Monday Mourning

FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM

1.  The art of answering questions. Contributor and attorney Sean Bigley advises, “Whatever issues you think you have, you can be certain that your investigator has dealt with dozens of people with far bigger problems. Your mission is to blend into the larger pool of security clearance applicants – not to stand out by sharing your life story. You do that by providing ‘just the facts.’”

2.  Choosing your cards. Also from barrister Bigley, “Although your investigator may have the same inherent biases as your adjudicator, it is much more difficult to subjectively report facts than it is to subjectively justify a decision based upon them. So the key is changing the facts your investigator is reporting . . . before they become a problem for you.  I liken this to choosing your cards versus playing the ones you’re dealt.”

THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT

1.  Arms to Kurds. AP’s Lolita C. Baldor and Matthew Lee report, “The Obama administration has begun directly providing weapons to Kurdish forces who have started to make gains against Islamic militants in northern Iraq, senior U.S. officials said Monday. Previously, the U.S. had insisted on only selling arms to the Iraqi government in Baghdad, but the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters had been losing ground to Islamic State militants in recent weeks. The officials wouldn’t say which U.S. agency is providing the arms or what weapons are being sent, but one official said it isn’t the Pentagon. The CIA has historically done similar quiet arming operations.”

2.  Peshmerga regroups. Christian Science Monitor’s Simon Montlake reports, “Backed by US air power, Kurdish Peshmerga forces have regrouped in their fight against Sunni Arab militants and made modest gains in taking back territory in northern Iraq that had changed hands in recent days. Efforts to rescue tens of thousands of displaced minority Yazidis – whose persecution President Obama cited Thursday as a trigger for US military intervention – also progressed. . . . Kurdish forces had opened up an escape route for Yazidis who took refuge on Sinjar mountain last week. Others have fled into northeast Syria, while hundreds have already reached safety in Irbil, the political capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region.” See also from LongWarJournal.Org, “US airstrikes against Islamic State continue in northern Iraq.”

3.  Maliki’s last stand. AP’s Sameer Yacoub and Vivian Salama report from Baghdad, “Iraq’s embattled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is taking his struggle to keep his job to the courts after announcing he will file a legal complaint on Monday against the country’s newly elected president. The deadlock over a new government has plunged Iraq into a political crisis at a time it is fighting a land grab by militants from the Islamic State in the country’s north and west. Al-Maliki has resisted calls for his resignation and the political infighting could hamper efforts to stem advances by the Sunni militants.”  See also, “Iraq’ highest court paves way for Maliki to serve third term.”

4.  Second ceasefire in Israel. DefenseNews.Com reports, “Israel and the Palestinians agreed Sunday to a new 72-hour Gaza ceasefire . . . . The agreement, to take effect at one minute past midnight (2101 GMT on Sunday), clinched days of frantic mediation to stem a firestorm of violence that ignited after an earlier truce collapsed on Friday. . . . It called on both sides to use the lull to ‘reach a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire.’” Such a deal must lead to the lifting by Israel of its blockade of the Gaza Strip . . . .” See also, “Ceasefire holds as negotiators gather.”

5.  Suicide bomber before the suicide. Khaama.Com reports, “A teenage suicide bomber who was arrested before he managed to carry out attack in southern Kandahar province has revealed that he was injected before the attack by terrorists. . . . He has confessed that he was trained by terrorist groups in Pakistan and was injected with a suspicious injection before he was sent to carry out suicide attack. According to Rahmatullah, his enthusiasm to carry out suicide attack was boosted after he received the injection from the terrorists.”

CONTRACT WATCH

1.  Exelis acquires Barco Orthogon. MilitaryAerospace.Com’s Editor John Keller reports, “Leaders of aerospace and defense contractor Exelis in McLean, Va., are boosting their company’s expertise in commercial aviation networks their acquisition of Barco Orthogon, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barco NV in Bremen, Germany. Exelis officials announced they have completed the acquisition of Barco Orthogon, which provides applications for air traffic flow management and decision-making to airport operators and air navigation service providers.”

2.  Contract suspended—USIS. FederalTimes.Com’s Andy Medici reports, “The Department of Homeland Security has suspended background checks and most contracts with contractor USIS after a cyber attack may have accessed the personal information of DHS employees. . . . a multiagency cyber response team is working to identify the scope of the attack and how many employees were affected. He said the agency has determined that some DHS personnel have had their personal information compromised and the agency has notified its entire workforce to monitor their financial accounts for suspicious activity.”

TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY

1.  Best hackers money can buy. VentureBeat.Com’s Richard Byrne Reilly reports, “If you’re a hacker, a really good one, you now have even more career choices awaiting you . . . . big changes in the cyber threat landscape had prompted aerospace and defense contractors like Boeing, Raytheon and Northrup Grumman, all billion-dollar-plus companies, to begin aggressively courting and hiring hackers to buttress their own cyber defenses. All of these companies provide the technology and machines that keep the U.S. military amongst the best equipped and best prepared in the world. Where once these firms relied on their own cyber security defenses to keep unwanted intruders outside their firewalls, they now see the value proposition of bringing hackers into the fold.”

2.  Network Integration Applications. FierceGovernmentIT.Com’s Dibya Sarkar reports, “The Army said it’s simulating a battlefield environment in a laboratory to better address cyber threats to new technologies before they’re tested by soldiers in the field. Labs at the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, or C4ISR, Maryland-based campus are working to identify, understand and mitigate as many vulnerabilities as possible before new technologies are evaluated in operational exercises, known as Network Integration Evaluations, or NIEs. ‘We’re incorporating the cyber piece earlier than ever before,’ Lt. Col. Carlos Wiley . . . .”

3. The first great tank. Wired.Com’s Jordan Golson reports, “It looks puny in comparison to the armored vehicles driving around today’s battlefields, but 100 years ago, it was a big deal. The 4.5L 4-cylinder Renault engine generated 39 horsepower, laughable in 2014, but a significant improvement over the single horsepower an actual horse could provide. It was started with either an external or internal hand crank, and could travel a bit more than 30 miles on a 25-gallon fuel tank. The tank had two tracked drive wheels to move over rough terrain. A rotating turret could be used to launch 37mm shells or fire a 7.92mm machine gun.”

POTOMAC TWO-STEP

1.  Don’t do stupid stuff: “This is what Clinton said about Obama’s slogan: ‘Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.’ She softened the blow by noting that Obama was ‘trying to communicate to the American people that he’s not going to do something crazy,’ but she repeatedly suggested that the U.S. sometimes appears to be withdrawing from the world stage. . . . She said that the resilience, and expansion, of Islamist terrorism means that the U.S. must develop an ‘overarching’ strategy to confront it, and she equated this struggle to the one the U.S. waged against Soviet-led communism.”

2.  POTUS Vay-Kay: “President Barack Obama is doing something unusual with his summer vacation on Martha’s Vineyard: He’ll come back to Washington midway through the getaway to attend White House meetings. It’s an odd move, especially since Obama and his aides for years have fended off questions about the timing of his vacations by arguing that he is president at all times and can do the job wherever he is. Obama planned to go ahead with the vacation even after the first of the military airstrikes he authorized in northern Iraq were carried out Friday.”

OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS

1.  “US and genocide: Who gets bombed, who gets saved?Aljazeera.Com contributor Victoria Fontan argues, “No one can rejoice when airstrikes are being carried out by a superpower which is responsible for having created the situation in the first place. The US is not saving anyone but its own interests in Kurdistan. Had the Islamic State group not approached Erbil, it is likely no intervention would have taken place, and that the Yazidi displaced from Sinjar would be forced to eat tree leaves for another while, just like the population of Halabja who were not saved from Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.”

2.  “New US intervention in Iraq has odd dynamics.” Stars & Stripes contributor Joshua Keating argues, “Ironically, the Islamic State’s campaign against the Kurds may end up helping unify Iraq. Until this month, it looked like the destabilization caused by the Islamic State’s rampage would aid the cause of Kurdistan, which has been pushing for full independence from Iraq for years and had been feuding with al-Maliki’s government over oil revenues. Now, al-Maliki is ordering his air force to help the Kurds. Iraq’s various factions, as well as Baghdad’s odd-couple patrons, Iran and the U.S., may be forced to work together to confront the most serious threat the country has faced since the worst days of the Iraq War.”

3.  “Why are we back in Iraq?Los Angeles Time’s Editorial Board argues, “We don’t doubt that the president was moved by the suffering the Islamic State has inflicted on the Yazidis and other victims. But the airstrikes can also be interpreted as an attempt to shore up the government of Iraq against an insurgency that Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has helped to foment by excluding Sunnis from the political process.”

THE FUNNIES

1.  Sell phones.

2.  Onslaught.

3.  Godblessyou.

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Ed Ledford enjoys the most challenging, complex, and high stakes communications requirements. His portfolio includes everything from policy and strategy to poetry. A native of Asheville, N.C., and retired Army Aviator, Ed’s currently writing speeches in D.C. and working other writing projects from his office in Rockville, MD. He loves baseball and enjoys hiking, camping, and exploring anything. Follow Ed on Twitter @ECLedford.