■"Rule Change Lets C.I.A. Freely Send Suspects Abroad: Interrogation At Issue; Official Defends Program as Being Helpful in Effort on Terror," by Douglas Jehl and David Johnston, New York Times, 6 March 2005, p. A1.
■"U.S. Adopts Preemptive Counterintelligence Strategy," by David Morgan (Reuters), Washington Post, 6 March 2005, p. A7.
■"Many Actions Tied to Delay In Armor for Troops in Iraq: Army Was Forced to Scramble as Reality of Insurgents' Effectiveness Set In," by Michael Moss, New York Times, 7 March 2005, p. A1.
■"U.S. Checkpoints A Deadly Gantlet: Iraqis Killed or Injured in Troops' Security Effort," by John F. Burns, New York Times, 7 March 2005, p. A1.
■"How to Shake Hands Or Share a Meal With an Iraqi," by Peter Edidin, New York Times, 6 March 2005, p. WK1.
It was kind of funny watching Michael Schuerer, he of Anonymous fame as a critique of the Bush administration, bragging about how he set up the "rendition" program whereby the U.S. routinely hands over terror suspects to Gap states we know will torture them at will. He said he has no problem with what the terrorists get at the hands of their torturers, and he said it with a smile.
Yes, Michael Schuerer, the man you want running your Global War on Terrorism. I mean, look at the bang-up job he did on Al Qaeda all those years, just like Richard Clarke, another security genius who deserves his fame as critic of the Bush White House.
Of course, Clarke and Schuerer were always "thwarted" when they tried to do good and necessary things . . . uh . . . including the rendition program, right?
No, when I call for a Core rule-set on the Global War on Terrorism in Wired, I get labeled a racist and torture-monger for calling for a World Counter-Terrorism Organization to regularize the treatment and processing of prisoners. But Schuerer, he of rendition program fame, he is to be lionized for his great contribution to national security! Must be cool to be on "60 Minutes" chuckling to yourself about helping terrorists get what they deserve . . .
So now the U.S. is going to have a preemptive counter-intelligence strategy where we go after other countries' intell services aggressively, lest they continue to spy on us. Who are the targets? We are told it is China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Libya. The last four I get, but are you telling me we shouldn't be seeking cooperation from China and Russia instead of engaging in spy wars? So we turn over terror suspects to authoritarian regimes in the Middle East we don't trust and then seek to turn China and Russia into enemies on intelligence? Tell me where we're going on that one? Does it seem like we're working at cross-purposes with ourselves?
On the SysAdmin side, sad stories told about the many snafus in obtaining body armor for our troops. Seems we got them only for the "front lines" of the Leviathan force, not the rank-and-file of the SysAdmin force. So we had enough for the warfighting, but not enough to keep the peace, which in its backtracking got us plenty of more warfighting.
Also, we see yet another snafu at a checkpoint, where apparently we go straight from handwaving to shooting, with basically nothing in between. This one boggles my mind, having worked on look-ahead technologies studies examining the many uses of non-lethal weapons and systems designed to trap both people and vehicles without killing anyone. So because we go cheap on all those programs over the past 15 years, our troops at the checkpoints are forced into bad decisions that cause serious fissures with long-term allies. Talk about a self-inflicted wound.
We know what needs to be done, and almost none of it's secret or necessarily kinetic. This is basic security generation and police work in many instances. You have to know how to walk the beat. You have to be able to take down potential suspects without deadly force-or you're off the force. None of this is new, and none of this is particularly expensive (although the labor costs do rise dramatically). It's all about deciding which wars and which enemies we don't need to fight anymore and moving those freed-up resources to the ones we do need to fight-and the peace we need to wage.
Not easy, but not complex.
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