Is Pakistan the solution to the budget impasse?

So, Pakistan has decided to begin restricting their support of anti-terrorism. And the USA has pushe back, threatening to cut off military aid. And finally, Pakistan has threatened to pull out of anti-terrorism efforts altogether. There seems like a simple solution here - end all aid to Pakistan and pull our troops out of Afghanistan.

We save $2 billion in aid, plus the trillions we are investing in the War. In return, Pakistan suddenly has to face its own internal problems without an international scapegoat, while simultaneously having to face what they have made in Afghanistan by refusing to fight the Taliban.

It's time for our allies to understand that we can't afford to pay extortion money anymore. We're looking to fill trillion dollar holes in our budget. Pakistan just volunteered to do that for us.

Pakistan is NOT our ally

With the capture and death of Osama Bin Laden, it is time to face an uncomfortable truth. After a decade and trillions of dollars in aid, Pakistan is not really our friend or ally in the War On Terror. This has been evident for years, became obvious during the OBL capture, and is now something we can no longer ignore. During a recent set of sting operations on terrorist bomb-making factories, the Pakistani military or intelligence warned militants time and time again before raids

The two sites' locations in the tribal areas had been shared with the Pakistani government this past week, the officials said Saturday. The Americans monitored the area with satellite and unmanned drones to see what would happen.

In each case, within a day or so after sharing the information, they watched the militants depart, taking any weapons or bomb-making materials with them, just as militants had done the first two times. Only then, did they watch the Pakistani military visit each site, when the terror suspects and their wares were long gone, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.

It is an uncomfortable truth. But clearly it is time to scale back our aid to this nation, as we prepare to eventually pull out of Afghanistan.

Text Message saves lives!

We all know them and hate them. The random text messages sent by your cellular carrier announcing random offers. They tend to come at inopportune times and set off your phone in the middle of the night. But in Russia, one such text message may have saved hundreds of lives. How long until AT&T is advertising them as "anti-terrosist services" and charging a fee for them?

A "Black Widow" suicide bomber planned a terrorist attack in central Moscow on New Year's Eve but was killed when an unexpected text message set off her bomb too early, according to Russian security sources...Security sources believe a message from her mobile phone operator wishing her a happy new year received just hours before the planned attack triggered her suicide belt, killing her at a safe house.

Terror attempt at Tree Lighting

One wonders if plots like this one - apparently run by a crazy loner assisted by overseas terrorists - are the reasons that the TSA and the president are so unapologetic about "Grope-Gate". It is one thing to monitor a whole organization. It is another to watch for a thousand crazy lone wolves.

A Corvallis man, thinking he was going to ignite a bomb, drove a van to the corner of the square at Southwest Yamhill Street and Sixth Avenue and attempted to detonate it.

However, the supposed explosive was a dummy that FBI operatives supplied to him, according to an affidavit in support of a criminal complaint signed Friday night by U.S. Magistrate Judge John V. Acosta.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, a Somali-born U.S. citizen, was arrested at 5:42 p.m., 18 minutes before the tree lighting was to occur, on an accusation of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. The felony charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Pentagon wined and dined the Enemy

It was hard to tell friend from foe in the dark days following 9/11/2001. America's illusion of invulnerability was shattered, and we were desperate to prosecute the attackers while simultaneously reaching out to moderate Muslims. It appears in the rush to reach out, the Pentagon may have invited in the man who is now at the top of the CIA's kill-or-capture list for dinner. And it appears that if they had only asked the CIA at the time, they'd have known it was a bad idea.

Awlaki "was considered to be an 'up and coming' member of the Islamic community. After her vetting, Aulaqi (Awlaki) was invited to and attended a luncheon at the Pentagon in the secretary of the Army's Office of Government Counsel."

Awlaki, a Yemeni-American who was born in Las Cruces, N.M., was interviewed at least four times by the FBI in the first week after the attacks because of his ties to the three hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Hani Hanjour. The three hijackers were all onboard Flight 77 that slammed into the Pentagon.

Awlaki is now believed to be hiding in Yemen after he was linked to the alleged Ft. Hood shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who e-mailed Awlaki prior to the attack.

Yet more evidence that our issue is not knowing our enemy, but that the various branches of the military, intelligence, and law enforcement disciplines are unwilling or unable to share information. And there is little evidence that the DHS has helped much.

Home-grown terror may be on the rise

One of the great accomplishments of the final years of the Bush administration was to prevent any further terrorist attacks in the United States. Between the diligent work of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies and the War in Iraq to distract and divert our enemies, the homefront has remained relatively unscathed.

Terrorism experts are warning that may be about to end. And no, it is not any particular Obama administration policy that is putting us at risk. It is an increasing willingness of Al-Qaeda and its allies to recruit Americans and settle for smaller attacks which are harder to predict and prevent.

"The impact of the attempted attacks during the past year suggests al-Qaeda, and its affiliates and allies, will attempt to conduct smaller-scale attacks targeting the homeland but with greater frequency," said Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, pointing to plots against the subway system in New York, the attempt to down a commercial airliner approaching Detroit and the failed car bombing in Times Square.

Leiter said in his testimony that "al-Qaeda in Pakistan is at one of its weakest points organizationally," but he noted that "regional affiliates and allies can compensate for the potentially decreased willingness of al-Qaeda in Pakistan - the deadliest supplier of such training and guidance - to accept and train new recruits."

"The spike in homegrown violent extremist activity during the past year is indicative of a common cause that rallies independent extremists to want to attack the homeland," said Leiter.

Pittsburgh is target #2 of Weekend Terror

Last night's attempted bombing of Times Square was scary, but we all hoped it was an isolated incident. But it appears that it may not be the case as a pipe bomb was found at the finish line of the Pittsburgh Marathon. But again, it was disposed of before anyone was hurt.

One officer at the scene said that the device was a microwave with a pipe bomb inside. The microwave was in a white box near the entrance of the building.

However, Police Chief Nate Harper would only confirm that there were suspicious contents inside the microwave.

The device was detonated and Liberty Avenue and Grant Street had been blocked off.

It is scary to see so many attempted attacks, but reassuring that so far we have been spared from the potential disaster.

NYC spared from car bomb attack in Times Square

It took two tries for terrorists to take down the Twin Towers, so it should be no shock to learn they are not yet done terrorizing the city that never sleeps. Overnight, a car bomb was found in an SUV in Times Square. Due to the vigilance of a Vietnam War veteran and the NYPD, the bomb was found and defused before anyone was hurt. It is a grim reminder that the War On Terror is not over, as much as we'd like it to be.

Inside the vehicle, police found three propane tanks, two filled five-gallon gas containers, two clocks with batteries, consumer-grade fireworks and a locked metal box that resembled a gun locker.
The wiring around the device "was nothing that looked amateurish," Bloomberg said...The shutdown began Saturday when the T-shirt vendor, a Vietnam veteran, saw smoke coming from a box inside a vehicle with Connecticut plates on 45th Street near 7th Avenue. The vendor notified a New York police officer on horseback, who smelled gunpowder from the vehicle.

There are many who argue with the victory in Iraq, that we should declare the War On Terror won and go back to the way things were on 9/10/2001. But the fact is that no war is over until both sides agree it is. And the terrorists are nowhere near ready to surrender or walk away.

Seriously

Outrage is too mild a term

How involved was Pakistan in the Mumbai attacks?

While Americans were busy eating turkey and shopping for Black Friday deals, India was busy dealing with their own equivilent of 9/11, as 10 gunmen invaded railway stations, hotels, and shopping areas killing hundreds before all but one were killed by Indian commandos. The question now is how complicit was Pakistan in the attacks? The answer could decide whether two nuclear-armed countries go to war int he next few weeks.

The announcement blaming militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, threatened to escalate tensions between India and Pakistan. However, Indian officials have been cautious about accusing Pakistan's government of complicity.
A U.S. counterterrorism official had said some "signatures of the attack" were consistent with Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammed, another group that has operated in Kashmir. Both are reported to be linked to al-Qaida.

(AP) Mourners gather for a memorial to pay tribute to Mumbai police officers who lost their lives in the...
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Lashkar, long seen as a creation of the Pakistani intelligence service to help fight India in disputed Kashmir, was banned in Pakistan in 2002 under pressure from the U.S., a year after Washington and Britain listed it a terrorist group. It is since believed to have emerged under another name, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, though that group has denied links to the Mumbai attack.

My own impression is that it is unlikely that Pakistan incited these attacks, but that it is very likely one or more Pakistani officials looked the other way to allow them to happen. Pakistan is in the midst of a transition from one government to another, and in that time there is a power vacuum. Who knows who may have stepped in?

Blast in Islamabad

In case you haven't heard just how big the blast was in Islamabad, here's an account of what the scene looks like. Though no one, as of the writing of the article, has taken credit for the what appears to be the largest terrorist bombing in Pakistan, it is thought that it is the Pakistan Taliban.

Last May, the top commander of the Pakistan Taleban, Baitullah Mahsud, had this to say when he spoke to the BBC: "We do not expect the new government to change anything. But we will fight it, every way we can and if we are not safe in our homes, neither will they be."

'They' has now come to signify ordinary Pakistanis and that shift speaks volumes of how this war has changed in character.

It is no more a stop-start battle of wavering ideals. It is now, without doubt, a battle to the death for the soul of Pakistan.

Car bomb at U.S. Embassy in Yemen

Here we go again. CNN is reporting "multiple casualties" which hopefully means wounded and not dead. This is in the middle of the Islamic holiday of Ramadan, which some years has seemed to radicalize the Muslim world.

Al-Qaeda on the verge of collapse?

I imagine after the political fiasco of the "Mission Accomplished" banner, the Bush Administration is loathe to call any conflict "near victory". But the CIA has now released a report indicating that Al-Qaeda may be on its last legs.

"On balance, we are doing pretty well," he said, ticking down a list of accomplishments: "Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally -- and here I'm going to use the word 'ideologically' -- as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam," he said.

The sense of shifting tides in the terrorism fight is shared by a number of terrorism experts, though some caution that it is too early to tell whether the gains are permanent. Some credit Hayden and other U.S. intelligence leaders for going on the offensive against al-Qaeda in the area along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where the tempo of Predator strikes has dramatically increased from previous years. But analysts say the United States has caught some breaks in the past year, benefiting from improved conditions in Iraq, as well as strategic blunders by al-Qaeda that have cut into its support base.

"One of the lessons we can draw from the past two years is that al-Qaeda is its own worst enemy," said Robert Grenier, a former top CIA counterterrorism official who is now managing director of Kroll, a risk consulting firm. "Where they have succeeded initially, they very quickly discredit themselves."

This may also explain the rumored Bin Laden tape which calls for the use of WMDs on Western Civilians - a sign of desperation and a complete abandonment of any moral high ground by even the most ardent Militant Islamic observer.

Ward and I were discussing just yesterday the administrations unwillingness to toot its own horn right now in the Iraq War and the battle against Al-Gaeda. Do you think this is a reversal of that policy, or is the CIA trying to make their own news outside of the White House news cycle?

Visualizing 9/11

Warning, while there is nothing graphic about this video, some may wish to not view it as the visuals are quite intense. It gives some sense for what it would have been like to be inside the WTC when the planes hit on 9/11/01.

Should Iraq Pay For Its Own Reconstruction?

Iraq is sitting on a bunch of oil which is worth quite a lot these days. This has prompted Senators Carl Levin (D - Michigan) and John Warner (R - Virginia) to ask, "Where's the money?" Estimates are that Iraq will earn at least $100 million because of oil for 2007 and 2008 combined. To date, we've spend around $47 billion trying to reconstruct Iraq. Iraq can't even figure out how to spend the $10.1 billion it has allocated for reconstruction.

Is it fair to require Iraq to spend on its own reconstruction or will this just create resentment like in the post-Civil War South?

How can we enforce the requirements we've put on Iraq? On the one hand, if we say, "Do this by X date or we will leave," we've given the terrorists a timetable. We've told them that all they have to do is create enough havoc until that date. On the other hand, if we don't somehow enforce it, then we give the Iraqi government no incentive to not have us foot the bill.

I honestly believe that there are people in Iraq that want to be free, but does Iraq as a country really want to be free? Is this just a case of being under a dictator for so long that it takes a while to get the concept of freedom like post-Soviet Russia?

I believe that we want Iraq to be stable. I believe that if we leave now, we'll have sent a message that the terrorists won and we'll just have to redo what we've done before. That being said, if Iraq wants a ruler, I'm not sure I like the idea of having the U.S. holding Iraq as a territory, at least from a PR standpoint.

Photos Immediately Before, During, and After Bhutto Assasination

This is what it means to live in a digital age. Days after the event, a photographer can narrate, in his own voice, what he experienced during the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, with his digital photos taken in the moment.

Fair warning, some of these images are graphic and may not be suitable for young children.

Terrorists and Wile E. Coyote

Although this article was posted some time ago, I wanted to pass it on. In some ways, the fear of terrorism is even worse than terrorism itself. Our enemies want us to have our freedoms restricted and to live in fear. When we let our fear of terrorism overwhelm us, we "gladly" give up our liberties in exchange for "protection". Security is something we need to work on, but we need to have the security measures be things that actually protect us and not just give the government more power.

Typically, people who write articles about this come at it from an angle of how the "security measures" really do nothing, but Bruce Schneier over at Wired takes a different angle. Our security response needs to be proportional to the threat and many "terrorists" plans are so riddled with impossibilities that we needn't worry about them especially when traditional means are working fine.

Why Terrorism Doesn't Work

Wired has up a fascinating article that explains why in most cases terrorism does not achieve the ends it seeks, and oftentimes winds up causing the opposite of what the terrorist desires.

People tend to infer the motives -- and also the disposition -- of someone who performs an action based on the effects of his actions, and not on external or situational factors. If you see someone violently hitting someone else, you assume it's because he wanted to -- and is a violent person -- and not because he's play-acting... Countries believe that their civilian populations are attacked not because the terrorist group is protesting unfavorable external conditions such as territorial occupation or poverty. Rather, target countries infer the short-term consequences of terrorism -- the deaths of innocent civilians, mass fear, loss of confidence in the government to offer protection, economic contraction, and the inevitable erosion of civil liberties -- (are) the objects of the terrorist groups. In short, target countries view the negative consequences of terrorist attacks on their societies and political systems as evidence that the terrorists want them destroyed. Target countries are understandably skeptical that making concessions will placate terrorist groups believed to be motivated by these maximalist objectives.

Of course, Al Qaeda and the like are unlikely to take the advice of Western scientists and studies, so things are unlikely to change. But perhaps this will influence the next generation of Islamic thinkers to find a different model to change the world... and maybe this time it can be Christ or Gandhi who learned you can change the world without committing violence.

Bombing Plot on JFK Airport Foiled

Only a week after John Edwards declared the War on Terror a "bumper sticker", four men have been charged with plotting to blow up jet fuel flowing under New York's Kennedy Airport. Terrorism as a philosophy and methodology is alive and well.

"The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable," said Roslynn Mauskopf, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, where the criminal complaint was filed.

The alleged ringleader of the plot, former JFK Airport employee Russell Defreitas, 63, was the only person in U.S. custody. Following his arrest Friday night, Defreitas appeared in Brooklyn federal court Saturday but did not enter a plea. He is scheduled to have a bail hearing next Wednesday.

Two other suspects are in custody in Trinidad. Abdul Kadir, a citizen of Guyana who has served as a member of the Guyanese Parliament and a mayor of the city of Linden, and Kareem Ibrahim, a citizen of Trinidad.

We need to understand that really the U.S. is fighting two wars. One, a war against Islamic Extremists who wish to subjugate the world under their dark rule. This war is similar to World War II or the Cold War. Two, we are fighting a war to get across to the world that Terrorism is unacceptable as a tool of war. This War is more like the movements to ban chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. If we do not win the first War, our children may live in a world shrouded in the shadow of tyranny. If we do not win the second war, our children may live in a world without certainty or safety, where every person with a gripe feels they have a right to harm others by any means.