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Richard Clarke on Cyberterrorism and Iraq
An anonymous reader writes "Richard Clarke, former counter terrorism advisor to the US National Security Council, has revealed that before invading Iraq, the U.S. government used the Internet to communicate directly with Iraqi soldiers by sending them personalised messages saying, "We're about to invade. We're going to overwhelm you and if you resist us we're going to kill you. But we don't want to do that. So really the best thing for you to do when we invade is to go home." He said the soldiers got the message and most of them went home. Clarke, who many will remember for publicly criticizing the Bush administration, also emphasized the importance of cybersecurity. "Just because it doesn't create a lot of body bags, doesn't mean it's not important. It's vitally important for our economies," Clarke said."
dropping propaganda leaflets from an airplane.
I can't imagine too many of the Iraqi grunts with email or IM. Maybe the upper eschelon officers.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
How many Iraqi soldiers actually had internet access? Sounds like they really just got in touch with the senior guys.
to Falluja to stock up on car bombs and mortar shells.
A turned enemy is far more valuable than a dead one.
The war in Iraq will never be won because Bush is focused on kiling the enemy -- and not too worried about killing innocents. Every dead civilian is probably going to create 2-5 enemy insurgents (former friends and family of the dead)... The more people you kill the more enemies you end up with.
Unless he's willing to just Nuke the country then this is is gonna continue ad-infinitum.
The interesting thing is that all of those messages probably gave the baath party the idea of going home (with their weapons) and waiting until the US had moved in -- thus leading, in part, to the current dilemma.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
His book has a bit of puffery, but it was also very insightful.
wait...how many iraqi soldiers had email? According to our administration, most were lucky to have the basics. Further, according to the propaganda on the evening news ( and it's all propaganda ), the countries infrastructure was almost nonexistant regarding internet connectivity.
Further, how did they know these were iraqi emails?
I smell a fish. I don't doubt the few that did manage to get these emails stayed home, but come on, bragging about saving 5-6 technically superior iraqis?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The truly unfortunate thing in my mind is that it apparently didn't occur to anyone to keep up this communication after the invasion when there was still a chance to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis. Maybe if we had continued to treat Iraqis with the same sort of basic level of respect we wouldn't be in this lovely guerilla warface mess we're faced with now.
Buy hey, there's always next time, right?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Iraq is a good example: Americans supported to war for good reasons, and we're still clinging onto our good intentions. The only unfortunate bit is that the result of those good intentions turns out to be having 19 year olds shoot unarmed injured prisoners in their mosques.
Path to hell and all that.
Propaganda? There were telling the enemy to go home so as to inflict fewer casualties; considering the allied forces obliterated the Iraqi army within weeks, that may very well have saved lives.
I don't know about you, but I'm really getting tired of people bashing the British & American forces in Iraq. Sure, you can debate whether they should've gone in the first place, I will give you that, but now that they are there, will you not admit that they are in the right?
I mean, here we have a country filled with and ruled by fascists and Islamic fundamentalists, where women are looked down upon -- the United States attempts to install a democracy and yet people like you see the United States as "the bad guys". Are the US and British forces truely worse than the suicide bombers who kill civilians packed in buses, restaurants, and crowded Israeli markets, or worse than the Saddam Husseins of the world, or worse than the Islamic radicals that kill civilians in the name of Allah with knives, slowly sawing the throats of captured aid workers?
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[snip]if you believe how he tells it, he was involved in every national security crisis in the past 30 years and if it wasn't for him, by golly, we'd all be doomed. He almost single-handedly saves the day every time![/snip]
Ok, stop bashing on the guy just because he disagreed with Bush and was asked to leave. I see alot of this, if your not with us, your against us posts about people who disagree with Bush.
This is still America and you can disagree, for now...
But anyways, Richard Clarke has been around for over 30 years fighting terrorism. I'm sure he has seen a little more than the average slashdot poster, his experience shouldn't be disregarded with such disrespect.
Check out Wikipeida on Richard Clarke.
Aside from that, Clarke is a smart guy with some awfully impressive credentials. Regardless of what the GOP Smear Machine(tm) tried to do with him after he dared to testify that Iraq wasn't involved with 9-11, his input should not be disregarded lightly.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Yeah, I feel that committing the most awesome war crimes in the history of history is the way to go, too. Word up, brothuh. And seig heil.
What was it that happened to Rome again?
Is this the same Richard Clarke who contradicted himself constantly on when the Bush administration decided on a proactive approach to al-Qaida? Administration records show April 2001 which he initially agreed with. Then he had a book to sell and it suddenly became September 10. Even Time Magazine couldn't pimp his book for him after they found numerous questions of credibility and outright partisanship.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Mod me down as off topic, but I'd like to personally thank the parent poster for his service and his lucid post.
Contrary to the image seen on TV, some of the Iraqi units did stand and fight -- talk to anyone in the US units who were at the front line of the attack (of course, many of those are now back in Iraq for their second or third tour, but some are Stateside). The assault wasn't the advertised "cakewalk"; there was real fighting. Of course, those Iraqis who fought, often as not, died as a consequence.
As for most of the remainder -- who didn't want to be there in the first place, and had no love for Saddam and his cronies -- they did what men in any army in history would do in a similar set of circumstances: they deserted as soon as the opportunity arose to do so without risking punishment.
And finally, some percentage -- it is unclear how many -- disappeared, went into hiding for about six months, and then emerged to fight a classical guerrilla war. Which, unfortunately for the stability of the region, they are doing with considerable skill. Some folks that earlier deserted (particularly Sunnis; the Shi'a have decided to wait until they can win the election that the US is generously arranging for them) have joined them, as have an unknown number of outsiders.
This is a nice neat plausible story without the email, which probably had little if any effect. The Iraqi Army (as distinct from Baath apologists and lackies, plus their fearless leader) had no illusions about its chances against the US -- after all, this organization fought two major wars within the memory of its current officer corps. They probably found the emails a bit of comic relief prior to dealing with the inevitable.
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
Nor is this constrained to resistance forces. The evacuation at Dunkirk was probably Britain's finest hour in World War II, because the citizens took it on their own to sail in anything that could move on water, through the German bombers and artillery, to rescue escaping allied troops.
However, you'll notice something about both of these examples. No side had an overall advantage. In the case of Russia, the Germans used armor heavily, which is not a good tactic in urban warfare. Their tanks were built for high speeds, which is why they did well in Africa (being defeated largely by superior numbers) but that meant defensive capability and tight cornering were not part of the design.
In the case of Dunkirk, we see a similar situation. The German aircraft were designed to strike fast and run fast. Both the aircraft and artillery were designed to hit big, slow-moving targets. That made them utterly ineffective against something as tiny or as manoeverable as a sailing boat.
The fact, then, that the opponents in both cases were relatively puny was offset by the limitations of the attackers.
At Tora Bora, we got to see both sides. When the Afghan troops were used, the defenders had the advantage, because they had superior terrain. When the US carpet-bombed the entire region, though, relatively little escaped. (Carpet-bombing is frowned upon by the International community, precisely because very little tends to survive. You can't exactly aim to miss the guys who are too wounded to fight, have surrendered, etc. This puts it on the no-no side of the rules of engagement. On the other hand, most nations aren't stupid enough to argue the finer points with a country with 20,000 lb. MOABs.)
In Iraq, we're seeing a similar scenario panning out. Where the US uses Iraqi troops (or their own troops in small numbers), the resistance tends to do quite a bit of damage. However, when the US uses air strikes, missile-armed UAVs, the really heavy tanks (where an RPG just means someone has to go out and re-paint the star on the side) or very large numbers of troops, the US tends to walk right over the opposition.
Do I think the opposition is likely to last? Probably. There are a few too many "unfortunate incidents" which could push the undecided voters - sorry, undecided Arabs into opposing the US presence. There are some serious allegations that such incidents, far from being the product of "a few bad apples" were actually approved policy. If that pans out, I can imagine that we'll start seeing some serious fireworks.
Will the resistance defeat the US? Probably not. At least, not directly. It's currently a war of attrition, and the US can afford the current casualty ratio. Now, if the insurgents were to scatter in the desert and wait it out, then re-invade Iraq once the US left, they'd probably win and the US would be unlikely to go back. (Well, provided the oil stayed flowing.)
The current tactic, though, seems to be geared more to draining the US of the financial resources needed to maintain any presence in the Middle East. That might work. Indirect wars have been fought before. (Napoleon's famous remark of armies marching on their stomach was in reference to the fact that you can destroy an army far more effectively by eliminating the supplies than by direct confrontation.)
Certainly, the US is heavily in debt, inflation is becoming a problem and consumer confidence is very low. However, the war would have to continue at current levels for several more years to destabilize the US economy enough to cause severe problems. The insurgents would also need t
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
and I've pointed it out before. Define "terrorism" in this context. How you can hold up Titus' genocide against the Jews -- he ordered the complete destruction of Judea -- as an example of stopping terrorism is beyond me. It was an attempt to steal gold and, of course, put down Jewish resistance to the Roman empire. Perhaps the morons modding this crap up every time you post it would stop to think if they knew you were advocating genocide based on an example of the near extermination of Jews that was actually an influence on Hitler's strategy of annihilation during WWII.
You didn't even address his character assassination by the Bushistas after his testimony to the 911 Commission. Your comment that he thought "cyberterrorism" was a bigger threat than bin Laden just shows how uninformed you are. Clarke publicly admitted being partially to blame for 911, but his book makes very clear that if anything, people thought he took the OBL threat too seriously prior to 911. And of course the biggest problem is that the Bush Admin stopped listening to him entirely until 911. "Cyberterrorism" was a subset of his concerns, but for him, al Qaeda was the biggest threat America faced since the Cold War, and he made that eminently clear.
We knew who two of the hijackers were terrorists and we detected when they entered the country.
We'd arrested short-bus hijacker Mousaoui.
FBI field agents guessed correctly the friggin plan in writing to their superiors, for Christ's sake.
Here's a good idea, let's vote for the guy that blew it then covered it up then attacked the wrong country.
The scuttle but is that Rumsfeld, Cheney and Powell were the movers who decided on the response to 9/11. Only one of them wanted to attack Afghanistan before Iraq. Thank goodness he got his way. Can you guess who it was?
I'll give you a hint: he's the only one that Bush has fired.
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That's what they said shortly after the invasion. We're still waiting.
And how long did it take for us to fully restore Germany, Italy, and Japan to their pre-war electrification and production levels? I'll give you a hint: it was a lot longer than two years. You're being too impatient, not understanding the size and scope of what's required to change a country that's been mired in dictatorship and sanctions for decades.
This isn't some quick in-and-out intervention here, Iraq is a long-term project. It's not going to be a nice and tidy, wrapped up in between commercial breaks. The President never said it would be and neither did the generals or the Pentagon. In fact, both parties said the exact opposite. You should give people time to do their jobs before condemning their efforts as failures.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky