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."

Comments

So it was like

[ch-chuck]

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.

Body Bags Don't Win a War.

[Stephen Samuel]

A war is won when the enemy gives in (or decides that you're right).
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.

Re:That's actually a good thing I guess

[Skyshadow]

The concept of communicating directly with the guys out in the field -- the ones who were going to get their asses shot off by a tremendously superior force and knew it -- seems like a fairly well-proven idea. After all, it worked really well in Gulf War I. I have my doubts about how many Iraqi grunts had email, but we'll set those aside for now.

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?

Re:I can't put much faith in Richard Clarke

[BrookHarty]

[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.

Re:No, it was like

[BauHound]

Let's say a large military power (China?) decided that OUR (U.S.'s) leader was a dangerous crazy with access to WMDs. They invade, depose and occupy for a period of time. Would YOU sit by and wave to the invading troops, bringing them hot Starbuck's and wishing them well, satisfied they were only here for YOUR benefit? I wouldn't. I might even decide to be a giant pain in their ass.