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Why Counter-Terrorism Is In Shambles
Early last week several questions were submitted to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern about the sad state of counter-terrorism in the United States, and he has answered frankly and in-depth. In addition, McGovern solicited former FBI attorney/special agent Coleen Rowley to review his answers and provide her own comments. Ray's biggest tip to the intelligence community was to "HOLD ACCOUNTABLE THOSE RESPONSIBLE. More 'reform' is the last thing we need. Sorry, but we DO have to look back. The most effective step would be to release the CIA Inspector General report on intelligence community performance prior to 9/11. That investigation was run by, and its report was prepared by an honest man, it turns out. It was immediately suppressed by then-Acting DCI John McLaughlin — another Tenet clone — and McLaughin's successors as director, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, and now Leon Panetta."
The people directing the operations believe them to be ineffective? It's all smoke and mirrors, and nothing is really safer? If something was going to happen, it still is, regardless of the measures implemented today? Who could have guess this to be the case?
The answer to that first question (the first part anyway) could basically be summed up in one sentence: Read the goddamned 9/11 Commission Report. As one of probably seven Americans who actually did, I must say that it always surprised me just how flat it seemed to fall on the populous and government both. Sure, it made the NYT best-seller list for a bit, because hey, in 2004 what better coffee table book was there?
Sure, the first third of the report might be horrifying, and the middle third was extremely dry, but they were still extremely telling. What's more, the final section offered some suggestions, potential fixes, and forward-thinking plans that were excellent. Of course none of them were fully-fledged, but they were great jumping-off points. How many were put into action? Surely not too many, and five and a half years later we're still reeling from that inaction.
The main message in the report was that of any good relationship, communication, and that's precisely what hasn't been happening. McGovern hits a lot of good points, but I agree with him that this is all incredibly old. Not stale, because it hasn't been done, but old nonetheless. And lord knows holding those responsible responsible is a novel concept.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
Look, the main thing is we forgot that terrorism is a tactic, and let ourselves get swept up in Fear.
From my personal experience (multiple counter-terrorism ops) what works is fairly simple: basic police detective work.
Torture doesn't work. Fear plays into what they want.
Stop living in fear and treat this as we treat natural disasters and food poisoning - don't overreact, don't reduce your freedom or liberty, but do allocate a PORTION of your police resources to proper detective work in tracking them down.
That works. None of what we've done so far does, sadly.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm not a terrorist
That's not for you to decide.
Two problems with this statement.
1 You can't be sure they are a terrorist while your punching them there have been several people tortured who were, in the end, found innocent.
2 Torture only makes the person say what they think will make you leave them alone. Maybe they confess to something they didn't do or maybe they give you bad intelligence.
In World War two it was discovered that the best way for the allies to get intel from their prisoners on what the Germans were up to was a steak dinner.
Torture is just a violent jerk finding righteous excuses for unconscionable behavior and is counter productive every time.
If you want to see how frequent terrorist attacks can become, take a look at Iraq,
Wooooooooooosh!
The reason "terrorist attacks" are so frequent in places like Iraq is because of LOCAL CONDITIONS. Terrorism does not appear out of nowhere. It takes a lot of local infrastructure in order to pull off, including motivated individuals with lots of experience in both the tradecraft of terrorism and the local society.
And, lets see if I get your argument correct here - even though we haven't been doing anything substantial and the number of attacks have been near zero, we need to massively ramp up the amount of effort we put in to stop all those non-existent attacks? Right? Because I'm saying the opposite and you appear to be disagreeing with me.
Actually, Israel is outsmarting the terrorists by staying on the offensive.
And yet they fail far more often than our own counter-terrorism program.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
What if they don't want you to address the causes, maybe the causes are a natrul effect of how business is done. Dealing with causes means changing how you do business.
The so called acts of "terrorism" against the USA, could be called by another name. They are the resistance. The United States is an empire. it's ok, it's not a bad thing in itself. Embrace what you are. So, there is a resistance. A small, stupid, disorganized, and full of religious fanatics resistance. The fact that the resistance isn't bigger doesn't mean there are not a lot of other people that would like to resist, they just don't think blowing up buildings is the way to resist the empire.
So, when you say "Anti-terrorism" you actually mean "Anti enemies of the empire". What the government is doing is chasing the enemies of the empire. It is doing so using the worth methodologies: fear, violence, persecution, surveillance. And what the US is accomplishing is far from stopping that resistance: It actually gets more people to join in, and causes even more hate against your country.
The UK was once a Huge Empire, and they conquered most of the known world. And nobody hated them as much as everyone hates the US. And many times, what they did was actually far worse than the actions of the US. Then, why is the US hated so much? two reasons: One, people don't like self-righteous fucks. Do what you must, but don't pretend to be the land of the free and home of the whatever anymore. You are an empire. Conquer and STFU. Stop trying to sell the "American" way to everyone. Second: Conquer, but don't destroy. The UK conquered half the world, and now those places are known as Australia, The United States, Canada ... The US, OTOH, conquered Iran, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and those places are the same shitholes they were before. They are actually worse now after you screwed them up. Want their oil? Conquer them, get their oil, and in the process establish there and build trains and schools. The Colony model works, the big country takes the resources and cheap work that they need, and the small startup country grows and learns. Eventually, it becomes independent.
But if you keep conquering, screwing the place up, and then leaving, with the sole goal of selling more weapons and controlling the price of oil, people will hate you mroe and more, and they'll continue trying to blow the fuck out of your country.
Being a self righteous fuck and saying "why does the world hate us" doesn't help. Realizing what you are, and acting in consequence does.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Terrorists are trolls.
Don't feed the trolls, it's fucking simple.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
Like what happened during 9/11? Or the underpants bomber? Or the shoe bomber? Perhaps the bali bombers? Only the 9/11 hijackers fit the mold of the experienced terrorists. The others are fairly low grade terrorists with nearly no experience, just given a bomb and told to set it off.
You are proving my point. 9/11 was it. Underpants and shoes didn't work - they weren't good enough. Bali bombers were in their home court they had experience with local society.
I didnt realise you work for the CIA or the DHS to know about every foiled attack or plot to say that attacks have been near-zero. Just because you dont see the attacks being foiled, doesnt mean they arent happening.
Don't try to play that game. Absence of evidence is not evidence. But there is plenty of evidence to the contrary - every single indicted terrorist plotter in the US has been a total incompetent. The JFK bombers, the Sears Tower Plot, etc, etc. If they are so willing to trot out these incompetents and actually take them to trial, you can be pretty sure they would at least charge ONE competent terrorist. But so far, nada.
Israel succeeds more often, as they are attacked far, far more often than the US.
TADA! Glad you see my point. Now I just don't understand why you thought you had to argue with me in the first place.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
BZZZ. Thanks for playing.
We want them to catch the bad guys - AND WHEN THEY FAIL to do that job, hold them accountable. Which wasn't clear in the summary, but was clear in the article.
George Tenet was the CIA director. CIA's job is to get all of the intelligence information in a CENTRAL agency (who knew?). Mandated by congress at it's creation after WWII.
9/11 happened. CIA blew it, and there was no consequence for the people We The People hired. Tenet wasn't fired for NOT DOING HIS GODDAMN JOB.
Instead of holding the CIA accountable for their failure, we create Homeland Security, National terrorism center, TSA, Patriot Act, so-on and so-forth, ad infinitum. We declare "War on Terror" - which will end up like the War on Poverty or the War on Drugs. Generate a lot of money for a lot of technology and industry without ever providing a path to victory.
Bureaucracy at it's finest.
Too bad we didn't have a President. He could've said "CIA blew it. Tenet, you're fired. Let's get someone in here who can be bothered to be responsible."
Instead we have all of the BS that's been justified in the name of security, and we're worse off (security-wise) than we were on 9/12/2001.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Actually, I would say that's right on. Congress, the whole darned institution, not just your O'Reilly-esque political Punch and Judy show, should be held accountable for any failure(s) of the CIA.
They oversee it. They order it. Michael Scheuer smartly said, during the hearings on extraordinary rendition, that a "half-assed bureaucrat like [himself] wouldn't do anything without the approval of Congress."
I wanted to stand up and applaud him when I saw it. We kidnapped people with Congressional authority, and it is amazing that nobody's been held accountable for their incredible lack of ethics and malfeasance. There needs to be an investigation.
--
Toro
Oh, you may still say what you want. Just anywhere. I may still post things on the internet. But I should be prepared to be arrested for things I didn't even write. You may still protest against politicians. But you'll be sent to areas where nobody cares and certainly no camera will see your protest.
In case you didn't notice, you're still allowed to say what you want, what's limited is your exposure. And what is it good for to talk about grievances if it's made sure that nobody can hear you? It's classic constitution circumvention. You're not silenced because you can't say what you want, you're silenced by taking away any possible audience that might hear you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So what? That was entirely post-attack. The attack was paid for by Saudis, and executed by nationals from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Egypt.
Now, do you see Iraq in that list? Fuck no, you don't. Do you see Afghanistan there? Fuck no, you don't. Do you see us attacking Egypt? No. Lebanon? No. The UAE? No. Saudi Arabia? No. Instead, we attacked Iraq (a total WTF) and Afghanistan, a country uninvolved in the attack; no nationals, no funding.
And if you think it's ok to attack a country because they don't want to hand someone over, then you better start ducking, because the US holds people back from all manner of countries. A, B, C, D, etc.
If you think it's ok to attack a country because you don't agree with how they do things, then holy chickenshit, you'd *really* better duck, because there's a whole line of countries that can say that about us.
If you think it's ok to attack a country because they're screwed up internally, that is, not obeying their constitution or other founding papers... yeah, you guessed it, duck. because we're so far away from our constitution it can't be seen from here.
But I think you might agree with me that if someone attacks you, then you have some justification to hit back at where they come from and/or who paid/ordered the act. Let me repeat, just for the sake of trying to point the objective facts to you:
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Whatever you want to call them. I feel absolutely zero need to respect the current PC terminology for these superstitious middle easterners, or their so-called "religion." It's a cult of reality-challenged people, just like every other religion, and just like every other religion, it breeds more reality-challenged people doing moronic things.
As far as I'm concerned, our ideal path here is to crash develop electric vehicles, never buy another drop of oil from them, never let another one across our borders, and never send them another red cent. Let them eat sand, to vaguely paraphrase Marie Antoinette, and with about as much concern as her delivery.
Sure they do. They come from a nice mix of the gullible, the ignorant, and the reality-challenged. The same place Christians come from. It's purest superstition. They live their lives -- and die -- by/for an imaginary friend. They're natural idiots, or people of sadly lost potential made idiotic by consumption of mythology.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You say the USA is not an empire but Israel is a client state of the USA? It seems to me that empires still do exist but the forms of power are a little more subtle than in the Roman or British Empire. People are not excluded from positions of power if they are not Roman citizens - though it could be argued that you'd be marginalised from positions of power if you don't speak English in 'client states'. The British flag is not run up flag poles right across the Empire - though there are preferential trading agreements and even pricing for 'client states' and promises of economic and other support.
I think geopolitics still exists but it has become a little more subtle. To be fair of course this doesn't just refer to the USA but many other countries. It strikes me that aid money - long term, not disaster support, can be used as a means of establishing and maintaining influence.
The vast majority of muslims are a little bit hypocritical. Same as the vast majority of all people. They subscribe to Islam and revere the Koran, and indeed many do have a lot of sincere faith. But the Koran contains, as does the Bible and other holy books, odd little things that if taken literally and in absolute terms, are very destructive. So they're quietly downplayed or forgotten about. So who gets to say who is a True Scotsman *ahem* True Muslim. Well there's no absolute authority other than God / Allah Itself, and It isn't publishing specifications in the papers for us. For most people, including muslims, someone is a muslim (or a Christian) if they say they are.
A lot of criticism which starts from picking out some part of the Koran to illustrate how Islam believes in wiping out non-believers or whatever, is flawed. Not because there aren't such examples in the Koran, but because it's not really addressing the vast bulk of muslims who don't in their hearts believe or want such things. Yet these people are still muslims. It's an argument based on wanting to prove that culture X is evil and therefore finding legalistic reasons why it ought to be, instead of actual observation. There are nearly two-billion people on this planet that self-identify as muslim. If even one in ten-thousand were determined terrorists wanting to commit atrocities on the United States of America, that would be two-hundred thousand 9/11 hijackers, shoe-bombers, market-place killers decimating the USA right now. Simple fact of the matter is that muslims, like everyone else, are basically just people. There are good and bad bits to their cultures (and I'm an outspoken critic of some of those bad bits), but the demonisation of many millions of people by much of the US media is absurd. And the responses of the US government are absurd - and that's why the anti-terrorism measures have been ineffective:
The causes of terrorism have gone unacknowledged because they have to be. To acknowledge them is to address excess influence on policy and media by the oil industries, by the military-industrial complex, by politicians playing the Fear card to win votes and power, it's to acknowledge the actions of the Israeli government and the US sponsorship of their actions, it's to acknowledge the US navy bombing resistance camps at the request of the Saudi regime, it's to acknowledge all sorts of things that the US government doesn't want to acknowledge. But like someone who's an alcoholic, compulsive eater or whatever, you can't address a problem if you don't acknowledge it is there.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Dude, your first post was very well said but making blanket statements about large groups of people just because they believe differently than you isn't being funny or intelligent, it is outright being a bigot.
I myself am an Atheist and have a hard time believing so many people are so into Religion, but hey, I could be dead wrong. The belief that there is no Supreme Being to worship is a belief and leap of faith in itself. As much as we've progressed with science and logic we have not found that key that says with 100% certainty that there is no such thing as God/Allah/Random Deity.
As far as my faith (or lack thereof) is concerned I have as of late been hanging around with a group of people from Iran and a group of people from Palestine, all followers of the Islamic faith. I'm not sure I've met many people more open minded about my opinions. I treat their religious ideals with respect (Instead of say...telling them that they are idiots) and they do the same for me. That is more than I can say about most Christians (who inform me that I am going to Hell or something) or how most Atheist/Agnostic people treat those involved with religion (who usually are more than willing to tell people how stupid and ignorant they are.