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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."

13 of 999 comments (clear)

  1. Re:War is fun! by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  2. What we learned about running death squads... by js_sebastian · · Score: 5, Informative
    From TFA:

    The manual, Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces (1994, 2004), may be critically described as "what we learned about running death squads and propping up corrupt government in Latin America and how to apply it to other places". Its contents are both history defining for Latin America and, given the continued role of US Special Forces in the suppression of insurgencies, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, history making. This has nothing to do with "war is war". These are tactics for keeping a corrupt government in place by killing, torturing and otherwise terrorizing any opposition (this includes legitimate, non-violent opposition, labor unions, etc) and the general population. This was applied in places like el Salvador or Nicaragua, and please remember that THE US WERE NOT AT WAR WITH THESE COUNTRIES. In fact, there is no war in Iraq either, right? Mission accomplished...
  3. Wow. Just wow. by sm62704 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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
  4. Re:Did any of this need to be confirmed? by sesshomaru · · Score: 4, Informative

    No point mistaking bad intelligence and unquestioning politicians for malice.
    Ok, as you are speaking of Australia, this may not apply to you. After all, I could see the government of Australia accepting intelligence from their ally the United States in good faith. However, citizens of the United States, you should understand that there is a difference between cooked intelligence and bad intelligence.

    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."
  5. The Suspension Clause by thesaurus · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  6. Re:War is fun! by Scratch-O-Matic · · Score: 4, Informative

    This document was signed in 1994. Thanks for playing.

    --


    Evil is the money of root.
  7. Big Deal!!! Counterinsurgency Manual not new. by QuantumSam · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Big Deal!!! Counterinsurgency Manual not new. by mizhi · · Score: 4, Informative

      Well, to be fair, the particular manual WikiLeaks posted was restricted on 5 DEC 2003 to Army personnel only. So, while it's not classified, it's not generally meant for public consumption. That doesn't mean you can't find it with a little searching.

      What is currently available on Amazon's website is the Operational Techniques (link) Manual. This is more of a "what sf does" type of book. The WikiLeaks article links to a TTP which is like a "HOW TO" manual. And in reality, while it's no secret what SF or any other type of Army unit does, specific TTP are sensitive because they have pretty specific guidelines and checklists on how certain tasks are accomplished.

      They're not classified, but they're also not something an Army unit would necessarily want widely distributed.

      Oh, and for people complaining about the format of the manual - this is what Army manuals look like. They have lousy formatting, and it's pretty common to find typos and other errors.

      WikiLeaks didn't really scoop anything, so it's not some sort of coup.

      --
      Humorless sig goes here.
  8. Re:War is fun! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  9. Re:War is fun! by ericspinder · · Score: 3, Informative

    Like Bush' supposed "service record" from 73 that turned out to have been made with word 2003.

    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.
  10. Re:War is fun! by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!

    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.
  11. Re:War is fun! by fredrated · · Score: 5, Informative

    "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.

  12. Re:Did any of this need to be confirmed? by halber_mensch · · Score: 3, Informative

    The good guys almost always outnumber the bad guys, but most won't do a single thing about it becauase they have their own lives to worry about.


    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})"