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Wikileaks Gets Hold of Counterinsurgency Manual
HeavensBlade23 writes in to let us know that Wikileaks has published a US Special Forces counterinsurgency manual, titled Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces (1994, 2004). "The document, which has been verified, is official US Special Forces doctrine. It directly advocates training paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control and restrictions on labor unions & political parties. It directly advocates warrantless searches, detainment without charge and the suspension of habeas corpus. It directly advocates bribery, employing terrorists, false flag operations and concealing human rights abuses from journalists. And it directly advocates the extensive use of 'psychological operations' (propaganda) to make these and other 'population & resource control' measures more palatable."
Hi,
This is a common mistake made by many Americans, but please remember that Canada is not actually one of your states. You see we're an independent nation. If you need help finding us on a map its that really big spot above you where you get your maple syrup and you used to get cheap shopping. Since we're laterally north of you, we're also a "western government". Unless you're specifically talking about Alaska, then I suppose it is more west than us.. This was a US special force book. I don't believe it was a joint US/Canadian military manual. Yes our carrier planes suck and we occasionally bum a ride but we don't partake in all military activities together.
Unless it was - you know - either a fake or inaccurately reported.
Like Bush' supposed "service record" from 73 that turned out to have been made with word 2003.
I've scanned the comments, and after reading the respoonses from my countrymen I amd ashamed and appalled.
There was an item on the radio in the news today that the Gitmo prisoners are suffering from TSS and show evidence of torture. When will Americans wake up and demand accountability? Like excellence, mediocrity and criminality come from the top.
Bush, Cheney, the Secretary of "defense", and a whole lot of other people need to be tried and convicted of war crimes. The actions of my government are past shameful.
We deserve the vitriol hurled at us by the rest of the world. For the first time in my 56 years I'm ashamed to be an American.
Bush and all the people he has appointed should be impeached, tried, found guilty of treason and war crimes, and set in front of a firing squad and shot.
Not even Hirohito damaged my country as much as the current administration.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
"(just like the majority of people) thought it was necessary at the time."
Are we talking about in Australia?
because in the UK the sentiment was thoroughly anti-war, to the extent that we the largest protests in the history of the country.
Bad intelligence is when Achmed is giving you information, but he is actually secretly working for the Taliban. Cooked intelligence is when there is no Achmed, and the information you supposedly got from him was actually created by the Office of Special Plans out of whole cloth. Basically, black propaganda aimed at your own populace.
Bad intellegence can be incompetence (or it can just mean the other side is better than you), but cooked intelligence is definitely malice.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I like their claim to have "leaked" the document. Its a 'sensitive' document, not classified, and you can google for it and find the full text on the web in several locations, all posted before wikileaks. Anyone in the US Army had access to it through multiple websites for soldier education.
The terrorists from the Middle East want to kill all Americans. Why? Because of something our government did decades ago,
... I flamebait unreasonably. The actual issue is not people's stupidity. It's that they wish to reduce the problem to one that they can control. Accepting the lessons of history would make that impossible; pretending that the world was a perfect place and Islam spread out of the Arabian peninsula with flower garlands and fluffy bunnies right up to the election of George Bush who is the sole source of evil anywhere in the entire world -- that frames the problem in terms they can affect, and thus empowers them, and therefore all reality which contradicts that is denied.
Point of information: Whilst you are not actually inaccurate, you are imprecise. By a factor of half a millennium. The "terrorists from the Middle East" got particularly pissed with American troops remaining in Saudi Arabia after the first active phase of the still ongoing Gulf War, true, but long before the nation of America even EXISTED, let alone anything remotely recognizable as "our government" there were fatwas against the West, in particular Spaniards, to reclaim the "Muslim lands" of "Al Andalus". Which most of us know as "Spain", and have since the Reconquista was completed. In 1492.
Or, talk to some Hindus. Whose post-9/11 reaction was basically "Um, guys? We've been battling Muslim terrorists for over a millennium on THIS side of the world? Nice of you to finally get on board?"
However, this kind of historical knowledge and context is not only rare but deemed undesirable by many. "Bush lied, people died" is more suited to their cognitive talents.
OK
Indeed, I think that the single best reason for President Obama to be elected is that the shock of these people's delusions running smack into their Messianic Figure dealing with the world as it actually is will be a positive delight to behold...
One of the things the manual apparently advocates is "the suspension of habeas corpus". Why is this shocking? The U.S. Constitutional standard is "when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion" and I'd sure consider insurgency as qualifying.
This document was signed in 1994. Thanks for playing.
Evil is the money of root.
Sorry to pop all your bubbles, but that Counterinsurgency Manual is publically available. I bought an offical copy from Amazon many months ago. There's nothing secret in the book and those "warrantless searches" are done on the battlefield overseas, not in this country. The whole article is alarmist tripe.
WWI began in 1914, but America didn't get there till April of 1917 (oh yea, and it ended in November of 1918. Of the ~10 million deaths, and 13 million wounded, America's contribution stands at approximately 1% (117k killed, 205k wounded).
Cripes, Canada, with a population about 1/12th of the United States at that time, suffered HALF as many casualties (67k killed, 150k wounded)! By proportion to overall population, Canada contributed approximately 24x as much as the USA!
World War II began in 1939. The Battle of Britian was fought in 1940. The Americans, after A LOT of wembling about "other peoples' problems", finally joined the war in December of 1941 (having essentially sat-out half of the conflict).
The Shah of Iran was an American-backed dictator who essentially pillaged Iran and stayed in power by virtue of the CIA.
Similiarly, Saddam Hussein was enabled by support from the American military-industrial complex, as well as the CIA and the DoD. They armed him, paid him, and supported him because he was happy to throw hapless Iraqis lives at Iran on behalf of the ole' US-of-A.
Given these things, I'm having trouble finding a basis for the self-righteous tone of your message (other than just being completely blind to history, and having swallowed the current propaganda hook-line-and-sinker...)
-AC
Yes, we in the USA haven't had a properly declared war since World War II.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
This is really kind of absurd. The article is all alarmist creating the impression that the U.S. is on some moral limb with its counter insurgency tactics. This is hogwash. Whats REALLY funny is that the U.S. has always been hesitant to really commit to the kind of counter insurgency tactics that actual work and keeps trying to fight insurgencies with normal battlefield tactics. This book is just an attempt to implement in the special forces what many other governments have already successfully done against insurgencies.
For example-
(1) England. England practically wrote this play book. They used it to great effect in Ireland, India and amusingly the middle east. They suppressed the media, lied, arrested on mere flimsy suspicion, bribed and bombed. Guess what- it worked. They were very successful at suppressing insurgencies in many many countries.
(2) India. They learned very well from their former colonial masters and have one of the best counter insurgency operations in history running in Kashmir and a few other provinces. Totally dirty. Totally works.
(3) The French in Algeria. The French successfully beat down an insurgency in Algiers that was particularly brutal (bombed many many civilian locations) using all of the tactics cited in the article above. Unfortunatly they went one step too far and engaged in some pretty nasty torture. While they were able to pacify the city their was media outrage at home. The insurgents started operations again in the country-side and the broke French government just decided to leave.
There are a lot of other examples. However consider this, the British have been far more unsuccessful in their areas of operations in Iraq then the U.S.. On the one hand they are far less arrogant, and far more respectful in some ways to the locals then the U.S.. On the hand they are employing all of the dirty tricks they learned from hundreds of years of successful direct colonialism.
Insurgencies fight dirty. Successful counter insurgencies do too. The U.S. to date has been pretty bad at this game and it really does appear that its due to a mindset in U.S. commanders that insists on forcing big war paradigms onto the a very different kind of battlefield. It sounds like this book needs wider distribution if we are going to go to places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yea, that may have been made up, too bad it overshadowed the very real issue of Bush's questionable National Guard service.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
So the only way to contribute to the war effort is to sustain casualties? By that logic I guess that Yugoslavia contributed more during WW2 than the US or UK?
World War II began in 1939. The Battle of Britian was fought in 1940. The Americans, after A LOT of wembling about "other peoples' problems", finally joined the war in December of 1941 (having essentially sat-out half of the conflict).You might want to consider reading some history before you bemoan how the United States "sat out" the first half of WW2. Even if the American people were inclined to get involved (they weren't) the United States didn't really have much of a military to speak of in those years. The only branch of the American armed forces that was remotely ready for war was the US Navy. The US Army and Army Air Corps were a joke and meaningful American intervention simply wasn't possible until late 1942/early 1943.
FDR did what he could with the cards that he held -- he sent arms to the Allies (a blatant violation of the concept of neutrality), attempted to keep Japanese aggression in check and ordered the US Navy to escort conveys in the Atlantic and to sink u-boats on sight -- months before we were formally at war with Nazi Germany.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/jp3_07_1.pdf
This is not a signature.
Did you ever hear of Free Speech Zones
What about Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and extraordinary rendition to name but three. Cheney is on record saying that torture is a no-brainer if there is the potential to save (presumably american) lives...
Well, depending on how you define terrorist, the US has provided support for: the IRA, Osama Bin Laden, and various death squads in South America. Doing business with "friendly" tyrants has not been atypical either.
Actions speak much louder than words.
Talk is cheap. The actions of this administration suggest less-than-noble intentions.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Most people who join the special forces are "lifers", I have yet to meet a cop that did anything more interesting then be a MP or some other kind of support MOS. I have met a few people who got a chance to do the "entry level" special forces training and then run around telling people they were in the SF.
"the intelligence may well have been flawed, but Bush didn't do it."
In fact he and Cheney's "office of special plans" did exactly that: they blocked information that was not favorable to war, provided 'intelligence' from expatriots that was nothing more than lies and wishful thinking, provided 'intelligence' from torture victims that was worthless... and engineered the whole thing with only war in mind.
"What was important was the Saddam comply with inspectors which he did not do"
Dude you live in a fantasy world. The inspectors were in the process of inspection when they were driven out by the comming war. In addition, the UN 'resolution' fig leaf under which we went to war called for all countries to provide information the inspectors could use to locate the WMD. All the while the inspections were going on, Rumsfeld and others kept saying "we know where the weapons are" but refused to provide this information to the inspectors. This placed the US in violation of the resolution. It's easy to understand why we didn't provide this information: when inspection proved it wrong it would have made it a lot harder to justify why were going to war.
Those who sit idle while evil happens are not "good guys". The "good guys" are those who will actually get up off their asses to help out others, even at some risk
Your ass had better be posting from a Darfur refugee camp, if you're going to make that kind of claim.perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
you are entitled to your opinion and me mine ... however, nothing I said is factually incorrect.
:D
You haven't said anything "factually incorrect" because you haven't said anything factual at all.
and I will be voting McCain in 2008 too. Lets see if that can get a few more expletives to come out of your mouth
Well, it is obviously pointless to try change your position. I'm just pointing out your hypocrisy to others. After eight years in power, two nations in ruins, a trillion dollars spent on war, and an economy in shambles, Republicans still fail to take responsibility for their actions and admit that they screwed up. After what you did and how you are trying to weasel out of it now, people have a right to be angry with Republicans and people like you.
You also don't know your history when you talk about "anti-war liberals" in reference to WWI and WWII. It was two liberal Democrats that caused the US to enter into WWI and WWII. They entered those wars for the right reasons, and they followed through correctly. Despite all the Republican lies and distortions, it is the liberals that cause the economy to flourish and bring prosperity to America, lead the nation into just and successful wars, and promote freedom around the world.
People like McCain and you lack values, you lack historical understanding, and you lack integrity. And the sooner people realize that, the sooner we can restore American values and American strength.
Editor could make a living pitching breaking balls for the MLB.
Since I'm bored:
"The document, which has been verified, is official US Special Forces doctrine."
WAS official doctrine. The 1994 version has been superceded by the version dated Feb. 2007. Furthermore, the document does not actually have a printed security classification, which means it is either Unclassified or For Official Use Only, the lowest classification level. It does have a distribution restriction (correctly excerpted) which is not the same thing, and only to protect other classified information. Furthermore, Wikileaks is incorrect in claiming it is the first to publish to the web. A quick Google search reveals several sites that have had it posted, not the least of which is FAS.org, which maintains a comprehensive library of military manuals. In short, not much of a leak.
"It directly advocates training paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control and restrictions on labor unions & political parties."
Based on the severity of the situation, true. None of this is unusual however, for a student of either history, or the student of law who recognizes that civil law may be superceded by martial or "emergency" law (the conditions under which the document in question advocate these actions). Furthermore, special legislation is emplaced at the will of the foreign nation, not by the US.
"It directly advocates warrantless searches, detainment without charge and the suspension of habeas corpus."
Again, true if the foreign nation enacts the legislation. The assumption being made by Wikileaks is that normal civil law should operate without respect to any civil strife, which is questionable at best. Certainly no government of a nation under civil strife has attempted it. Wikileaks also fails to point out that these are advocated as measures of last resort.
"It directly advocates bribery, employing terrorists, false flag operations and concealing human rights abuses from journalists."
False. The manual discusses monetary motivation without making a recommendation. It does not advocate employing terrorists. Wikileaks has bolded "attacking infrastructure" without making clear that this refers to the insurgent organizations. It also has bolded a sentence on drawing the insurgency into terrorist acts, but this is clearly not advocating terrorism by US or the supported foreign-nation forces. "False-flag operations" are not discussed, unless Wikileaks is refering to operations by paramilitary forces, but these are citizens of the foreign nation and would only be operating under their own flag. As for concealing human rights abuses, the manual says that US personnel are not to discuss them, but nowhere does it instruct them to lie--this is not instruction to conceal.
"And it directly advocates the extensive use of 'psychological operations' (propaganda) to make these and other 'population & resource control' measures more palatable."
True, by explaining what the measures are for. As the US found out the hard way in Iraq, not explaining what you are doing gives free reign to insurgent propoganda to paint every action as evil.
I give this story a 1/10.
- The Captcha is "generals." Irony.
So we didn't put him there, but we helped his party to power.