intelligence

Drones Don’t Declutter, And Neither Do Expulsions

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by Gary Farber

We can't "win" militarily in Afghanistan any more than we could in Vietnam. 

"AfPak" is still AfPak, no matter that it displeases Pakistan, no matter how the U.S. placates.

It's one war, and it can't be won militarily without invading Pakistan.  Anyone up for that? 

2 US servicemen mistakenly killed by drone attack in Afghanistan [UPDATE, 3:41 p.m., PST: erroneous link fixed; thanks, Ugh!].

[…] The Marines under fire were watching streaming video of the battlefield being fed to them by an armed Predator overhead. They saw a number of "hot spots," or infrared images, moving in their direction. Apparently believing that those "hot spots" were the enemy, they called in a Hellfire missile strike from the Predator.

Technology will triumph.

It worked in Vietnam! We're winning.

After all, unlike Vietnam, there are no safe havens across borders: Pakistan Tells U.S. It Must Sharply Cut C.I.A. Activities:

Pakistan has demanded that the United States steeply reduce the number of Central Intelligence Agency operatives and Special Operations forces working in Pakistan, and that it halt C.I.A. drone strikes aimed at militants in northwest Pakistan. The request was a sign of the near collapse of cooperation between the two testy allies.

Pakistani and American officials said in interviews that the demand that the United States scale back its presence was the immediate fallout from the arrest in Pakistan of Raymond A. Davis, a C.I.A. security officer who killed two men in January during what he said was an attempt to rob him.

In all, about 335 American personnel — C.I.A. officers and contractors and Special Operations forces — were being asked to leave the country, said a Pakistani official closely involved in the decision.

It was not clear how many C.I.A. personnel that would leave behind; the total number in Pakistan has not been disclosed. But the cuts demanded by the Pakistanis amounted to 25 to 40 percent of United States Special Operations forces in the country, the officials said. The number also included the removal of all the American contractors used by the C.I.A. in Pakistan.

This is what we call "big news."

It's also, when you read between the lines, leverage, and there will be a trade-off, and you'll have to read between the lines, at best, and look carefully at the right sources, to find information about it when it happens, should said information be findable — but traces always surface on the internet:

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Did Bushies seek to disregard terror alert guidelines on eve of election?

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By Lindsay Beyerstein

(Hello, Obsidian Wings readers. I'm the newest member of ObWi and I'm truly honored to be here. Thanks to Publius and the team for inviting me. A bit about me: I'm a freelance journalist based in New York City. I also write for the Media Consortium, UN Dispatch, In These Times, and for my personal blog, Majikthise.)

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge claims in his forthcoming memoir that Sec Def Don Rumsfeld and AG John Ashcroft unsuccessfully pressured him to raise the terror alert on the eve of the 2004 election.

Four days before the vote, someone dropped a previously unseen video message from Osama Bin Laden on al Jazeera's doorstep. Bin Laden told the citizens of the United States that neither John Kerry nor George Bush could protect them, but he didn't issue any specific threats.

Ridge claims Bush officials pressured him to raise the threat level, even though the tape contained no specific threat. Officially, an orange alert indicates a "high probability" of terrorist attacks. According to DHS guidelines adopted in 2003, orange alerts are reserved cases where there is specific, credible, detailed evidence of an imminent attack on American soil.

"We certainly didn't believe the tape alone warranted action, and we
weren't seeing any additional intelligence that justified it. In fact,
we were incredulous," Ridge wrote "… I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?'" (Keep in mind that the panel that advised Ridge on threat levels included not only Rumsfeld and Ashcroft but also notorious intel politicizer George Tenet, who was responsible for fixing the facts around the Bush administration's policy of invading Iraq.)

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