[Austin-ghetto-list] Emotions versus careful analysis

[Roger Baker]

teleb:

Well Roger…please do not put me merely “in the Bush camp”…. but do put
me in 
the camp of those who do not believe that pacifist rhetoric or marching
in a 
peace parade is going to help our situation.  Osama bin Laden wants us
dead, 
including you, pal.  You may be willing to roll over for it, but I am not.

The difference between these guys and the Viet Nam conflict is huge…so
don’t 
get the knee-jerk, ‘blame America first’ shirt on too fast.  Muhammed
Ali 
once said…”No Viet Cong ever attacked me.” Well that is not true of Al 
Quaida.  They have attacked you and me, and they killed more people on
9/11 
than died at Normandy on D-Day.  That’s all the urging I need that you
won’t 
be finding any peacenik tie-dye on my back..."


       ***********************


OK, those are indeed in tune with the kind of patriotic sentiments in
lastest fashion nowadays. The first part of change is getting the
subject's attention. The American public is now alert and focused and
ready to follow Bush's military orders, possibly, now that a world
depression is a real possibility. They're frightened.
 
But will declaring bin Laden to be the devil incarnate plus lashing out
at Afganistan militarily actually lead to anything good? As the
following piece indicates, bin Laden might not even be the right target.
If so, this troublesome fact will likely become known in the Arab world
-- and the effect will not be welcome to Americans.

But assuming that bin Laden was indeed the mastermind, the
inadvisability of a military response in Afganistan, a land which
defeated the nearby Soviets, has become a matter of such nearly
universal comment within recent days that this argument fly on its own
without my help.

I have been reading a book by a British conservative, False dawn, by
John Gray, highly recommended by billionaire financier George Soros. He
spells out quite plausible reasons why the global economy is likely to
splinter apart, without any help from oil shortages or an islamic Jehad either.

If the United States is going to come out of the current array of
plausible problems looking good, it seems like we need to study the
current big picture situation calmly and objectively before we take off
on our new crusade. -- Roger 
 


          *********************



Benjamin Zycher Senior Fellow,
Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy
bennyz@pacbell.net

September 13, 2001

A Few Thoughts On Terrorism and Disinformation

I have not worked on the terrorism problem in several years, and I am
hardly an expert on the groups and subgroups lurking in the shadows in
the Middle East and elsewhere. Nonetheless, facts are stubborn things,
as Ronald Reagan once put it, and it is with the central facts that we
must begin serious thinking with respect to the issue of assigning blame,
directing retribution, and creating conditions and incentives yielding
effective deterrence.

At the simplest level, the facts of this week can be summarized as follows.
Notwithstanding a budget of $30 billion or more, our intelligence services,
using incredible technological tools of signals intelligence, were able
to intercept every false electronic transmission issued by the Iraqis
and others, while remaining utterly oblivious to the real plot that actually
unfolded. That suggests that disinformation---the use of false information
for purposes of deception---remains a critical problem for our intelligence
agencies, a point to which I will return shortly. Within minutes, and
certainly hours, of the events of Tuesday, our learned intelligence
officials
began to assure us that Usama Bin Laden is the most likely culprit; but
it is wholly unclear as to precisely how this conclusion has emerged,
since little or nothing could have been learned in those minutes and
hours that was not known before and that could have been examined for
veracity.

What is clear is that this was a highly sophisticated operation, requiring
coordinated timing within tight constraints, and trained pilots able
to fly not crop dusters, but 757s, and willing or forced to undertake
suicide missions. It required knowledge of the kinds of planes that would
be scheduled on the chosen flights. That means that flight simulators
and months of preparation were needed. It required the coordinated hijacking
of not just any planes, but ones full of fuel from different airports,
and sophisticated knowledge of flight operations so as to fly over Manhattan
in such a way as to avoid stalling the planes and avoid breaking the
planes up, while missing 60-story buildings but hitting 100-story ones.
It required coordination of targeting within tight time limits, passports,
safe houses, and all of the other ancillary needs of individuals undertaking
covert operations.

What this means is that the events of this week were orchestrated by
a modern state intelligence service, with substantial resources,
bureaucratic,
expert, and financial, and with the requisite political will and internal
controls necessary to prevent infiltration, moles, leaks, and other sources
of compromise.

It is clear to me that it is the Iraqi regime that has the ability, the
resources, the motive, and the clear opportunity for this operation.
The argument that the central responsibility lies instead with an amorphous
"network" run by a bitter Moslem living in the mountains of Afghanistan
is, to be blunt, simply not plausible. Indeed, the established record
of the 1998 embassy bombings suggests that Bin Laden's network resembles
nothing so much as a group of poorly educated, bumbling, backward fanatics,
as Laurie Mylroie has demonstrated in her book "Study of Revenge."

Nonetheless, the argument that Bin Laden is the villain, however dubious,
will be encouraged in the coming days---mark my words---by the "discovery"
of an amazing series of false clues pointing to him. I am convinced that
these will be planted by the Iraqis. And a substantial part of our
intelligence
services and public officials will believe them. And that is the core
of the problem.

Our intelligence services underwent a dramatic change in the late 1970s
when William Colby---a man combining great confidence and abysmal
judgment---decided
that disinformation efforts on the part of our adversaries were a problem
no more because our myriad electronic toys were on the job. Satellites.
Sensors. Listening devices. Ubiquitous electronic surveillance. All would
create clear pictures out of what always has been the forest of
mirrors of covert operations. As appalling as it is, our intelligence
services have evolved intellectually to a point at which they really
believe that they cannot be fooled. Well, please allow me to differ.


The interpretation of intelligence requires dispassionate objectivity
rather than a bureaucratic need to justify past and future budgets and
bureaucratic turf. Disinformation always has been and remains a huge
problem to be dealt with through serious analysis rather than assumed
away; and the plain reality is that our intelligence services have been
so thoroughly corrupted by various forces that they cannot simply be
"reformed." The most recent example was the decision by the Clinton
Administration
to give the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, a policymaking
role, which inevitably meant that his policy preferences would color
the intelligence reporting given decision makers.

More generally, an intelligence service that genuinely believes that
it cannot be fooled, that finds it excruciating bureaucratically and
politically ever to admit that it has been fooled, that does not bear
adverse consequences when it is fooled, and whose budget rises when abject
failure occurs, in reality will be fooled again and again, with horrendous
consequences for our people. And that is why Michael Ledeen is quite
correct: The Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, must be
fired immediately. The head of the CIA counterterrorism bureau must be
fired. The same is true for the head of the Federal Aviation Administration
security service, and the head of the FBI counterterrorism unit. Were
it not for the fact that the new FBI director was just sworn in, it would
be mandatory that he be fired as well.

The plain reality is that the events of this week have Iraqi fingerprints
all over them. Again: It is Saddam Hussein with the means, motive,
opportunity,
and will. Perhaps the Sudanese were involved; and possibly the Iranians
and the Syrians as well, although I doubt it; I know only what I read
in the papers. But the approach of the last 15
years---a search for "those responsible" using courtroom standards as
the evidentiary basis for policy decisions---combined with a decided
dismissal of the disinformation problem means that the governments waging
war through terror will not face serious penalties. We simply cannot
fight bombs with subpoenas and lawyers and investigators; the terrorism
war is fundamentally a problem of national security rather than law
enforcement,
and the central questions are political and military rather than legal
and procedural.

There may be reason for hope. George W. Bush, for all his poor rhetorical
skills, and not by any means the intellectual that Ronald Reagan was,
nonetheless is a man of intelligence and for the most part has good
instincts
and solid judgment. He will receive sound advice from several people,
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld foremost among them. There will be great
political pressure to do far more than merely lob a few cruise missiles
at some overseas warehouses. But whispering in his other ear will be
Colin Powell, a man of honor, a man of courage, and a man who for years
has exhibited such incredibly bad political and policy judgment in so
uninterrupted a fashion as to be unfathomable. There will be Brent
Scrowcroft,
the former national security adviser, who has not been right on a single
issue---indeed, who has not had an original thought---in four decades.
And there will be former President George Herbert Walker Bush, whose
tenure in office exhibited consistently poor policy judgment both domestic
and foreign. Whether this combination of pressures and advice will yield
the correct policy---the use of overwhelming military force to remove
Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Baathist regime from power and to install
Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress in their place---simply
remains to be seen.

###

Former Mossad Agent Suspects Iraq-Led Terrorist 'Coalition'

Berlin Die Welt (Internet Version-WWW) in German 15 Sep 01
[Interview with Former Mossad Agent Gad Shimron: "The Terrorism Is Supported
by a Sovereign State"] [FBIS Translated Text]

[DIE WELT] Assignment of blame is becoming more and more definite. US
Secretary of State Colin Powell is now officially designating UsamaBin
Laden as the prime suspect. Do you believe he is behind the attacks?

[Gad Shimron] The name Bin Laden is like a mantra, he is the "usual
suspect,"
like Carlos in the 1970's. As far as I know, he is sitting somewhere
in Afghanistan, a country with no infrastructure. He has a cell phone
which the Americans monitor. Maybe this act of terorism was his idea,
but I am sure that it was carried out by others. Perhaps
by a coalition of organizations. Yet they must have received support
from a sovereign state.

[DIE WELT] Which state do you suspect?

[Gad Shimron] My guess is Iraq. But I have no proof. It cannot be
Afghanistan,
because it is not a sovereign state.

[DIE WELT] If it were a coalition, does that mean a sort of network,
that would be at least as threatening? Do you have any more specific
information?

[Gad Shimron] The various groups are well versed in secret operations.
All the cells work for themselves, without any unnecessary contacts.
We have been familiar with that here in the Middle East for a long time.
What is new is that the organization must have been in progress for at
least 18 months. It is amazing that nothing got out. I am sure that the
NSA (National Security Agency) heard something, the only problem is that
this information did not get into the right hands at the right time,
so no one was able to put the puzzle together.

[DIE WELT] Who are these organizations?

[Gad Shimron] They are groups like Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the two Hizbollah
groupings in Lebanon and Kashmir - organizations whose ideology is to
conduct a holy war against the western world. They are either supported
or authorized by sovereign governments. For example, Damascus lets Islamic
Jihad operate from its territory, and Teheran allows Hizbollah.

[DIE WELT] How do they maintain contact with each other?

[Gad Shimon] THEY KNOW THAT THE AMERICANS HEAR ALMOST EVERYTHING. THE
FBI EVEN HAS ACCESS TO THEIR E-MAILS. I BELIEVE THE ORGANIZATIONS HAVE
BUILT UP AN ALTERNATIVE COMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE, WITH PERSONAL
MESSENGERS AND CODED CONVERSATIONS. IN ADDITION, THEY HAVE THE SO-CALLED
"SAFE HAVENS": THEY CAN MEET IN DAMASCUS, TEHERAN, SUDAN AND OF COURSE
IN BAGHDAD: THERE ARE ENOUGH COUNTRIES WHICH CLOSE THEIR EYES TO PEOPLE
WHO HAVE BEEN CLEARLY IDENTIFIED BY OTHER SECURITY SERVICES AS TERRORISTS.
(emphasis mine. dbc)

[DIE WELT] How will it be possible to find the guilty parties soon?

[Gad Shimron] The whole world is waiting for the US to end everything
in 90 minutes, in the style of Hollywood films. But it will take a long
time. And unfortunately there will be more and more targets as time goes
by. It's not like normal police investigations, they will not be able
to close the net tighter and tighter; they will keep coming across more
and more wire-pullers and perpetrators.

[Description of Source: Berlin Die Welt (Internet Version-WWW) in German--
major right-of-center daily]