The Senate, with no debate Saturday, passed and sent to the president legislation that would impose mandatory sanctions on entities that provide goods or services for Iran's weapons programs.
The Senate action came two days after the House approved the measure following a debate over the wisdom of toughening unilateral sanctions on Tehran at the same time the United States was trying to work with its U.N. partners on a multinational approach to Iran's nuclear threat.
Both chambers approved the measure, which sanctions any entity that contributes to Iran's ability to acquire chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, by voice vote.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., in a statement, said the action "strengthened one of our most important tools in the fight to keep nuclear weapons out of the mullahs' hands."
He said it would encourage the administration to use all available leverage over Russia, a partner in Iranian energy projects, to gain Russian support for multilateral sanctions against Iran.
But in the House Thursday, Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, said that "unilateral sanctions don't work and there is no evidence that the other principle parties that are dealing with Iran will follow this example."
The legislation gives the president waiver authority over the sanctions, but only when he demonstrates that it is in the vital national interest.
"It would be a critical mistake to allow a regime with a track record as bloody and as dangerous as Iran to obtain nuclear weapons," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., sponsor of the measure. "Enough with the carrots. It's time for the stick."
The measure codifies existing economic sanctions against the Tehran government that have been in effect since the takeover of the U.S. embassy in 1979 and states that the president must notify Congress 15 days before terminating any of those sanctions.
It also approves assistance for human rights, pro-democracy and independent organizations and states that it is the sense of Congress that the United States should not enter into agreements with governments that are assisting Iran's nuclear program or transferring weapons or missiles to Iran.
The House passed a similar Iran sanctions bill last April, but that measure met opposition from the administration, which said it reduced the flexibility it needed to reach a diplomatic solution to Iran's uranium enrichment program and the threat that it was developing nuclear weapons. That proposal was defeated in the Senate.
The revised version takes out one section that would have cut off aid to countries, such as Russia, investing in projects in Iran that could be linked to weapons proliferation. The legislation also in effect alters the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 10 years ago by taking away restrictions on Libya, which is now cooperating with the West in eliminating weapons of mass destruction.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday again rejected demands that Tehran suspend its uranium enrichment activities, repeating that Iran would continue pursuing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Armies Around Globe Trotting out High-tech Warrior Ensembles by Grace Jean
The concept of humans possessing the machine-like capabilities of science fiction characters, such as Robocop, the Terminator and Star Trek Borg, is fast becoming reality among several of the world’s armies. In as little as two years, soldiers will begin wearing kits designed to seamlessly accommodate and connect all their advanced gadgets and weapons, effectively turning each individual into an informational “node” within the larger troop network.
The suits are part of a solution to help quench soldiers’ thirst for more information on the battlefield, or what military officials call “situational awareness.” Instead of being mere pawns, every soldier will come equipped with a suite of readily accessible digital technologies to help him better understand, navigate and manipulate the combat environment.
From small handheld computers and hands-free communications links to helmet-mounted displays and global positioning system receivers, the equipment incorporated into these future soldier ensembles will make the infantryman more lethal, stealthy and survivable, say company representatives during the Eurosatory ground warfare exposition here.
But while the future fighting ensembles consolidate disparate systems into a single “plug and play” unit, they do not yet alleviate the weight of all the gear.
For a typical infantry combat mission, soldiers currently are saddled with 100 to 150 pounds of gear. Armies developing these future ensembles have set ambitious weight-loss goals for the equipment. The U.S. Army’s “future warrior” project, for example, wants to lighten the load to about 50 pounds.
Some European efforts estimate the gear will weigh between 52 and 66 pounds.
Along with the weight concerns, power consumption requirements for all the digital technologies will likely be high, which will require soldiers to tote even more energy sources. And there is a question of how much information troops can absorb before becoming overloaded.
The French army’s future soldier technology, FELIN — Fantassins à Equipement et Liaisons Integrées — is a major program that integrates electronic equipment for dismounted soldiers, says a representative from Sagem Defense Securité, the prime contractor that is manufacturing the ensemble.
The basic suit weighs 52.8 pounds, or 24 kilograms, and can support an infantryman for 24 hours with batteries, munitions, food and water. The lithium-ion battery pack, wearable computer, digital radio communications system and GPS navigational system are incorporated directly into the uniform.
“It’s very comfortable,” says Richard Frank, a company representative who is wearing a demonstration FELIN system. He holds a modified FAMAS assault rifle that can sight targets, and capture and transmit video.
Platoon leaders will carry a special handheld computer that is loaded with a battlefield management system. It will allow them to track their squads, send orders, operate weapons and communicate with commanders.
All helmets come with mounted night vision systems and rotating eyepieces that display video from weapons, unmanned aerial platforms, the unit’s vehicles, as well as any of the computers worn by the soldiers.
Beneath their helmets, soldiers will wear audio headsets with osteophone technology, which conducts sound through bone vibrations. The microphones and headphones rest on the sides of the head, which leaves the ears “open” to the environment. To talk, soldiers press buttons on their radio system. The controls can also be mounted onto their weapons for remote operation.
The French army has ordered 32,000 FELIN units, which will be fielded to soldiers in 2008. Sagem will deliver 358 suits in February for first year testing and evaluation. Second generation suits are also in the works, and likely will lighten the load and improve upon technologies in the first iteration, say company representatives.
FELIN’s Italian counterpart, Soldato Futuro, has many similar characteristics. Digital technologies are incorporated into the suit to give soldiers easy access to communications, information and weapons. But the suit also features a built-in physiological monitoring system whose sensors will transmit a soldier’s vital statistics and stress levels to personal digital assistants, or PDAs, that are carried by commanding officers. Tests of the ensemble, according to Finmeccanica representatives, were to have taken place in July.
The German army has fielded an early version of its future soldier system, the Infanterist der Zukunft, to some of its troops in Afghanistan, says Lt. Col. Jochen Rheinhardt, procurement officer.
“They have situational awareness with PDAs. They get GPS positions so they have total understanding about the mission,” he tells National Defense. “Now you can protect a wider area because you have very close communication. This is really an incredible step forward for the infantry. They get pictures of what’s in front of them. They get messages. It makes their job easier,” he says.
The IdZ is scheduled to roll out into German units in 2008.
The German army has also procured an 8-wheel armored vehicle to transport such future warriors in 2009. The Boxer, says Rheinhardt, will cater to the individual soldier’s needs, including providing energy by recharging his batteries and linking him to larger digital networks for updates and information.
The capability to see around the corner while remaining safely behind barriers is another technology sought by many armies.
During a live demonstration of ground warfare technologies, three soldiers hop out the back of a French-made combat vehicle and take positions behind a stucco-colored wall. To conduct reconnaissance on the enemy beyond the barrier, one soldier hoists another up for a peek. The third soldier, wearing the French FELIN ensemble, lifts his rifle over the top of the wall. The weapon’s camera transmits video in real-time to his eyepiece, allowing him to see the environment without exposing himself to harm.
For forces that want such a capability now instead of waiting years for future soldier kits to come online, one company is offering a solution that upgrades weapons with minimal physical alterations.
Corner Shot Ltd., based in Yehud, Israel, has designed a weapon housing system with a barrel that can swivel 90 degrees and accommodate various firearms.
“We don’t want them to change the pistol for us — we are changing the pistol housing for them,” says Rami Shaul, vice president of development.
Pistols, machine guns and even grenade launchers slide into the housing. A camera at the end of the barrel sends live color video to a small screen on the side of the weapon, allowing operators to see around the corner, acquire targets and shoot without exposing themselves to harm.
The product is not only saving the lives of law enforcement officers and troops, but it is also preserving the lives of potential victims at the other end of the barrel, says Shaul. Information gathered by video from around the corner can help mitigate dangerous situations without resorting to violence, he says.
Night vision capability is also available and operators can transmit the video wirelessly to their commanders.
The company’s newest product is the Corner Shot APR — assault pistol rifle 5.56. It offers increased firepower and extended range for more accuracy and lethality.
Shaul says the company is working on adapting the core firearm housing technology for non-lethal weapons, such as tasers.
Gadgets that keep soldiers out of harm’s way during reconnaissance missions include softball-sized video cameras that can be tossed into buildings and hostile environments.
The Singaporean army has acquired one such technology called “vision ball.” When tossed through a window, the chrome-colored ball uprights itself after rolling to a stop and gives a 360-degree view of its environment, says Capt. Eddie Khng. It is one of many commercial-off-the-shelf products that the military is asking for, he says. Singapore Technologies acquires the products and modifies them for military use.
“We know what we want, so we go tell them what we need,” says Khng.
Remote-controlled ground robots with mounted cameras are a high-priority item, he says.
“We wanted to have something cheap, so we took a toy car, ruggedized it, and put a camera on it,” says Khng.
Singapore Technologies has also purchased iRobot’s Packbot and mounted its own suite of cameras and sensors.
The suits are part of a solution to help quench soldiers’ thirst for more information on the battlefield, or what military officials call “situational awareness.” Instead of being mere pawns, every soldier will come equipped with a suite of readily accessible digital technologies to help him better understand, navigate and manipulate the combat environment.
From small handheld computers and hands-free communications links to helmet-mounted displays and global positioning system receivers, the equipment incorporated into these future soldier ensembles will make the infantryman more lethal, stealthy and survivable, say company representatives during the Eurosatory ground warfare exposition here.
But while the future fighting ensembles consolidate disparate systems into a single “plug and play” unit, they do not yet alleviate the weight of all the gear.
For a typical infantry combat mission, soldiers currently are saddled with 100 to 150 pounds of gear. Armies developing these future ensembles have set ambitious weight-loss goals for the equipment. The U.S. Army’s “future warrior” project, for example, wants to lighten the load to about 50 pounds.
Some European efforts estimate the gear will weigh between 52 and 66 pounds.
Along with the weight concerns, power consumption requirements for all the digital technologies will likely be high, which will require soldiers to tote even more energy sources. And there is a question of how much information troops can absorb before becoming overloaded.
The French army’s future soldier technology, FELIN — Fantassins à Equipement et Liaisons Integrées — is a major program that integrates electronic equipment for dismounted soldiers, says a representative from Sagem Defense Securité, the prime contractor that is manufacturing the ensemble.
The basic suit weighs 52.8 pounds, or 24 kilograms, and can support an infantryman for 24 hours with batteries, munitions, food and water. The lithium-ion battery pack, wearable computer, digital radio communications system and GPS navigational system are incorporated directly into the uniform.
“It’s very comfortable,” says Richard Frank, a company representative who is wearing a demonstration FELIN system. He holds a modified FAMAS assault rifle that can sight targets, and capture and transmit video.
Platoon leaders will carry a special handheld computer that is loaded with a battlefield management system. It will allow them to track their squads, send orders, operate weapons and communicate with commanders.
All helmets come with mounted night vision systems and rotating eyepieces that display video from weapons, unmanned aerial platforms, the unit’s vehicles, as well as any of the computers worn by the soldiers.
Beneath their helmets, soldiers will wear audio headsets with osteophone technology, which conducts sound through bone vibrations. The microphones and headphones rest on the sides of the head, which leaves the ears “open” to the environment. To talk, soldiers press buttons on their radio system. The controls can also be mounted onto their weapons for remote operation.
The French army has ordered 32,000 FELIN units, which will be fielded to soldiers in 2008. Sagem will deliver 358 suits in February for first year testing and evaluation. Second generation suits are also in the works, and likely will lighten the load and improve upon technologies in the first iteration, say company representatives.
FELIN’s Italian counterpart, Soldato Futuro, has many similar characteristics. Digital technologies are incorporated into the suit to give soldiers easy access to communications, information and weapons. But the suit also features a built-in physiological monitoring system whose sensors will transmit a soldier’s vital statistics and stress levels to personal digital assistants, or PDAs, that are carried by commanding officers. Tests of the ensemble, according to Finmeccanica representatives, were to have taken place in July.
The German army has fielded an early version of its future soldier system, the Infanterist der Zukunft, to some of its troops in Afghanistan, says Lt. Col. Jochen Rheinhardt, procurement officer.
“They have situational awareness with PDAs. They get GPS positions so they have total understanding about the mission,” he tells National Defense. “Now you can protect a wider area because you have very close communication. This is really an incredible step forward for the infantry. They get pictures of what’s in front of them. They get messages. It makes their job easier,” he says.
The IdZ is scheduled to roll out into German units in 2008.
The German army has also procured an 8-wheel armored vehicle to transport such future warriors in 2009. The Boxer, says Rheinhardt, will cater to the individual soldier’s needs, including providing energy by recharging his batteries and linking him to larger digital networks for updates and information.
The capability to see around the corner while remaining safely behind barriers is another technology sought by many armies.
During a live demonstration of ground warfare technologies, three soldiers hop out the back of a French-made combat vehicle and take positions behind a stucco-colored wall. To conduct reconnaissance on the enemy beyond the barrier, one soldier hoists another up for a peek. The third soldier, wearing the French FELIN ensemble, lifts his rifle over the top of the wall. The weapon’s camera transmits video in real-time to his eyepiece, allowing him to see the environment without exposing himself to harm.
For forces that want such a capability now instead of waiting years for future soldier kits to come online, one company is offering a solution that upgrades weapons with minimal physical alterations.
Corner Shot Ltd., based in Yehud, Israel, has designed a weapon housing system with a barrel that can swivel 90 degrees and accommodate various firearms.
“We don’t want them to change the pistol for us — we are changing the pistol housing for them,” says Rami Shaul, vice president of development.
Pistols, machine guns and even grenade launchers slide into the housing. A camera at the end of the barrel sends live color video to a small screen on the side of the weapon, allowing operators to see around the corner, acquire targets and shoot without exposing themselves to harm.
The product is not only saving the lives of law enforcement officers and troops, but it is also preserving the lives of potential victims at the other end of the barrel, says Shaul. Information gathered by video from around the corner can help mitigate dangerous situations without resorting to violence, he says.
Night vision capability is also available and operators can transmit the video wirelessly to their commanders.
The company’s newest product is the Corner Shot APR — assault pistol rifle 5.56. It offers increased firepower and extended range for more accuracy and lethality.
Shaul says the company is working on adapting the core firearm housing technology for non-lethal weapons, such as tasers.
Gadgets that keep soldiers out of harm’s way during reconnaissance missions include softball-sized video cameras that can be tossed into buildings and hostile environments.
The Singaporean army has acquired one such technology called “vision ball.” When tossed through a window, the chrome-colored ball uprights itself after rolling to a stop and gives a 360-degree view of its environment, says Capt. Eddie Khng. It is one of many commercial-off-the-shelf products that the military is asking for, he says. Singapore Technologies acquires the products and modifies them for military use.
“We know what we want, so we go tell them what we need,” says Khng.
Remote-controlled ground robots with mounted cameras are a high-priority item, he says.
“We wanted to have something cheap, so we took a toy car, ruggedized it, and put a camera on it,” says Khng.
Singapore Technologies has also purchased iRobot’s Packbot and mounted its own suite of cameras and sensors.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Behind the NIE: Scheuer Parses the Intelligence from the Politics
(Michael Scheuer, the former head of the Bin Laden desk at the CIA, interprets the National Intelligence Estimate document on the global terrorist threat, which reflects the consensus view of the intelligence community and is the first comprehensive report of its kind since the October 2002 NIE document on Iraq’s estimated weapons program, most of which was released in July 2003. Scheuer, interviewed by National Interest online editor Ximena Ortiz, uncompromisingly describes the nature and scale of the terrorist threat, and the political hedging of the current NIE. He also weighs in on former President Clinton’s real counter-terror record.)
The Bright Shining Truths
Q: Much of the NIE reflects what you have long been warning about, especially in regards to Iraq War. How much political hedging is done in completing these documents, and could you parse for us the politics from the good intelligence in this latest NIE report?
MS: There unfortunately has been increasing politicization in the NIE throughout the course of my career. On the whole, the NIE accurately presents the terrorist threat, in that it doesn’t say that so many young men are willing to blow themselves up because Scheuer has a draft beer after work, or there are women in the workplace or we have primary elections in Iowa. And it begins to talk about anti-Americanism.
The failure that I see in the excerpts was not to take anti-Americanism a step further. Because it leaves the impression that we’re hated in the Muslim world because we’re Americans. That, thank goodness, is just not the case yet.
We’re hated for our policies and their impact. And I thought that the NIE took a step in the right direction and I also thought that the President’s words two weeks before in the Rose Garden that we should begin to listen to what Bin Laden and Zawahiri and the others are saying were also a step in the right direction.
The Opacity of Politics
Q: Given the politicization that you describe, does the intelligence have to reach a critical mass, if it is inconvenient for the president, before it would be included in a document like this?
MS: In my experience, and I only worked on half-a-dozen NIEs over the course of my career, but in my experience there were always issues that were difficult to put into finished intelligence. But now what we’re seeing, under either kind of administration, Republican or Democrat, are a certain number of issues that just will not be mentioned in the NIE simply because they’re sacrosanct to both parties.
The failure of the NIE to describe how firmly we’re tied to supporting police states in the Islamic world because we are so dependent on oil in that region—that’s something that under recent administrations, whether it was Mr. Clinton or Mr. Bush, is not going to find its way into the report.
The whole question of our relationship with Israel, whether or not that’s a good thing is kind of irrelevant. But the reality of it, the factual information is that our relationship with Israel makes it more difficult for us to be accepted on a non-antagonistic basis in much of the Middle East. That can’t get into it. So, what we’ve done is create a situation where the intelligence is not written in a way that is the most useful to the president of either party because there a number of issues that—when we’re talking about this particular enemy, the Islamist enemy— that you can not write about with any kind of frankness or regularity in intelligence publications.
Briefer-in-Chief Barely Briefs
Q: Would those issues be presented verbally to the president in your view?
MS: No, I think that’s very unlikely. Under Mr. Clinton or Mr. Bush, my impression is, certainly it was the case until I resigned in 2004, that the director of central intelligence had become the briefer-in-chief for the president. And I think we’ve seen that what that led to was sort of a personal friendship between the director and the president. And I think it’s very unlikely that in that kind of relationship the director of central intelligence is going to go to the president and say: “Listen Mr. President, analytically we’re really without options in foreign policy as long as we’re dependent on the Saudis for oil. That’s something that’s not going to happen.
It used to be before Mr. Tenet, that the senior briefer for the president was an analyst who had long experience and deep expertise on particular subjects. He or she was kind of designated to go in and tell the president what he needed to know and be ready to absorb whatever discontent the president might respond with.
But that’s no longer the case. Now it’s much more, I think, telling the president what he wants to hear.
Q: What about the areas where the document doesn’t suffer as much from political liability, where there actually is some truth telling on Iraq? Is it your sense that the president would have been confronted with that kind of information earlier on, or that he had really seen it for the first time in the report?
MS: If it’s the first time he saw it, what that will tell the American people was that George Tenet didn’t carry the message from the CIA.
Because what’s in the new National Intelligence Estimate, again, that I’ve read, is kind of soft, but it’s exactly the viewpoint that was expressed from the counter-terrorism center before the invasion of Iraq. The consensus among the terrorism section of the intelligence community was—I think it would have been phrased something like: “Mr. President, whatever the threat is from Saddam Hussein in Iraq, you need to be aware that if you invade Iraq, you break the back of our counter-terrorism policy.
I think that we’re slowly moving toward that truth. It’s a truth that was recurrent and accepted within the terrorism part of the intelligence community far before the invasion actually occurred.
Q: Right. And then the question is, did that information actually make it to the president?
MS: Only Mr. Tenet knows that because again, Mr. Tenet appointed himself briefer-in-chief to the president. And one of the interesting things to see in Mr. Tenet’s book that’s coming out this fall is if he carried that difficult message to the president, General Powell and Mr. Rumsfeld. I’m not sure he did. He’s ultimately the only one that can tell us that.
The Truth, Obliquely
Q: The other thing that’s interesting is that NIE report said: “perceived jihadist success [in Iraq] would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere.” And so you wonder what kind of implications that has for Afghanistan. There’s no direct mention of Afghanistan, but what’s your take on that? Are they trying to, in oblique language, reference the Iraq impact on Afghanistan?
MS: Oh sure. Afghanistan we forget sometimes is the source of modern jihadism, not only in the sense that so many non-Afghan Muslims went to fight the Soviets, but they actually won. Now what we’re seeing in Afghanistan, is that it seems to me that the war is basically over there, that we’re fighting a rear-guard action, spending most of our time trying to protect Mr. Karzai. My own view is that both of those wars are over—Iraq and Afghanistan. We’re not going to do what the necessary militarily, which would be to greatly increase the force we have and the aggressiveness of the force we use. And so we’re basically going to have to withdraw from both.
At the end of the day, what the message is, as you say, rather obliquely saying, is that, listen, if we don’t win in Iraq and if we don’t win in Afghanistan, suddenly the jihadists have beaten one superpower once, and the second superpower twice. And it’s a rather weak way of saying that, but that’s where we’re heading.
Got Metrics?
Q: You remember that famous leaked Rumsfeld statement, where he ponders about whether we have the metrics to figure out if we have we’re killing the jihadists faster than they’re being created. This document clearly posits that they’re being created faster than we’re killing them. So do we have a better handle on the metrics or have the sheer number of the jihadists that are being created just become so large that it’s unmistakable?
MS: I think it’s the latter. The pace of the insurgency gradually continues to increase, mixed with some kind of civil war. But what’s really stunning, I think, is the quality of the Taliban forces and the pace of the fighting that’s occurring in Afghanistan. Clearly, these two invasions have increased the number of people willing to train and willing to fight and, ultimately, happy to die to beat the Americans.
I’m not sure we have a precise metric yet. But the impression to me, at least, is that we’re in far worse shape now than we were in 2001, primarily because we’ve kind of, perhaps unknowingly, provided the Quranic predicate for a jihad: the unprovoked invasion of a Muslim country by an infidel. And so, as night follows day, no one should be surprised that the level of fighting has increased.
The other half of Mr. Rumsfeld’s ponderings should be: do we understand what the motivation is for them to do this? And clearly, we come back to the point that what we do, and not how we live or what we think, is what the motivation is.
And so not only are we losing those two wars, but we have yet to take the measure of the enemy’s motivation.
Q: And perhaps a more accurate way of pondering the question would be: are we creating them faster than killing them? Not, are they being created, but are we creating them.
MS: We are certainly providing the predicate for their creation. You know, we’re not talking here about good policies or bad policies, we’re just simply talking about reality in terms of what really motivates the enemy. And we haven’t had that discussion in this country.
And whenever, at least, I’ve tried to raise it, I become a Bush hater, or an America basher or an Islamophile. And so it’s a very hard discussion to have in this country.
Clinton and Bin Laden
Q: Is there more of a willingness now to take on those questions?
MS: I haven’t noticed it. I certainly get a good hearing but I think it’s because people don’t know quite what box to put me in. They say I’m an equal-opportunity basher. But I’m not sure…Looking at the media over the weekend, we don’t even seem to be able to discuss fact.
The whole exchange between Mr. Wallace and Mr. Clinton on Fox was really an argument about fact, not an interpretation. Clinton indisputably had X number of chances to kill or capture Bin Laden. Mr. Bush had none in his first eight months. So that’s a fact.
But if we can’t even agree on that, it’s very hard to have substantive discussion on policy issues or policy trends or policy impact.
Corpses Not a Metric
Q: The NIE report refers generally to a strengthening of Al-Qaeda and to the organization distinguishing itself as our prime threat. What’s left unclear is, when they say Al-Qaeda, what exactly do they mean?
MS: The editors, whoever they were, really did a disservice in the very opening sentence of the material that appears on the [Director of National Intelligence] website because it’s contradictory: We’ve hurt them, but they’re the biggest danger out there.
It goes back to your question about a metric. We just don’t have it. We’ve been kind of assuming that the body count we’ve attained by killing Al-Qaeda leaders, and by capturing them, amounts to a measure of progress. I think it’s perfectly possible that the admirable achievement in all those dead and captured people is not really a measure of progress. It just gives you the ability to say we killed X number of people.
We really have witnessed, and again we’re really in the realm of fact here, an extraordinary ability by Al-Qaeda since 2001 to replicate itself. It clearly has very deep succession plans on the shelf, so that when a senior man is captured or killed, he is replaced by his understudy.
And so, the contradictory nature of those opening sentences is just the result of us not having the ability, or not wanting, to do a solid analysis of the damage we’ve done to Al-Qaeda.
A New Tier of Threat
Q: And would that be Al-Qaeda as an organization, or ideology.
MS: I think that the problem we have is that we now have three tiers of threat. My own view is that we’ve put too much stock in the body count. What Peter Bergen calls Al-Qaeda central, the organization that answers to Osama bin Laden, has been hurt but not nearly as badly as we assume.
So that organization that attacked us on 9/11 is getting ready to attack us again. And there’s no solid reason to think it can’t.
The second level of threat remains from those allies of Bin Laden that have threatened us and our allies in the past. Whether it was Kashmiri groups, some of the Afghan groups— there are various groups around the world.
But now we have a third tier. The war in Iraq has had a transforming impact on what Bin Laden has been aiming at all along, which is to find a way to transform one Muslim in a vanguard (himself) to a philosophy and a movement. And that’s what we’re seeing now. So the third tier is the inspiration that is flowing out from Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda—their words and actions. And that’s what we’re seeing in these cells that have been taken down in Miami, Toronto, a couple in Australia, two in London, the recent ad hoc group that was going to bomb trains in Germany.
They are not directly tied to Al-Qaeda. Their activities are not directed or supported by Al-Qaeda. But invariably, the men who were arrested in these cells either said they had been inspired by Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, or it was clear from the documents that were captured with them.
So now we have three tiers, rather than one or two. And again, we assume far too glibly that Al-Qaeda central is out of business.
The Bright Shining Truths
Q: Much of the NIE reflects what you have long been warning about, especially in regards to Iraq War. How much political hedging is done in completing these documents, and could you parse for us the politics from the good intelligence in this latest NIE report?
MS: There unfortunately has been increasing politicization in the NIE throughout the course of my career. On the whole, the NIE accurately presents the terrorist threat, in that it doesn’t say that so many young men are willing to blow themselves up because Scheuer has a draft beer after work, or there are women in the workplace or we have primary elections in Iowa. And it begins to talk about anti-Americanism.
The failure that I see in the excerpts was not to take anti-Americanism a step further. Because it leaves the impression that we’re hated in the Muslim world because we’re Americans. That, thank goodness, is just not the case yet.
We’re hated for our policies and their impact. And I thought that the NIE took a step in the right direction and I also thought that the President’s words two weeks before in the Rose Garden that we should begin to listen to what Bin Laden and Zawahiri and the others are saying were also a step in the right direction.
The Opacity of Politics
Q: Given the politicization that you describe, does the intelligence have to reach a critical mass, if it is inconvenient for the president, before it would be included in a document like this?
MS: In my experience, and I only worked on half-a-dozen NIEs over the course of my career, but in my experience there were always issues that were difficult to put into finished intelligence. But now what we’re seeing, under either kind of administration, Republican or Democrat, are a certain number of issues that just will not be mentioned in the NIE simply because they’re sacrosanct to both parties.
The failure of the NIE to describe how firmly we’re tied to supporting police states in the Islamic world because we are so dependent on oil in that region—that’s something that under recent administrations, whether it was Mr. Clinton or Mr. Bush, is not going to find its way into the report.
The whole question of our relationship with Israel, whether or not that’s a good thing is kind of irrelevant. But the reality of it, the factual information is that our relationship with Israel makes it more difficult for us to be accepted on a non-antagonistic basis in much of the Middle East. That can’t get into it. So, what we’ve done is create a situation where the intelligence is not written in a way that is the most useful to the president of either party because there a number of issues that—when we’re talking about this particular enemy, the Islamist enemy— that you can not write about with any kind of frankness or regularity in intelligence publications.
Briefer-in-Chief Barely Briefs
Q: Would those issues be presented verbally to the president in your view?
MS: No, I think that’s very unlikely. Under Mr. Clinton or Mr. Bush, my impression is, certainly it was the case until I resigned in 2004, that the director of central intelligence had become the briefer-in-chief for the president. And I think we’ve seen that what that led to was sort of a personal friendship between the director and the president. And I think it’s very unlikely that in that kind of relationship the director of central intelligence is going to go to the president and say: “Listen Mr. President, analytically we’re really without options in foreign policy as long as we’re dependent on the Saudis for oil. That’s something that’s not going to happen.
It used to be before Mr. Tenet, that the senior briefer for the president was an analyst who had long experience and deep expertise on particular subjects. He or she was kind of designated to go in and tell the president what he needed to know and be ready to absorb whatever discontent the president might respond with.
But that’s no longer the case. Now it’s much more, I think, telling the president what he wants to hear.
Q: What about the areas where the document doesn’t suffer as much from political liability, where there actually is some truth telling on Iraq? Is it your sense that the president would have been confronted with that kind of information earlier on, or that he had really seen it for the first time in the report?
MS: If it’s the first time he saw it, what that will tell the American people was that George Tenet didn’t carry the message from the CIA.
Because what’s in the new National Intelligence Estimate, again, that I’ve read, is kind of soft, but it’s exactly the viewpoint that was expressed from the counter-terrorism center before the invasion of Iraq. The consensus among the terrorism section of the intelligence community was—I think it would have been phrased something like: “Mr. President, whatever the threat is from Saddam Hussein in Iraq, you need to be aware that if you invade Iraq, you break the back of our counter-terrorism policy.
I think that we’re slowly moving toward that truth. It’s a truth that was recurrent and accepted within the terrorism part of the intelligence community far before the invasion actually occurred.
Q: Right. And then the question is, did that information actually make it to the president?
MS: Only Mr. Tenet knows that because again, Mr. Tenet appointed himself briefer-in-chief to the president. And one of the interesting things to see in Mr. Tenet’s book that’s coming out this fall is if he carried that difficult message to the president, General Powell and Mr. Rumsfeld. I’m not sure he did. He’s ultimately the only one that can tell us that.
The Truth, Obliquely
Q: The other thing that’s interesting is that NIE report said: “perceived jihadist success [in Iraq] would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere.” And so you wonder what kind of implications that has for Afghanistan. There’s no direct mention of Afghanistan, but what’s your take on that? Are they trying to, in oblique language, reference the Iraq impact on Afghanistan?
MS: Oh sure. Afghanistan we forget sometimes is the source of modern jihadism, not only in the sense that so many non-Afghan Muslims went to fight the Soviets, but they actually won. Now what we’re seeing in Afghanistan, is that it seems to me that the war is basically over there, that we’re fighting a rear-guard action, spending most of our time trying to protect Mr. Karzai. My own view is that both of those wars are over—Iraq and Afghanistan. We’re not going to do what the necessary militarily, which would be to greatly increase the force we have and the aggressiveness of the force we use. And so we’re basically going to have to withdraw from both.
At the end of the day, what the message is, as you say, rather obliquely saying, is that, listen, if we don’t win in Iraq and if we don’t win in Afghanistan, suddenly the jihadists have beaten one superpower once, and the second superpower twice. And it’s a rather weak way of saying that, but that’s where we’re heading.
Got Metrics?
Q: You remember that famous leaked Rumsfeld statement, where he ponders about whether we have the metrics to figure out if we have we’re killing the jihadists faster than they’re being created. This document clearly posits that they’re being created faster than we’re killing them. So do we have a better handle on the metrics or have the sheer number of the jihadists that are being created just become so large that it’s unmistakable?
MS: I think it’s the latter. The pace of the insurgency gradually continues to increase, mixed with some kind of civil war. But what’s really stunning, I think, is the quality of the Taliban forces and the pace of the fighting that’s occurring in Afghanistan. Clearly, these two invasions have increased the number of people willing to train and willing to fight and, ultimately, happy to die to beat the Americans.
I’m not sure we have a precise metric yet. But the impression to me, at least, is that we’re in far worse shape now than we were in 2001, primarily because we’ve kind of, perhaps unknowingly, provided the Quranic predicate for a jihad: the unprovoked invasion of a Muslim country by an infidel. And so, as night follows day, no one should be surprised that the level of fighting has increased.
The other half of Mr. Rumsfeld’s ponderings should be: do we understand what the motivation is for them to do this? And clearly, we come back to the point that what we do, and not how we live or what we think, is what the motivation is.
And so not only are we losing those two wars, but we have yet to take the measure of the enemy’s motivation.
Q: And perhaps a more accurate way of pondering the question would be: are we creating them faster than killing them? Not, are they being created, but are we creating them.
MS: We are certainly providing the predicate for their creation. You know, we’re not talking here about good policies or bad policies, we’re just simply talking about reality in terms of what really motivates the enemy. And we haven’t had that discussion in this country.
And whenever, at least, I’ve tried to raise it, I become a Bush hater, or an America basher or an Islamophile. And so it’s a very hard discussion to have in this country.
Clinton and Bin Laden
Q: Is there more of a willingness now to take on those questions?
MS: I haven’t noticed it. I certainly get a good hearing but I think it’s because people don’t know quite what box to put me in. They say I’m an equal-opportunity basher. But I’m not sure…Looking at the media over the weekend, we don’t even seem to be able to discuss fact.
The whole exchange between Mr. Wallace and Mr. Clinton on Fox was really an argument about fact, not an interpretation. Clinton indisputably had X number of chances to kill or capture Bin Laden. Mr. Bush had none in his first eight months. So that’s a fact.
But if we can’t even agree on that, it’s very hard to have substantive discussion on policy issues or policy trends or policy impact.
Corpses Not a Metric
Q: The NIE report refers generally to a strengthening of Al-Qaeda and to the organization distinguishing itself as our prime threat. What’s left unclear is, when they say Al-Qaeda, what exactly do they mean?
MS: The editors, whoever they were, really did a disservice in the very opening sentence of the material that appears on the [Director of National Intelligence] website because it’s contradictory: We’ve hurt them, but they’re the biggest danger out there.
It goes back to your question about a metric. We just don’t have it. We’ve been kind of assuming that the body count we’ve attained by killing Al-Qaeda leaders, and by capturing them, amounts to a measure of progress. I think it’s perfectly possible that the admirable achievement in all those dead and captured people is not really a measure of progress. It just gives you the ability to say we killed X number of people.
We really have witnessed, and again we’re really in the realm of fact here, an extraordinary ability by Al-Qaeda since 2001 to replicate itself. It clearly has very deep succession plans on the shelf, so that when a senior man is captured or killed, he is replaced by his understudy.
And so, the contradictory nature of those opening sentences is just the result of us not having the ability, or not wanting, to do a solid analysis of the damage we’ve done to Al-Qaeda.
A New Tier of Threat
Q: And would that be Al-Qaeda as an organization, or ideology.
MS: I think that the problem we have is that we now have three tiers of threat. My own view is that we’ve put too much stock in the body count. What Peter Bergen calls Al-Qaeda central, the organization that answers to Osama bin Laden, has been hurt but not nearly as badly as we assume.
So that organization that attacked us on 9/11 is getting ready to attack us again. And there’s no solid reason to think it can’t.
The second level of threat remains from those allies of Bin Laden that have threatened us and our allies in the past. Whether it was Kashmiri groups, some of the Afghan groups— there are various groups around the world.
But now we have a third tier. The war in Iraq has had a transforming impact on what Bin Laden has been aiming at all along, which is to find a way to transform one Muslim in a vanguard (himself) to a philosophy and a movement. And that’s what we’re seeing now. So the third tier is the inspiration that is flowing out from Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda—their words and actions. And that’s what we’re seeing in these cells that have been taken down in Miami, Toronto, a couple in Australia, two in London, the recent ad hoc group that was going to bomb trains in Germany.
They are not directly tied to Al-Qaeda. Their activities are not directed or supported by Al-Qaeda. But invariably, the men who were arrested in these cells either said they had been inspired by Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, or it was clear from the documents that were captured with them.
So now we have three tiers, rather than one or two. And again, we assume far too glibly that Al-Qaeda central is out of business.
Iran Mulled Nuclear Bomb in 1988 by Frances Harrison
A letter from 1988 in which Iran's top commander says Iran could need a nuclear bomb to win the war against Iraq has come to light in Tehran.
The commander is quoted in the letter, written by the father of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, to top officials in the final days of the war.
It has only now been made public - by former President Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The letter seems at odds with Tehran's statements that Iran is not seeking a bomb because it is against Islam.
The letter from Ayatollah Khomeini lists the requirements of military commanders if they are to continue fighting against Iraq.
It mentions more aircraft, helicopters, men and weapons, and also quotes the top commander saying Iran would within five years need laser-guided and atomic weapons in order to win the war.
Some Iranian news agencies have, however, deleted the reference to atomic weapons in the letter.
It is sensitive because Iran has always said it is not seeking a nuclear weapon and leading clerics say an atomic bomb would be against Islam.
Ayatollah Khomeini's letter also reveals how challenged Iran's economy and military were by the eight years of war against Iraq.
The letter quotes the prime minister of the time saying the economy was operating at a level below zero and volunteers for the front were in short supply.
Ayatollah Khomeini's letter has been made public at a time when Iran is preparing for a possible confrontation with the US over its nuclear programme.
But it also comes against a background of an argument between Mr Rafsanjani and a top military commander over who was instrumental in persuading Ayatollah Khomeini to agree to a ceasefire with Iraq that the Ayatollah himself likened to drinking a poisoned chalice.
The commander is quoted in the letter, written by the father of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, to top officials in the final days of the war.
It has only now been made public - by former President Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The letter seems at odds with Tehran's statements that Iran is not seeking a bomb because it is against Islam.
The letter from Ayatollah Khomeini lists the requirements of military commanders if they are to continue fighting against Iraq.
It mentions more aircraft, helicopters, men and weapons, and also quotes the top commander saying Iran would within five years need laser-guided and atomic weapons in order to win the war.
Some Iranian news agencies have, however, deleted the reference to atomic weapons in the letter.
It is sensitive because Iran has always said it is not seeking a nuclear weapon and leading clerics say an atomic bomb would be against Islam.
Ayatollah Khomeini's letter also reveals how challenged Iran's economy and military were by the eight years of war against Iraq.
The letter quotes the prime minister of the time saying the economy was operating at a level below zero and volunteers for the front were in short supply.
Ayatollah Khomeini's letter has been made public at a time when Iran is preparing for a possible confrontation with the US over its nuclear programme.
But it also comes against a background of an argument between Mr Rafsanjani and a top military commander over who was instrumental in persuading Ayatollah Khomeini to agree to a ceasefire with Iraq that the Ayatollah himself likened to drinking a poisoned chalice.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
UN report says U.S. breaking Qaeda by James Gordon Meek
A United Nations report on Iraq echoed many of the dire predictions in an American assessment, but was also more optimistic about the fight against Al Qaeda.
Like the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate released this week, the survey for the UN Security Council made public yesterday concluded the Iraq war has "provided many recruits and an excellent training ground" for Al Qaeda.
It also said the war has increasingly exported deadly new tactics to Afghanistan.
"New explosive devices are now used in Afghanistan within a month of their first appearing in Iraq," the report said.
But the UN report was more upbeat than the National Intelligence Estimate.
It claimed Al Qaeda "may see more losses than gains" in Iraq.
The flow of foreign fighters into Iraq hasslowed to a trickle, and the slaying of Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may have confused the uprising, the UN revealed.
Jihadists have reportedly been angered at being turned away from the fight against U.S. forces by Iraqis, who often offer only suicide bombing missions, the UN report said.
Zarqawi's death probably pleased Osama Bin Laden, since the Jordanian "undermined the righteous image of Al Qaeda" by slaughtering fellow Muslims and beheading captives.
Yet Bin Laden replaced Zarqawi with Egyptian Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, a foreigner whom Iraqi nationalists are just as unlikely to follow, the UN concluded.
In Afghanistan, however, "there are few areas where the Taliban have lost ground," the report said. Supported by non-Afghan foreign fighters, the Taliban and Al Qaeda "have no shortage of recruits or arms," and are thriving this year because reconstruction efforts by the U.S. and its allies faltered.
Like the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate released this week, the survey for the UN Security Council made public yesterday concluded the Iraq war has "provided many recruits and an excellent training ground" for Al Qaeda.
It also said the war has increasingly exported deadly new tactics to Afghanistan.
"New explosive devices are now used in Afghanistan within a month of their first appearing in Iraq," the report said.
But the UN report was more upbeat than the National Intelligence Estimate.
It claimed Al Qaeda "may see more losses than gains" in Iraq.
The flow of foreign fighters into Iraq hasslowed to a trickle, and the slaying of Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may have confused the uprising, the UN revealed.
Jihadists have reportedly been angered at being turned away from the fight against U.S. forces by Iraqis, who often offer only suicide bombing missions, the UN report said.
Zarqawi's death probably pleased Osama Bin Laden, since the Jordanian "undermined the righteous image of Al Qaeda" by slaughtering fellow Muslims and beheading captives.
Yet Bin Laden replaced Zarqawi with Egyptian Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, a foreigner whom Iraqi nationalists are just as unlikely to follow, the UN concluded.
In Afghanistan, however, "there are few areas where the Taliban have lost ground," the report said. Supported by non-Afghan foreign fighters, the Taliban and Al Qaeda "have no shortage of recruits or arms," and are thriving this year because reconstruction efforts by the U.S. and its allies faltered.
How Low Do We Go? by Thomas Barnett
Quoting the NIE report, "The Iraq conflict has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
You want to know what this estimate would say if Saddam was still in power?
It would read, "The Afghan conflict has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
You want to know what this estimate would say if the Taliban were still in power?
It would read, "America's support for the Musharref regime in Pakistan has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.
And if Musharref was gone?
It would read, "America's military assistance to Israel in its conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
And if Israel was gone?
It would read, "America's emergency support to the Mubarek regime has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
And if the Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egypt?
It would read, "America's rescue of the House of Saud has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
And if the Salafi jihadists got control of Saudi Arabia?
It would read, "America's support to Iran in the emerging conflict with the Salafi jihadist front of Arab states has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
Is there anyone out there naive enough to believe the Salafi jihadist movement has ever been without a 'cause celebre'?
How low would we need to go to avoid pissing off the Salafi jihadists? To stop their women-hating, bloodthirsty reign of terror desired to enslave as much of the world as possible?
Let's give 'em a 'cause celebre' every day of the week.
You want to know what this estimate would say if Saddam was still in power?
It would read, "The Afghan conflict has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
You want to know what this estimate would say if the Taliban were still in power?
It would read, "America's support for the Musharref regime in Pakistan has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.
And if Musharref was gone?
It would read, "America's military assistance to Israel in its conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
And if Israel was gone?
It would read, "America's emergency support to the Mubarek regime has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
And if the Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egypt?
It would read, "America's rescue of the House of Saud has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
And if the Salafi jihadists got control of Saudi Arabia?
It would read, "America's support to Iran in the emerging conflict with the Salafi jihadist front of Arab states has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
Is there anyone out there naive enough to believe the Salafi jihadist movement has ever been without a 'cause celebre'?
How low would we need to go to avoid pissing off the Salafi jihadists? To stop their women-hating, bloodthirsty reign of terror desired to enslave as much of the world as possible?
Let's give 'em a 'cause celebre' every day of the week.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
A Few Thoughts on the NIE by Douglas Farah
Admittedly, we have only a few declassified pages of the National Intelligence Estimate, so some of these issues might be addressed there.
But it is striking that the “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States” does not discuss financial issues at all. Nor does it discuss the role in radicalization provided by the massive flow of Saudi and Arab Peninsula dollars into radicalization efforts.
It is this fundamental base of Salafist teachings that allow for the spread of radical, decentralized Islamist network described in the findings. There is a basic playbook being taught around the world, with funding by governments that claim to be allies in fighting jihadist movements. With the teachings from early childhood, coupled with corrupted teachings on the Koran spread at Wahhabi mosques around the world, a global community is built.
The lack of recognition of the “pull” factors in Islamist radicalization is surprising. The four “underlying factors fueling the spread of the jihadist movement” are defined as: (1) Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the Iraq “jihad”;(3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims-all of which jihadists exploit.
These are clearly legitimate push factors in Islamist radicalization. But they do not effectively touch on the other half of the equation. These include trying to understand why Islamists are making gains outside the Muslim-majority countries, and how not just the jihadis making bombs but the huge Islamist apparatus exploit the above factors.
They do it through the flow of money through charities, the international Muslim Brotherhood and diplomatic channels that teach not only a radical theology of hatred, but also define true Islamic spirituality as being radicalized to the point of being willing to commit suicide to attack the enemies of Islam. This is taught as the the way to redeem to sense of powerlessness, anger and humiliation, wage jihad in Iraq and far beyond, and punish the U.S. and its allies.
These push factors are powerful. The money that enables the push factor is important. Without them, the pull factors would be far less potent. Many people live worse than most of the jihadis do. The grievances alone cannot account for the growth of jihadist movements.
But it is striking that the “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States” does not discuss financial issues at all. Nor does it discuss the role in radicalization provided by the massive flow of Saudi and Arab Peninsula dollars into radicalization efforts.
It is this fundamental base of Salafist teachings that allow for the spread of radical, decentralized Islamist network described in the findings. There is a basic playbook being taught around the world, with funding by governments that claim to be allies in fighting jihadist movements. With the teachings from early childhood, coupled with corrupted teachings on the Koran spread at Wahhabi mosques around the world, a global community is built.
The lack of recognition of the “pull” factors in Islamist radicalization is surprising. The four “underlying factors fueling the spread of the jihadist movement” are defined as: (1) Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the Iraq “jihad”;(3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims-all of which jihadists exploit.
These are clearly legitimate push factors in Islamist radicalization. But they do not effectively touch on the other half of the equation. These include trying to understand why Islamists are making gains outside the Muslim-majority countries, and how not just the jihadis making bombs but the huge Islamist apparatus exploit the above factors.
They do it through the flow of money through charities, the international Muslim Brotherhood and diplomatic channels that teach not only a radical theology of hatred, but also define true Islamic spirituality as being radicalized to the point of being willing to commit suicide to attack the enemies of Islam. This is taught as the the way to redeem to sense of powerlessness, anger and humiliation, wage jihad in Iraq and far beyond, and punish the U.S. and its allies.
These push factors are powerful. The money that enables the push factor is important. Without them, the pull factors would be far less potent. Many people live worse than most of the jihadis do. The grievances alone cannot account for the growth of jihadist movements.
The Tehran-Baghdad-Kabul Alliance by Strategy Page
September 27, 2006: Russia is selling Iran five Tu-204 airliners. The 210 passenger, two engine, aircraft is one of the new generation of post-Cold War transports developed in Russia. It's been difficult to get export orders because of the competition from Boeing and Airbus. But this deal is worth nearly a billion dollars to Russia, and very important for keeping Russian civil aviation companies in business.
September 25, 2006: Russia is negotiating to sell Iran more anti-aircraft missile system, including long range (300 kilometers) S-300 ones. Russia has already sold Iran short range TOR-M1 systems. All of these systems are intended to guard Iran's nuclear weapons facilities.
September 24, 2006: There's a Tehran-Baghdad-Kabul Triangle developing. Recent exchanges of visits by the respective presidents and prime ministers of Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, which have led to agreements on economic, security, and other ties, have been viewed with some alarm by the U.S. These agreements are viewed as part of an expansionist foreign policy on Iran's part, and this is inherently anti-American.
But in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the ties are seen differently. Iraq's Shia majority sees Iran as an ally against the Sunni Arab nationalist terrorists, whether in its al Qaeda-sponsored religious form or Baathist secular form, and, not incidentally, as a way of helping defuse more radical elements in the Shia community. The country's most revered Shia religious leader, the moderately inclined Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Husaini al-Sistani, is actually an ethnic Iranian. Afghanistan also sees Iran as a potential ally, given its hostility to al Qaeda and the Taliban. Despite being openly anti-American, the Iranian regime quietly supported US and Coalition military operations in Afghanistan against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in 2001-2002.
So the short-term results of having improved ties with Iran may be an improvement in the internal security situation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Naturally there are some potential political dangers, if Iranian influence becomes too great. But there are obstacles to that happening; a majority of Iraqis may be Shia, but they are secularized, and as Arabs are wary of Iranian imperial ambitions, while most Afghans are Sunni, and not necessarily inclined to submit to Iranian influence.
September 25, 2006: Russia is negotiating to sell Iran more anti-aircraft missile system, including long range (300 kilometers) S-300 ones. Russia has already sold Iran short range TOR-M1 systems. All of these systems are intended to guard Iran's nuclear weapons facilities.
September 24, 2006: There's a Tehran-Baghdad-Kabul Triangle developing. Recent exchanges of visits by the respective presidents and prime ministers of Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, which have led to agreements on economic, security, and other ties, have been viewed with some alarm by the U.S. These agreements are viewed as part of an expansionist foreign policy on Iran's part, and this is inherently anti-American.
But in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the ties are seen differently. Iraq's Shia majority sees Iran as an ally against the Sunni Arab nationalist terrorists, whether in its al Qaeda-sponsored religious form or Baathist secular form, and, not incidentally, as a way of helping defuse more radical elements in the Shia community. The country's most revered Shia religious leader, the moderately inclined Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Husaini al-Sistani, is actually an ethnic Iranian. Afghanistan also sees Iran as a potential ally, given its hostility to al Qaeda and the Taliban. Despite being openly anti-American, the Iranian regime quietly supported US and Coalition military operations in Afghanistan against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in 2001-2002.
So the short-term results of having improved ties with Iran may be an improvement in the internal security situation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Naturally there are some potential political dangers, if Iranian influence becomes too great. But there are obstacles to that happening; a majority of Iraqis may be Shia, but they are secularized, and as Arabs are wary of Iranian imperial ambitions, while most Afghans are Sunni, and not necessarily inclined to submit to Iranian influence.
Saudis Plan Long Fence for Iraq Border by Jim Krane
Saudi Arabia is pushing ahead with plans to build a fence to block terrorists from crossing its 560-mile border with Iraq — another sign of growing alarm that Sunni-Shiite strife could spill over and drag Iraq's neighbors into its civil conflict.
The barrier, which hasn't been started, is part of a $12 billion package of measures including electronic sensors, security bases and physical barriers to protect the oil-rich kingdom from external threats, said Nawaf Obaid, head of the Saudi National Security Assessment Project, an independent research institute that advises the Saudi government.
The ambitious project reflects not only concern over terrorism but also growing alarm over the situation in Iraq, where U.S. forces are struggling to prevent sectarian violence from escalating to full-scale civil war between that nation's Shiite majority and Sunni minority.
All of Iraq's neighbors, including the Saudis, fear the violence could spill over the borders and threaten their own security.
Saudi leaders worry about Sunni extremists returning home to wage war on the U.S.-allied monarchy or Shiite militants trying to stir up trouble among the Shiite minority.
The fence would do little to stop the flow of militants into Iraq because most are believed to cross from Syria, Jordan and Iran. U.S. and Iraqi officials have long complained about Saudi extremists joining insurgent groups in Iraq, but say they mostly go through Syria.
Obaid said the $1.8 billion spent since 2004 on shoring up Saudi border surveillance has sharply reduced the movement of militants heading into Iraq. He said the Saudi government is most concerned now with stopping infiltration into its own territory from Iraq.
"More importantly, the main issue is to seal the border on the Iraqi side since there has been almost no (Iraqi security) presence since the U.S. invasion," Obaid said.
In addition to political extremists, the Saudis want to prevent drug smugglers, weapons dealers and illegal migrants from using Iraq as an avenue into Saudi Arabia, he said.
At the southeastern corner of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula, meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates is building a barrier along its border with Oman — mainly to keep out illegal migrants — just as the U.S. Congress is considering a fence for parts of the U.S. border with Mexico. And Israel is trying to protect itself from suicide bombers by building barriers along its borders with Palestinian areas.
U.S. officials in Baghdad declined to comment on the Saudi plan, saying it was a matter between the two governments.
The spokesman for Iraq's Interior Ministry, Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, said Iraqi officials had heard of the Saudi plans to improve border security "and we thank them for it."
"If the Saudis want to build border defenses to stop the infiltration of terrorists, they can do that to protect their borders," he said.
Saudi officials, who rarely comment on security matters, declined to discuss the project.
Obaid said contracts for building the fence, expected to cost about $500 million and take five to six years to finish, have not been awarded and work is not expected to begin before next year.
It is unclear whether the Saudis will actually in the end build a fence along the entire Iraqi border — virtually all barren desert — or simply at key crossing points.
Although the government in Riyadh has not released complete details of its plans, security experts familiar with the project said it would include electronic sensors and ultraviolet cameras capable of detecting any attempt to breach the fence.
The fence will not be electrified, but it will have sensors to alert security forces if anyone tries to cut through, said the experts, who agreed to discuss details only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the project to media.
The Middle East Economic Digest, a regional news magazine, reported this month that the barrier would have a double fence with 135 electronically controlled gates, fence-mounted movement detection sensors, buried radio detection sensors, and concertina razor wire. The magazine said the Saudi government planned to name an international firm to oversee the project.
U.S. officials said in April that Saudis were among the top five nationalities among foreign fighters captured by coalition forces in Iraq. Twenty-three Saudis were arrested in Iraq between September 2005 and April, compared with 51 Syrians and 38 Egyptians, the officials said.
The Saudis are especially sensitive to the possibility of unrest among the country's Shiite minority because it is centered in the oil-producing east of the country.
In another sign of Saudi concern over sectarian tensions, the kingdom plans to host a meeting next month of top Iraqi Sunni and Shiite clerics in the holy city of Mecca in hopes of bridging differences between the sects.
The barrier, which hasn't been started, is part of a $12 billion package of measures including electronic sensors, security bases and physical barriers to protect the oil-rich kingdom from external threats, said Nawaf Obaid, head of the Saudi National Security Assessment Project, an independent research institute that advises the Saudi government.
The ambitious project reflects not only concern over terrorism but also growing alarm over the situation in Iraq, where U.S. forces are struggling to prevent sectarian violence from escalating to full-scale civil war between that nation's Shiite majority and Sunni minority.
All of Iraq's neighbors, including the Saudis, fear the violence could spill over the borders and threaten their own security.
Saudi leaders worry about Sunni extremists returning home to wage war on the U.S.-allied monarchy or Shiite militants trying to stir up trouble among the Shiite minority.
The fence would do little to stop the flow of militants into Iraq because most are believed to cross from Syria, Jordan and Iran. U.S. and Iraqi officials have long complained about Saudi extremists joining insurgent groups in Iraq, but say they mostly go through Syria.
Obaid said the $1.8 billion spent since 2004 on shoring up Saudi border surveillance has sharply reduced the movement of militants heading into Iraq. He said the Saudi government is most concerned now with stopping infiltration into its own territory from Iraq.
"More importantly, the main issue is to seal the border on the Iraqi side since there has been almost no (Iraqi security) presence since the U.S. invasion," Obaid said.
In addition to political extremists, the Saudis want to prevent drug smugglers, weapons dealers and illegal migrants from using Iraq as an avenue into Saudi Arabia, he said.
At the southeastern corner of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula, meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates is building a barrier along its border with Oman — mainly to keep out illegal migrants — just as the U.S. Congress is considering a fence for parts of the U.S. border with Mexico. And Israel is trying to protect itself from suicide bombers by building barriers along its borders with Palestinian areas.
U.S. officials in Baghdad declined to comment on the Saudi plan, saying it was a matter between the two governments.
The spokesman for Iraq's Interior Ministry, Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, said Iraqi officials had heard of the Saudi plans to improve border security "and we thank them for it."
"If the Saudis want to build border defenses to stop the infiltration of terrorists, they can do that to protect their borders," he said.
Saudi officials, who rarely comment on security matters, declined to discuss the project.
Obaid said contracts for building the fence, expected to cost about $500 million and take five to six years to finish, have not been awarded and work is not expected to begin before next year.
It is unclear whether the Saudis will actually in the end build a fence along the entire Iraqi border — virtually all barren desert — or simply at key crossing points.
Although the government in Riyadh has not released complete details of its plans, security experts familiar with the project said it would include electronic sensors and ultraviolet cameras capable of detecting any attempt to breach the fence.
The fence will not be electrified, but it will have sensors to alert security forces if anyone tries to cut through, said the experts, who agreed to discuss details only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the project to media.
The Middle East Economic Digest, a regional news magazine, reported this month that the barrier would have a double fence with 135 electronically controlled gates, fence-mounted movement detection sensors, buried radio detection sensors, and concertina razor wire. The magazine said the Saudi government planned to name an international firm to oversee the project.
U.S. officials said in April that Saudis were among the top five nationalities among foreign fighters captured by coalition forces in Iraq. Twenty-three Saudis were arrested in Iraq between September 2005 and April, compared with 51 Syrians and 38 Egyptians, the officials said.
The Saudis are especially sensitive to the possibility of unrest among the country's Shiite minority because it is centered in the oil-producing east of the country.
In another sign of Saudi concern over sectarian tensions, the kingdom plans to host a meeting next month of top Iraqi Sunni and Shiite clerics in the holy city of Mecca in hopes of bridging differences between the sects.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Democracy in the Muslim World by Lorenzo Vidino
In recent weeks, President Bush has delivered a series of major speeches outlining his strategy against terrorism. We have come a long way from the nebulous rhetoric of the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001.
The foe is no longer defined as ``terror," which is simply a tool used by a well-defined adversary. The new ``National Strategy for Combating Terrorism" acknowledges that America's enemy is a ``transnational movement of extremist organizations . . . which have in common that they exploit Islam and use terrorism for ideological ends." The report then outlines measures to confront that challenge. While short-term measures such as denying terrorists sanctuary or tracking their funds seem logical , the administration's long-term strategy is less straightforward.
The obvious cure to the problem is tackling radical Islam, the ideology that motivates terrorists. But the administration believes firmly -- almost blindly -- that democracy is the right medicine. According to the report, democracy ``diminishes the underlying conditions terrorists seek to exploit." Promotion of democracy is, therefore, the key element in the administration's long-term approach.
Yet democracy does not always have these healing powers. The administration contends that individuals who enjoy political participation and can freely express themselves are less likely to embrace fundamentalist messages. The truth is that today democratic societies are spawning terrorists no less than dictatorships are.
The core Sept. 11 hijackers grew up under autocratic Middle Eastern regimes, yet embraced radical Islam only when they went to study in Germany. The young terrorist suspects arrested in London and Toronto, the vast majority of whom were second-generation Muslim immigrants in the West, shunned the values of their native societies and planned attacks against them. A recent round of routine Al Qaeda threats against the United States were delivered on tape by Adam Gahdan, who grew up in democratic Southern California.
Aside from not guaranteeing results, spreading democracy in the Muslim world is a monumental effort that requires changing cultures and overcoming entrenched skepticisms. Some oppose the concept because it clashes with their divinely ordered vision of government. For Islamists, a small but vocal minority in the Muslim world, the only source of legislation is God and his will is set in the Sharia; parliaments and other democratic institutions are illegitimately trying to replace God's will with man's. Others look at democracy with suspicion, as a form of government imposed by foreign forces.
A word often abused by local autocrats who cloaked themselves with it, democracy is viewed as just one of the ideologies that failed the people of the Middle East. Moreover, its difficult application (see Iraq) only increases the doubts of skeptics. At this point in time democracy is far from the magic bullet against fundamentalism. Spreading democracy to the Muslim world is an extremely difficult task whose achievement does not guarantee the end of radicalism.
Confronting the enemy on its own ideological ground seems to be a better option. Rather than simply calling it brutal and tyrannical, the administration needs to directly challenge Islamist ideology. The task is not easy, but some of the enemy's ideological weaknesses can be exploited.
The main one is the intellectual poverty of its offer. Al Qaeda and other such groups are crystal clear about what they oppose, but they have made no argument to prove they could offer a better tomorrow to ordinary Muslims. If they ever achieved their lofty dreams of avenging Muslim pride and re establishing the caliphate, how would they make it work? Do they have an economic plan? And how about fixing potholes and collecting garbage? Only few in the Muslim world would sign up for a Taliban-style state that lacks everything except public executions.
Islamist ideology is powerless when confronted with the basic duties of governance. Look at the Palestinian territories, where Hamas's recent unpopularity is derived from its inability to pay salaries and deliver basic services. Promotion of democracy is an ambitious goal whose prospects for success are unclear. What can produce immediate gains is a head-on challenge of the enemy's ideological shortcomings.
The foe is no longer defined as ``terror," which is simply a tool used by a well-defined adversary. The new ``National Strategy for Combating Terrorism" acknowledges that America's enemy is a ``transnational movement of extremist organizations . . . which have in common that they exploit Islam and use terrorism for ideological ends." The report then outlines measures to confront that challenge. While short-term measures such as denying terrorists sanctuary or tracking their funds seem logical , the administration's long-term strategy is less straightforward.
The obvious cure to the problem is tackling radical Islam, the ideology that motivates terrorists. But the administration believes firmly -- almost blindly -- that democracy is the right medicine. According to the report, democracy ``diminishes the underlying conditions terrorists seek to exploit." Promotion of democracy is, therefore, the key element in the administration's long-term approach.
Yet democracy does not always have these healing powers. The administration contends that individuals who enjoy political participation and can freely express themselves are less likely to embrace fundamentalist messages. The truth is that today democratic societies are spawning terrorists no less than dictatorships are.
The core Sept. 11 hijackers grew up under autocratic Middle Eastern regimes, yet embraced radical Islam only when they went to study in Germany. The young terrorist suspects arrested in London and Toronto, the vast majority of whom were second-generation Muslim immigrants in the West, shunned the values of their native societies and planned attacks against them. A recent round of routine Al Qaeda threats against the United States were delivered on tape by Adam Gahdan, who grew up in democratic Southern California.
Aside from not guaranteeing results, spreading democracy in the Muslim world is a monumental effort that requires changing cultures and overcoming entrenched skepticisms. Some oppose the concept because it clashes with their divinely ordered vision of government. For Islamists, a small but vocal minority in the Muslim world, the only source of legislation is God and his will is set in the Sharia; parliaments and other democratic institutions are illegitimately trying to replace God's will with man's. Others look at democracy with suspicion, as a form of government imposed by foreign forces.
A word often abused by local autocrats who cloaked themselves with it, democracy is viewed as just one of the ideologies that failed the people of the Middle East. Moreover, its difficult application (see Iraq) only increases the doubts of skeptics. At this point in time democracy is far from the magic bullet against fundamentalism. Spreading democracy to the Muslim world is an extremely difficult task whose achievement does not guarantee the end of radicalism.
Confronting the enemy on its own ideological ground seems to be a better option. Rather than simply calling it brutal and tyrannical, the administration needs to directly challenge Islamist ideology. The task is not easy, but some of the enemy's ideological weaknesses can be exploited.
The main one is the intellectual poverty of its offer. Al Qaeda and other such groups are crystal clear about what they oppose, but they have made no argument to prove they could offer a better tomorrow to ordinary Muslims. If they ever achieved their lofty dreams of avenging Muslim pride and re establishing the caliphate, how would they make it work? Do they have an economic plan? And how about fixing potholes and collecting garbage? Only few in the Muslim world would sign up for a Taliban-style state that lacks everything except public executions.
Islamist ideology is powerless when confronted with the basic duties of governance. Look at the Palestinian territories, where Hamas's recent unpopularity is derived from its inability to pay salaries and deliver basic services. Promotion of democracy is an ambitious goal whose prospects for success are unclear. What can produce immediate gains is a head-on challenge of the enemy's ideological shortcomings.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Intelligence
The United States is spending over $40,000,000,000.00 a year on intelligence, why is the United States not able to create actionable intelligence?
No amount of training can prepare you to hunt down terrorists when the intelligence you receive does not pinpoint their hideouts. Actionable intelligence is being able to look for a needle on a platter instead of being able to look for a needle in a haystack or between a precise mission and an indefinite mission requiring long periods of time on hostile territory.
With actionable intelligence comes comprehensive intelligence. Who are their leaders? How do they plan? How do they carry out operations? How are they organized? What methods are used for recruitment? What are their weaknesses and vulnerabilities? .....
With comprehensive intelligence comes local intelligence. Local intelligence is collected block by block and must be organized and staffed to identify armed group strengths, to identify armed group weaknesses, and to identify armed group vulnerabilities. Local intelligence must also be organized and staffed to turn local intelligence into operational opportunities.
The United Kingdom and Israel have learned that competitive intelligence involves time, money, men, and patience. Putting competitive intelligence into practice means utilizing all the tools in the intelligence toolbox - collection, analysis, covert action, and counterintelligence. Operational opportunities care of competitive intelligence involves targeted killings, interdiction of arms, interdiction of money, denial of safe houses, and denial of safe territory.
To identify capabilities and intentions requires human intelligence, electronic surveillance alone will not do.
Competitive intelligence is also done by seamlessly joining analysts and operators. Definite boundaries between analytical divisions and operational divisions will not do. Competitive intelligence also involves combining and making assessable intelligence for operational opportunities. Operational opportunities also can not have definite boundaries between one division of government and another division of government.
No amount of training can prepare you to hunt down terrorists when the intelligence you receive does not pinpoint their hideouts. Actionable intelligence is being able to look for a needle on a platter instead of being able to look for a needle in a haystack or between a precise mission and an indefinite mission requiring long periods of time on hostile territory.
With actionable intelligence comes comprehensive intelligence. Who are their leaders? How do they plan? How do they carry out operations? How are they organized? What methods are used for recruitment? What are their weaknesses and vulnerabilities? .....
With comprehensive intelligence comes local intelligence. Local intelligence is collected block by block and must be organized and staffed to identify armed group strengths, to identify armed group weaknesses, and to identify armed group vulnerabilities. Local intelligence must also be organized and staffed to turn local intelligence into operational opportunities.
The United Kingdom and Israel have learned that competitive intelligence involves time, money, men, and patience. Putting competitive intelligence into practice means utilizing all the tools in the intelligence toolbox - collection, analysis, covert action, and counterintelligence. Operational opportunities care of competitive intelligence involves targeted killings, interdiction of arms, interdiction of money, denial of safe houses, and denial of safe territory.
To identify capabilities and intentions requires human intelligence, electronic surveillance alone will not do.
Competitive intelligence is also done by seamlessly joining analysts and operators. Definite boundaries between analytical divisions and operational divisions will not do. Competitive intelligence also involves combining and making assessable intelligence for operational opportunities. Operational opportunities also can not have definite boundaries between one division of government and another division of government.
Intell Agencies on Iraq by Thomas Barnett
This analysis is typical intell stuff: obvious, useless, and playing into a do-nothing mind-set that here says, "Do nothing to piss off the terrorists!"
Duh! When we engage the security situation--any security situation--in the Middle East, we piss off (and create more) terrorists. We do it when we're pro-active, like in Iraq. We do it when we're passive, like our military support to Israel. And we do it when we're behind the scenes, like our intell co-op with regimes throughout the region.
So it's never been a question of whether or not we piss off terrorists (who live to be pissed off, and when there's not enough going on, they'll get jacked over a film (e.g., Van Gogh), a book (Rushdie), a speech (Benedict)--whatever).
We can either engage the region militarily to deal with its security deficits that hold off economic connectivity and keep this overwhelmingly young population from engaging the future (globalization) or we can sit back, try to firewall America (something the spooks are always up for) and wait for the next explosion--or 9/11.
The issue isn't our military involvement, which has been constant for decades now, but the everything else that we suck at: our diplomatic, economic and social engagement with the region. Criticizing our military in the region is perfectly fine, but most of that criticism (from me included) revolves around how poorly we do the everything else--not the mil stuff per se. So pretending the "war" fuels all local terrorism (and even there I say fine, because better there than here, better sooner than later, and better our professionals than our civilians) is magnificently self-flagellating (something intell is always good for) and ultimately misleading (another fine trait of intell analysis--i.e., its tragically non-strategic mindset). It just builds on the myth that the military can do all, so must try all, and when it fails, must be blamed for all.
We tend to view the world as a nail because we refuse to adequately develop our tools beyond the Pentagon's--so an overfed Leviathan and a starved SysAdmin (which I constantly note needs to be more civilian than uniform, more USG than DOD, more private-sector than public, and more rest of world than American).
And you know what? You do all that and you will piss off the terrorists even more. Our job (Big Bang) done poorly pisses them off, but our job done well (SysAdmin, Development-in-a-Box, Department of Everything Else, Shrink the Gap) will piss them off even more, and more importantly--even faster.
And yes, when we inevitably make such strides, the intell types will bemoan the resulting complexity all the more.
Always count on the intell community to advocate a strategy of limited regret, limited action, and limited results. It's what they know and believe in--ass-covering as a way of life.
You want to look and feel like scared Europe in this Long War? Then listen intently to everything the intell community peddles--and just assume we're all on our way out.
And act accordingly.
Duh! When we engage the security situation--any security situation--in the Middle East, we piss off (and create more) terrorists. We do it when we're pro-active, like in Iraq. We do it when we're passive, like our military support to Israel. And we do it when we're behind the scenes, like our intell co-op with regimes throughout the region.
So it's never been a question of whether or not we piss off terrorists (who live to be pissed off, and when there's not enough going on, they'll get jacked over a film (e.g., Van Gogh), a book (Rushdie), a speech (Benedict)--whatever).
We can either engage the region militarily to deal with its security deficits that hold off economic connectivity and keep this overwhelmingly young population from engaging the future (globalization) or we can sit back, try to firewall America (something the spooks are always up for) and wait for the next explosion--or 9/11.
The issue isn't our military involvement, which has been constant for decades now, but the everything else that we suck at: our diplomatic, economic and social engagement with the region. Criticizing our military in the region is perfectly fine, but most of that criticism (from me included) revolves around how poorly we do the everything else--not the mil stuff per se. So pretending the "war" fuels all local terrorism (and even there I say fine, because better there than here, better sooner than later, and better our professionals than our civilians) is magnificently self-flagellating (something intell is always good for) and ultimately misleading (another fine trait of intell analysis--i.e., its tragically non-strategic mindset). It just builds on the myth that the military can do all, so must try all, and when it fails, must be blamed for all.
We tend to view the world as a nail because we refuse to adequately develop our tools beyond the Pentagon's--so an overfed Leviathan and a starved SysAdmin (which I constantly note needs to be more civilian than uniform, more USG than DOD, more private-sector than public, and more rest of world than American).
And you know what? You do all that and you will piss off the terrorists even more. Our job (Big Bang) done poorly pisses them off, but our job done well (SysAdmin, Development-in-a-Box, Department of Everything Else, Shrink the Gap) will piss them off even more, and more importantly--even faster.
And yes, when we inevitably make such strides, the intell types will bemoan the resulting complexity all the more.
Always count on the intell community to advocate a strategy of limited regret, limited action, and limited results. It's what they know and believe in--ass-covering as a way of life.
You want to look and feel like scared Europe in this Long War? Then listen intently to everything the intell community peddles--and just assume we're all on our way out.
And act accordingly.
Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat by Mark Mazzetti
A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.
The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.
An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.
The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.
More than a dozen United States government officials and outside experts were interviewed for this article, and all spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a classified intelligence document. The officials included employees of several government agencies, and both supporters and critics of the Bush administration. All of those interviewed had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the creation of earlier drafts. These officials discussed some of the document’s general conclusions but not details, which remain highly classified.
Officials with knowledge of the intelligence estimate said it avoided specific judgments about the likelihood that terrorists would once again strike on United States soil. The relationship between the Iraq war and terrorism, and the question of whether the United States is safer, have been subjects of persistent debate since the war began in 2003.
National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence. Their conclusions are based on analysis of raw intelligence collected by all of the spy agencies.
Analysts began working on the estimate in 2004, but it was not finalized until this year. Part of the reason was that some government officials were unhappy with the structure and focus of earlier versions of the document, according to officials involved in the discussion.
Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and some policy makers argued that the intelligence estimate should be more focused on specific steps to mitigate the terror threat. It is unclear whether the final draft of the intelligence estimate criticizes individual policies of the United States, but intelligence officials involved in preparing the document said its conclusions were not softened or massaged for political purposes.
Frederick Jones, a White House spokesman, said the White House “played no role in drafting or reviewing the judgments expressed in the National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism.” The estimate’s judgments confirm some predictions of a National Intelligence Council report completed in January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion. That report stated that the approaching war had the potential to increase support for political Islam worldwide and could increase support for some terrorist objectives.
Documents released by the White House timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks emphasized the successes that the United States had made in dismantling the top tier of Al Qaeda.
“Since the Sept. 11 attacks, America and its allies are safer, but we are not yet safe,” concludes one, a report titled “9/11 Five Years Later: Success and Challenges.” “We have done much to degrade Al Qaeda and its affiliates and to undercut the perceived legitimacy of terrorism.”
That document makes only passing mention of the impact the Iraq war has had on the global jihad movement. “The ongoing fight for freedom in Iraq has been twisted by terrorist propaganda as a rallying cry,” it states.
The report mentions the possibility that Islamic militants who fought in Iraq could return to their home countries, “exacerbating domestic conflicts or fomenting radical ideologies.”
On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee released a more ominous report about the terrorist threat. That assessment, based entirely on unclassified documents, details a growing jihad movement and says, “Al Qaeda leaders wait patiently for the right opportunity to attack.”
The new National Intelligence Estimate was overseen by David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, who commissioned it in 2004 after he took up his post at the National Intelligence Council. Mr. Low declined to be interviewed for this article.
The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of “self-generating” cells inspired by Al Qaeda’s leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.
It also examines how the Internet has helped spread jihadist ideology, and how cyberspace has become a haven for terrorist operatives who no longer have geographical refuges in countries like Afghanistan.
In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists, and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake Al Qaeda’s current leadership in the constellation of the global jihad leadership.
But the new intelligence estimate is the first report since the war began to present a comprehensive picture about the trends in global terrorism.
In recent months, some senior American intelligence officials have offered glimpses into the estimate’s conclusions in public speeches.
“New jihadist networks and cells, sometimes united by little more than their anti-Western agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge,” said Gen. Michael V. Hayden, during a speech in San Antonio in April, the month that the new estimate was completed. “If this trend continues, threats to the U.S. at home and abroad will become more diverse and that could lead to increasing attacks worldwide,” said the general, who was then Mr. Negroponte’s top deputy and is now director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
For more than two years, there has been tension between the Bush administration and American spy agencies over the violence in Iraq and the prospects for a stable democracy in the country. Some intelligence officials have said the White House has consistently presented a more optimistic picture of the situation in Iraq than justified by intelligence reports from the field.
Spy agencies usually produce several national intelligence estimates each year on a variety of subjects. The most controversial of these in recent years was an October 2002 document assessing Iraq’s illicit weapons programs. Several government investigations have discredited that report, and the intelligence community is overhauling how it analyzes data, largely as a result of those investigations.
The broad judgments of the new intelligence estimate are consistent with assessments of global terrorist threats by American allies and independent terrorism experts.
The panel investigating the London terrorist bombings of July 2005 reported in May that the leaders of Britain’s domestic and international intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, “emphasized to the committee the growing scale of the Islamist terrorist threat.”
More recently, the Council on Global Terrorism, an independent research group of respected terrorism experts, assigned a grade of “D+” to United States efforts over the past five years to combat Islamic extremism. The council concluded that “there is every sign that radicalization in the Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking.”
The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.
The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.
An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.
The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.
More than a dozen United States government officials and outside experts were interviewed for this article, and all spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a classified intelligence document. The officials included employees of several government agencies, and both supporters and critics of the Bush administration. All of those interviewed had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the creation of earlier drafts. These officials discussed some of the document’s general conclusions but not details, which remain highly classified.
Officials with knowledge of the intelligence estimate said it avoided specific judgments about the likelihood that terrorists would once again strike on United States soil. The relationship between the Iraq war and terrorism, and the question of whether the United States is safer, have been subjects of persistent debate since the war began in 2003.
National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence. Their conclusions are based on analysis of raw intelligence collected by all of the spy agencies.
Analysts began working on the estimate in 2004, but it was not finalized until this year. Part of the reason was that some government officials were unhappy with the structure and focus of earlier versions of the document, according to officials involved in the discussion.
Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and some policy makers argued that the intelligence estimate should be more focused on specific steps to mitigate the terror threat. It is unclear whether the final draft of the intelligence estimate criticizes individual policies of the United States, but intelligence officials involved in preparing the document said its conclusions were not softened or massaged for political purposes.
Frederick Jones, a White House spokesman, said the White House “played no role in drafting or reviewing the judgments expressed in the National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism.” The estimate’s judgments confirm some predictions of a National Intelligence Council report completed in January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion. That report stated that the approaching war had the potential to increase support for political Islam worldwide and could increase support for some terrorist objectives.
Documents released by the White House timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks emphasized the successes that the United States had made in dismantling the top tier of Al Qaeda.
“Since the Sept. 11 attacks, America and its allies are safer, but we are not yet safe,” concludes one, a report titled “9/11 Five Years Later: Success and Challenges.” “We have done much to degrade Al Qaeda and its affiliates and to undercut the perceived legitimacy of terrorism.”
That document makes only passing mention of the impact the Iraq war has had on the global jihad movement. “The ongoing fight for freedom in Iraq has been twisted by terrorist propaganda as a rallying cry,” it states.
The report mentions the possibility that Islamic militants who fought in Iraq could return to their home countries, “exacerbating domestic conflicts or fomenting radical ideologies.”
On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee released a more ominous report about the terrorist threat. That assessment, based entirely on unclassified documents, details a growing jihad movement and says, “Al Qaeda leaders wait patiently for the right opportunity to attack.”
The new National Intelligence Estimate was overseen by David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, who commissioned it in 2004 after he took up his post at the National Intelligence Council. Mr. Low declined to be interviewed for this article.
The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of “self-generating” cells inspired by Al Qaeda’s leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.
It also examines how the Internet has helped spread jihadist ideology, and how cyberspace has become a haven for terrorist operatives who no longer have geographical refuges in countries like Afghanistan.
In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists, and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake Al Qaeda’s current leadership in the constellation of the global jihad leadership.
But the new intelligence estimate is the first report since the war began to present a comprehensive picture about the trends in global terrorism.
In recent months, some senior American intelligence officials have offered glimpses into the estimate’s conclusions in public speeches.
“New jihadist networks and cells, sometimes united by little more than their anti-Western agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge,” said Gen. Michael V. Hayden, during a speech in San Antonio in April, the month that the new estimate was completed. “If this trend continues, threats to the U.S. at home and abroad will become more diverse and that could lead to increasing attacks worldwide,” said the general, who was then Mr. Negroponte’s top deputy and is now director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
For more than two years, there has been tension between the Bush administration and American spy agencies over the violence in Iraq and the prospects for a stable democracy in the country. Some intelligence officials have said the White House has consistently presented a more optimistic picture of the situation in Iraq than justified by intelligence reports from the field.
Spy agencies usually produce several national intelligence estimates each year on a variety of subjects. The most controversial of these in recent years was an October 2002 document assessing Iraq’s illicit weapons programs. Several government investigations have discredited that report, and the intelligence community is overhauling how it analyzes data, largely as a result of those investigations.
The broad judgments of the new intelligence estimate are consistent with assessments of global terrorist threats by American allies and independent terrorism experts.
The panel investigating the London terrorist bombings of July 2005 reported in May that the leaders of Britain’s domestic and international intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, “emphasized to the committee the growing scale of the Islamist terrorist threat.”
More recently, the Council on Global Terrorism, an independent research group of respected terrorism experts, assigned a grade of “D+” to United States efforts over the past five years to combat Islamic extremism. The council concluded that “there is every sign that radicalization in the Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)