary (DASD) for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs and Director of DPMO. He replaced former DASD Bob Newberry. Also no longer in the DPMO front office are former Principal Director Edward Frothingham and former Acting Chief of Staff Colleen Getz. The League looks forward to working with DASD Winfield and will consult, cooperate and assist in every reasonable, appropriate way to ensure success. On June 5th, League Chairman of the Board Ann Mills-Griffiths met with DASD Winfield to discuss many areas of mutual, substantive interest.
FIELD OPERATIONS: Joint Field Activities (JFAs) are now taking place in Laos and will resume soon in Vietnam. With the impetus provided by high level visits and resulting commitments, the League is hopeful that the pace and scope of US efforts to account for Vietnam War missing personnel will continue to expand to enable getting answers before witnesses are no longer available and remains have disintegrated even more due to acidic soil in the region. Earlier this year, JPAC conducted a successful JFA in Cambodia, though utilizing only one RT and one trilateral IT, working with Cambodian and Vietnamese counterparts. Field operations in Cambodia must be more frequent.
THE LATEST FEDERAL SCAM ON THE PUBLIC:
The Marine Corps League is proud to announce a major addition to our member benefits package. We have just added a Veterans Employment opportunity program to our website. http://www.mcleague.com/ The site “ OPERATION EMPLOY VETS is run by CareerBuilder, one of the largest employment jobsites in the country. The site provides both job search information and the opportunity to post your resume to be viewed by potential employers. Please ensure that this information gets passed down to your Detachments and hopefully highlighted in your Division and Department newsletters. It is our goal to help provide employment opportunities to Marines and other Veterans out there who could use our help. Thanks for caring and helping. Semper Fi
Warren Griffith
Steps to Reduce VA Claims Backlog
Week of July 16, 2012
The Department of Veterans Affairs processes more than a million disability compensation claims a year, for veterans of every age and era, whether they served in wartime or during periods of relative calm. Despite this, 558,000 claims are in "backlog" status. A new electronic claims processing system VA wide To address this issue. Read Tom Philpott's latest Military Update to learn more about the new VA system.
By Tom Curry, msnbc.com National Affairs Writer Updated at 4:15 pm ET The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a federal law called the Stolen Valor Act which prohibits a person from falsely claiming that he has been awarded a military honor. The case involved Xavier Alvarez who was an elected member of the Three Valleys Municipal Water District Board in Pomona, California. In 2007 Alvarez said at a public water district board meeting that he was a retired Marine, had been “wounded many times,” and had been “awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor” in 1987. In fact, he never served in the United States armed forces. Alvarez pleaded guilty to violating the Stolen Valor Act, but claimed that his false statements were protected by the First Amendment right of free speech. The majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy said, “The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society.” Related: Lying about military service? Bloggers have you in their sights Kennedy quoted from the famous dissent by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in the 1919 Abrams decision: “The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” Kennedy said, "Some false statements are inevitable if there is to be an open and vigorous expression of views in public and private conversation, expression the First Amendment seeks to guarantee." Recommended: Supreme Court upholds health care law Writing a dissent for himself, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Samuel Alito said a long line of prior court decisions recognized “that the right to free speech does not protect false factual statements that inflict real harm and serve no legitimate interest.” Alito said, “Legitimate award recipients and their families have expressed the harm they endure when an imposter takes credit for heroic actions that he never performed. One Medal of Honor recipient described the feeling as a ‘slap in the face of veterans who have paid the price and earned their medals.’” Alito said diluting the effect of military awards “harms the military by hampering its efforts to foster morale and esprit de corps.” . DoD Could Renew Push to Restrict Personal Weapons Military.com| by Bryant Jordan The Pentagon appears ready to take on gun rights advocates this year in order to give commanders the ability to restrict troops at high risk of suicide from keeping their personal firearms easily available in their homes. Some Army leaders had previously encouraged troops to use gun locks on their weapons at home, or recommended that high-risk troops lock up their personal weapons on base if they were believed to be high risk. But the National Rifle Association and gun advocates objected and Congress barred that practice in last year’s defense authorization bill. But with military suicides continuing to climb, key leaders are not giving up on regaining a tool they considered helpful in saving some troops’ lives. “There’ll be a broad discussion on that,” Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki told Military.com Wednesday, after a senior Pentagon official stressed the importance of the policy at a conference on military and veterans suicide. Dr. Jonathan Woodson, an Army Reserve brigadier general who serves as assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, had told the conference the services must get better at recognizing people at risk of suicide and then doing what they know works to improve the odds. “In many circumstances, awareness of risk means removing firearms from those who we believe are at risk of harming themselves or others,” he said. “I would ask all of you at this conference to commit to making reasonable recommendations that will guide uniform policy that will allow separation of privately owned firearms from those believed to be at risk of suicide.” Those may prove to be fighting words to the NRA, which lobbied for the ban on personal gun restrictions even as the Army revealed its increasing numbers of military suicides and made the link between the deaths and personal weapons. Former Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli, in an interview with CNN, said the best way to reduce suicide among troops is to take the weapons away from those who appear likely to hurt themselves. “A majority of [suicides] have two things in common, alcohol and a gun,” he told the network. “And when you have somebody that you in fact feel is high risk, I don’t believe it’s unreasonable to tell that individual that it would not be a good idea to have a weapon around the house.” The NRA, however, not only thought it unreasonable, but the director of its lobbying arm called it “preposterous,” arguing Army leaders’ actions were intrusive on soldiers’ rights to own their own guns if they chose. Chris Cox slammed a proposal to make restrictions that were being applied locally into a military-wide policy. As a result Cox, the NRA and Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe crafted legislation put into the 2011 defense bill that barred the secretary of defense from issuing any regulation or policy on legally owned personal firearms or ammunition kept by troops or civilian employees off base, or from collecting any information on their guns or ammo. The Pentagon this month released figures showing that military suicides jumped after leveling off in 2010-11. Figures show that 154 servicemembers took their own lives during the first 155 days of 2012. “We know that firearms play a prominent role in completed suicides, particularly with males,” Woodson said. “We need to have a straightforward conversation in our community about what actions make a difference, and it is about communities, it’s not about authorities imposing regulations, but about preparing communities to be partners in this process.”
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Military has to fight to purchase lauded IED buster‘Awesome’ software platform left out of standard budget
U.S. commanders increasingly are turning to a relatively obscure battlefield detective to find buried bombs, a major killer of Americans in Afghanistan.
But getting permission to buy the detection system has not been easy, a congressman says.
The detective is not a sniffer dog, surveillance gear or metal detector. It is a software platform called Palantir that allows intelligence analysts to quickly mine streams of war-fighting data and calculate likely spots where the Taliban are hiding improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to attack allied convoys.
The Washington Times has obtained internal military documents that show commanders praising Palantir as a roadside-bomb buster. At the same time, they had to urge higher-ups to let them buy the system because the software platform is not standard issue or a separate budgeted item.
“The problem with the military is they have big programs for billions and billions of dollars, and Palantir is a semi-off-the-shelf, awesome product — software that’s written by geniuses not working at the Defense Department,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican and member of the House Armed Services Committee.
“This is a long-term Pentagon issue in the way that the Pentagon and the war-fighters kind of fight over what they should be using because they don’t see things eye to eye,” he said.
“Palantir is being used, but not without a fight. Ground combat commanders are having to fight to get stuff to use that the Pentagon doesn’t want them to use.”
The Army told The Times that it has invested in a broad-based intelligence collection system — the Distributed Common Ground System-Army, which it can update as needed. The Army said soldiers are using the ground system and Palantir concurrently.
The Common Ground System “is the Army’s program of record, and has been built deliberately to support current and future requirements of the intelligence community and government agency framework so the Army can save time and money leveraging existing tools and resources,” said Col. Charles Wells, the system’s project manager. “We combine government and commercial software to integrate best-of-breed applications and solutions to our soldiers.”
Documented effectiveness
“Program of record” designation means it is included as a separate item in the Army’s annual budget submission to Congress.
According to Mr. Hunter’s office, the Pentagon has spent about $222 million in the past two years on the Common Ground System and $20 million on the Palantir system, which comprises computer servers, laptops and other support equipment.
Palantir is best known inside government circles as software that can track terrorist financing and uncover fraud. At some point during the war, Palantir Technologies Inc., the company that developed the software, adapted it to do detective work on IEDs as it was fed volumes of information — open-sourced and classified — on battlefield trends.
Internal military documents show commanders pressing their superiors to make Palantir more available.
One such document was written Feb. 13 by Maj. Gen. John Toolan, then the top Marine Corps commander in southwestern Afghanistan, to the Pentagon's Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office. The office had provided Gen. Toolan with funds to buy three Palantir servers and other components for a yearlong deployment.
“I am pleased to report that Palantir has performed outstandingly,” Gen. Toolan said. “Intelligence analysts find it straightforward and intuitive. Palantir reduced the time required for countless analytical functions and streamlined other, once cumbersome, processes.”
In a sentence that shows Palantir was still not a fixture in the Pentagon’s procurement cycle, Gen. Toolan said: “I hope the Marine Corps will further its relationship with [the combating terrorism office] providing this capability to USMC forces engaged in the current fight and that the Marine Corps will eventually integrate Palantir into its program of record.”
After having taken charge of southwestern Afghanistan’s regional command, Gen. Toolan in June 2011 told Pentagon reporters that his intelligence team was locating where the roadside bombs were being assembled.
‘Where the bad guys are’
“One of our primary objectives is to identify the network of those IED builders, find out who they are, and then take them off of the network,” he said. “I think we are getting much better at that process. We have had success almost on a continuous basis since we’ve been here of identifying the IED makers and then targeting them appropriately so we can locate them and either capture them or kill them.”
Another internal document obtained by The Times shows that Army combat units in Afghanistan were seeking Army approval to buy Palantir.
It was written November by an intelligence officer with the 82nd Airborne Division, deployed in Kandahar. The officer sought approval to buy Palantir through the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force. In the memo, the officer compares Palantir with an existing intelligence-sifting system.
“Currently,” the unnamed officer wrote, “there are several databases that IED information is stored on. These databases, although very comprehensive, have to be searched individually for IED reports and currently available tools do not allow for the timely fusion and analysis of the information. Solving very hard analytical problems takes several days when using existing tools against these data sources. In our experience in using the Palantir platform against the same problems, we were able to reduce this time to a few hours. This shortfall translates into operational opportunities missed and unnecessary risk to the force.”
The division ultimately won approval to buy more platforms. In the first three months of 2012, it reported a 12 percent increase in the number of IEDs found and cleared, according to a memo reviewed by The Times.
“Palantir maps out where the bad guys are,” said Mr. Hunter, who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Marine officer. “It maps out all kinds of stuff. Secreted stuff. Open source stuff. It brings it all together for the analysts to say, ‘Hey, here’s where they’re going to be putting IEDs.’ It’s pretty amazing for their found-and-cleared rate to go up 12 percent in three months. That is drastic.”
Overall, the NATO command reports a decrease in IED attacks compared with last year. According to the website icasualties.org, of 174 battlefield deaths of Americans this year, 86, or 49 percent, were caused by IEDs.
Palantir Technologies was founded in 2004 by alumni of PayPal, where they developed software to detect fraud.
“Palantir Technologies is working to radically change how groups analyze information,” its website says. “Our products are built for real analysis with a focus on security, scalability, ease of use and collaboration. They are broadly deployed in the intelligence, defense, law enforcement and financial communities, and are spreading rapidly by word of mouth into applications in other industries and realms of impact.”
The company did not respond to a request for comment.
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