| | Dec. 5th, 2004 @ 06:29 pm |
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Jack Kelly: Not-so-secret wars
Spies should spy, fighters should fight
Sunday, December 05, 2004
Of all the oxymorons in politics and journalism, my favorite has been "secret war," wars being pretty tough to keep secret. And ever since the "secret war" in Laos in the 1960s, I've wondered why the CIA was conducting paramilitary operations.
Apparently President Bush is wondering, too. He's ordered CIA Director Porter Goss to study whether to transfer responsibility for paramilitary operations to the Department of Defense.
The job of the CIA is to collect information on what potential enemies are doing (to spy), and to figure out what the information means (to analyze). But the Operations Directorate of the CIA has long had a fascination with the dagger end of the cloak-and-dagger business.
( read more........... )
So where are we going to find large numbers of people brave enough to operate under NOC, and tough enough and skilled enough to succeed? Only in the military, in the special operations forces. And if they are already there, why place them under less capable management?
From the Pittsburgh-Gazette.
Interesting read.........Opinions? |
| | Nov. 26th, 2004 @ 03:05 pm |
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It appears that New Zealand might not be part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but that doesn't stop Kiwi soldiers from getting into the fight. |
| Al Qaeda in the US? | Nov. 26th, 2004 @ 03:05 pm |
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I attended the "Al Qaeda 2.0" conference on Thursday. One general consensus seemed to be that there are no sleeper cells in the US and that any attacks would probably be by Muslims entering the US from Europe.
Does anyone have any evidence(credible or not) to refute this? |
| Minigun Hummers | Nov. 11th, 2004 @ 02:22 pm |
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Does anyone know when the minigun mounts on Humvees we're seeing in Falluja were introduced? |
| Care Pakages (X/P) | Nov. 8th, 2004 @ 09:51 am |
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I have a friend who has a question regarding care pakages for the troops;
"I am trying to find a couple, (3 or 4) soldiers who don't have families to send them "stuff" for xmas of just things they might need...I have gone on to MarineMoms.com and the only thing you can do is sponsor a whole platoon or just sent $$$$...I want to be able to send personal stuff/ write letters etc...to someone...HELP ME Can you get me some names & addresses of soldiers that need friendly contact, preferrably in Iraq or Afghanistan, somewhere where the packages will make there day under such trying circumstances."
If anybody could help answer this I will pass the info on to her. Thanks |
| An Open Letter to the American People from Families of 9/11 | Nov. 1st, 2004 @ 01:58 pm |
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Three years ago, on the day that began as a beautiful September morning, 19 men and their sponsors carried out a brutal and devastating attack on our country, leaving 3,000 innocent men, women and children dead, including our loved ones. In those first agonizing hours, and for weeks and months afterward as we searched for word of their fate, we were aware that the shock and horror of that day was not ours alone. With a gratitude we could not yet express, we felt the strong and steady embrace of our fellow Americans. The words, “Never forget,” defiantly written in dust or humbly penned on makeshift memorials, were also permanently etched in our hearts. We will never forget your strength, your courage and your endless generosity.
( Read more... ) |
| | Oct. 28th, 2004 @ 12:02 pm |
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Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published October 28, 2004
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Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.
John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.
"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."
( read more............. )
Defense officials said the Russians can provide information on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.
crossposted............ |
| War Plan Orange | Oct. 27th, 2004 @ 05:21 pm |
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I thought this was an article worth sharing. |
| | Oct. 22nd, 2004 @ 04:26 pm |
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Dont you think that Albania should stay in front of the axe of evil? Dont you think, that we need to fuck them this criminal tribe first? |
| | Oct. 16th, 2004 @ 10:40 am |
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I keep hearing that insurgents are doing all this B.S. in Iraq to drive us out "for the good of the Iraqi people". THAT'S BULL. They kill more civilians then they do our troops & also they destroy parts of Iraq's infrastructure liek the pil pipelines, which are the life blood of the economy in Iraq as well as destroy power stations and assassinate governmental officials.
Also, they hurt the Iraqi people by destroying places of business with their car bombs and their presence.
How's that "for the good of the Iraqi people"?? |
| | Oct. 13th, 2004 @ 12:02 pm |
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I am sorry if this is spam, but i have a community set up to talk about news (good and bad) from Iraq: http://www.livejournal.com/community/iraq_news1/ |
| The Nuanced War on Terrorism (by me) | Oct. 12th, 2004 @ 09:23 pm |
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Liberals would like the world to believe that their view of the war on terrorism is “nuanced”, and the President’s view (the view of most conservatives) is simplistic. The fact is, the opposite is true. The leftist view is the simplistic one (Iraq didn’t have WMDs!). The conservative view has to be explained to people in depth. I’m here to do that.
Afghanistan was a straightforward action in the war on terrorism. The people who attacked us on 9/11 were being harbored there, training, and planning attacks against us. So we went in, killed and captured a lot of them, and deposed the government that helped them. In the strategic sense though, Afghanistan didn’t really mean much.
What I mean to say is, though it made us safer in the sort term, deposing the Taliban didn’t do much to solve the long-term problem of international terrorism increasingly gaining the capability of doing our people and our economy serious harm (and I use the word “our” in a broad sense, to include the entire developed world).
The fact September 11th made us aware of, was that Islamic terrorists were intent on doing as much harm to America as they could possibly achieve. And given the status quo in the Middle East, they would eventually acquire the ability to destroy a city, or worse. So the chief strategic goal of the war on terrorism is to prevent terrorists from doing us harm on a scale equal to or greater than 9/11.
The road to this grand goal requires a “nuanced” view of the problem, which liberals simply don’t have. Just like the way many of them view America’s violent crime problem with respect to gun control, they see airplanes as the problem, and bridges, chemical plants, ports, and WMDs. And many of them believe that terrorists have some legitimate gripe with our society that we can fix, as they believe criminals commit crimes because they’re poor or uneducated.
The conservative view of the problem is much more “nuanced”. We understand that the direct cause of terrorism is an ideology more fanatical than Nazism (Islamic-fascism, not Islam), and that the reason that ideology exists is because it’s been allowed and encouraged to grow by the tyrants that control the Middle East. And what’s more, we understand that without governments willing to turn a blind eye to terrorism – which is to say, terrorists’ efforts to train people, fund themselves, spread their ideology, plan attacks, and acquire weapons capable of doing us incomprehensible amounts of harm – they wouldn’t be able to exist in a way capable of doing us harm at all.
On the other hand, we also understand the truth behind the cliché, that in the defensive war liberals want to fight, we have to be right 100% of the time. The terrorists only have to be right or lucky once, with a chemical, biological, or nuclear attack. There are things we can do to impede them, but it’s not possible to wholly stop them in a defensive war.
So with this “nuanced” understanding of the problem, the road to the solution becomes self-evident. We have to change the situation in the Middle East, so that this fanatical ideology isn’t pushed on the people, and so that those people’s governments will do all they can to prevent international terrorists from operating within their borders. Doing this of course, isn’t simple, which is why the solution requires an even more “nuanced” understanding of the problem.
( Read more... )
(Crossposted to ![[info]](http://library.vu.edu.pk/cgi-bin/nph-proxy.cgi/000100A/http/web.archive.org/web/20041209073313im_/http:/=2fstat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) conservatism) |
| Iraq's WMDs | Oct. 7th, 2004 @ 11:28 pm |
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I'm reading through the report on Iraq's WMDs, and so far, what I've found is quite disturbing. The claim that Iraq destroyed all of it's chemical and biological munitions in 1991 seems to be based entirely on the word of one man (Dr. Mahmud Firaj Bilal). That man being the person Saddam Hussein supposedly put in charge of destroying them.
"Although other sources have corroborated parts of Dr. Bilal’s account, ISG’s understanding of Iraq’s chemical and biological warfare agent unilateral destruction is heavily dependent on Dr. Bilal’s information, which is a weakness in our analysis. Nevertheless, as with Iraq’s long range missiles, we obtained a reasonably coherent account of the disposition of the CW munitions, though we were not able physically to verify the story. The UN has, however, verified some of it."
--Page 36-37, Volume 3
"ISG has obtained no evidence that contradicts our assessment that the Iraqis destroyed most of their hidden stockpile, although we recovered a small number of pre-1991 chemical munitions in early to mid 2004."
--Page 36, Volume 3
They've found 53 chemical weapons to be precise (pg 35), including 41 122mm rockets filled with "sarin/cyclosarin".
There isn't one mention of Syria in the entire volume.
All I have to say is, what the fuck is this bullshit they're feeding us?
(Cross-posted to conservatism) |
| The ultimate in pathetic propaganda on Samarra | Oct. 5th, 2004 @ 01:48 pm |
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I found this on a message board i hang out on. This is a sad attempt to disrupt the American peoples' morale over Iraq:
Battle Of Samara - 7 Helicopters Downed, 147 Troops Killed
In a very bad turn of events for US invaders, the occupation along with Iraqi occupation police and army attempted to take the city of Samara similtanously from three axis (North, South, and West).
What was unknown to the occupiers was that the resistance had countered with a well devised trap where the US invaders were themselves surrounded from three areas which was the towns of "Balad, Dhaluia, Thirthar." The resistance used heavy wepons to attack the US inavders in the form of "Al-Tariq" (range 33 km), "Karad" (range 24 km), "Katushia" (range 11.3 km and 8.3km), "Mortor 120ml" (range 9.2 km and 7.2 km).
To counter the attack, the US forces called in its attack helicopters which were easy prey for the resistance as the area the helicopters need to fly over is heavy in trees and palm groves giving cover to the resistance. A total of 7 helicopters were shot down beginning with a Black Hawk, then a Cobra, then another Cobra, then a Chinook which was being used to land troops west of Samara, then two Apache helicopters which were downed to the north of Samara. The weopns used to take down the helicopters were the "Strella, C5K, Dimotrov 14.5 ml".
The resistance also managed to destroy 4 Abram tanks, 7 Humer's, two transports and kill over 82 Iraqi occupation soldiers and 65 US soldiers.
After this attack, the US called in its F14 and F16 attack planes which bombed the city for a straight 8 hours using cluster bombs, napalm, and laser guided weapons. Fearing for the life of the city's inhabitants, the resistance withdrew from sections of Samara and moved to the surrounding villages and towns where it attempted to draw the US forces towards it and away from the city.
This tactic was sucessful at stopping the attacks. The current situation in Samara has the resistance in control of 70% of the city with the Us and Iraq occupation army holding the remaining 30%.
The number of civilians killed in the attacks is yet unknown due to many homes falling on their inhabitants. What has been confirmed is 115 dead and 154 injured. The dead from the resistance has reached between 23-25, not counting the wounded.
http://www.iraq-war.ru/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=25148
Note a couple things:
1. It labels US troops as "invaders"
2. There is no mention of it in any mainstream media outlet (BBC, CNN, Reuters, AP) |
| Iraqis Liberate Samarra | Oct. 2nd, 2004 @ 01:05 pm |
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"Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's worst fears have just been realized: Iraqis are now fighting alongside the Americans to expel the terrorists and insurgents from their country.
The final battle to liberate Iraq has begun."
-- Citizen Smash |
| | Sep. 27th, 2004 @ 06:33 pm |
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Israel May Not Be Able to Destroy Nukes
By: PETER ENAV (Mon, Sep/27/2004)
JERUSALEM - Israel would not be able to destroy Iran's nuclear installations with a single air strike as it did in Iraq in 1981 because they are scattered or hidden and intelligence is weak, Israeli and foreign analysts say.
Israeli leaders have implied they might use force against Iran if international diplomatic efforts or the threat of sanctions fail to stop Iran from producing nuclear weapons.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said this month Israel is "taking measures to defend itself" - a comment that raised concern Israel is considering a pre-emptive strike along the lines of its 1981 bombing of an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak near Baghdad.
( read more...... )
"The time has come to move the Iranian case to the Security Council in order to put an end to this nightmare," Shalom said.
Article's URL:
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/93-09272004-372743.html |
| | Sep. 25th, 2004 @ 01:35 pm |
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tbonestg, i agree that if they are busy fighting us over there in Iraq, then that means they are sending all their money to fund their operations, so they are not wasting it on planning to attack us here at home.
Plus the advantage of having terrorists in Iraq instead of Afghanistan is that they have no caves to hide in, so our bombers can kick their butts easier, but sadly that could cause more risk to civilians, seeing as they mostly headquarter in residential areas like Fallujah, where our airstrikes not only kill them, but civilians |
| Srgt. Benjamin Isenberg (x-p) | Sep. 23rd, 2004 @ 01:33 pm |
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I attended memorial services for Srgt. Benjamin Isenberg of Sheridan Oregon (My home town) He was killed in a roadside bomb last week, and yesterday would have been his 28th birthday. He is from a big military family, his father is serving, as well as his cousin. It was very emotional and I felt I had to attend to show my respects not only for sergent Isenberg but all of our troops who have been killed in the War on Terror. |
| Flypaper | Sep. 21st, 2004 @ 12:16 pm |
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Is the "flypaper" theory sound?
I mean, if thousands of jihadis are going to Iraq to wage holy war against the US and Coalition forces, do we not have to worry about those thousands of people coming to the West to attack us here?
I mean the opposite is true too. We are also stuck in Iraq. We can't deploy elsewhere because we need so much for Iraq. But where else would we go? Is there anywhere else that's swarming with terrorists which we can deploy thousands of troops against?
All in all, this really sucks for the Iraqis, but it may be a good plan for us.
On the other hand, Al Qaeda's operations in the West aren't manpower intensive, so killing thousands of poorly trained but highly motivated jihadis might not be the way we want to go. One group we are benefiting is Arab governments, who are more than willing to let their fringe elements go fight Americans and die. |
| What do you make of this? | Sep. 16th, 2004 @ 05:03 pm |
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