re: "Spy problems"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") critiqued how America collects intelligence.

Money quote(s):

"One of the biggest flaws in our national security is the lack of any serious human intelligence capabilities. I do not mean to demean those who do practice this most dangerous craft, but to point out our lack of focus on this area."

We do have folks whose (dangerous) business this is; CAA has had the privilege of working with some of them in the past.

"I am saddened by the amateur nature of it. We decided back in the days of Jimmy Carter that spying was too nasty a game for a civilized nation to play and consequently we have blundered about like Mr. Magoo since then. We rely on signal intercepts to learn what is going on, and while this is valuable, absent the context and reality check of human intelligence it is guess work. Sadly all too often our guesses have turned out to be wrong."

Within the IC, the "science is settled" on this; the post-Vietnam focus on technical intelligence and severe cuts our human intelligence capabilities were a mistake.

Post-9/11, much time, effort, and money has gone to re-building our human collection capabilities but this isn't something that can simply be achieved, it's a moving target.

"If we want to avoid big wars, then we need a true intelligence gathering capability. That means spies, real spies, spying on people. We can scarf up all the data we want, but the value of an insider telling us what is really going on trumps all that. So let's thaw out some of the Cold War tactics that kept us safe. It may not be Boris & Natasha (or it might) but we need to keep an eye on all kinds of folks."

11/21

re: "Terrorists sightseeing in San Antonio"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") correctly described our enemies.

Money quote(s):

"It has been a long time since foreign terrorists successfully perpetrated anything heinous on US soil. That is partly due to the fact that our enemies are losers, but eventually they will pull something off."

There are, after all, quite a few of them making the attempt, and quite a large bankroll behind them.

"(W)e are fortunate that these scumbags are dumb as dirt, but even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then and it's only a matter of time. Anyone up for a little profiling? I would say some "country of origin". age, sex and religious affiliation selection points might narrow down the search a bit, eh?

Nah, instead we will rely on the ignorant incompetence of those who wish to slaughter us."

Not to raise too big a fuss, but our criteria, post-9/11, for extra "administrative processing" for visa applicants who meet just about all Uncle Jimbo's listed selection points had this covered.

Not sure if it currently does.

10/19

re: "Abdicating Iraq"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") waxed pessimistic about U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

Money quote(s):

"(W)hat do you call cutting and running from victory before it has solidified?"

"Abdication" works for me.

It also represents the creation of our second-largest potential hostage situation.

"Iran is our biggest enemy in the Middle East and this naive and misguided action leaves the playing field to them and they will certainly take advantage. We could have a good friend and ally on the free country of Iraq, a la Japan or Germany or Korea."

&

"Iraq is free to choose its own path in a dangerous region and that is a good thing. But they do not act in a vacuum. Iran and Syria and others attempt to influence them and not in ways that are good for peace-loving people. We sacrificed the lives of thousands of US troops to allow millions of Iraqis to taste freedom."

10/18

re: "Infuriating idiocy about Islamists"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") presented an award.

Money quote(s):

"This wins the prize for complete inability to admit the blisteringly freaking obvious point that al Qaeda is an Islamist terror group, they are at war with us and we are at war with them. This member of the Defense Department wastes bushels of oxygen evading the simple fact that our enemies are religious fanatics of an easily-identifiable flavor, identifiable because they shout their "god's" name as they hack the heads off living men and women. It is sad reminder that our "leaders" would rather bury their heads in sand, that our enemies tread wearing the iron sandals of violent Islamist extremist ideology, than be shunned by the "right"-thinking left as politically incorrect."

He does have a point. Patterns and indicators, as any intelligence analyst will tell you, assist one in identifying opposing forces.

12/15

re: "Lawfare & our enemies"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") considered the unwisdom of treating foreign unlawful combatants (i.e., war criminals) as if they were U.S. citizen offenders against federal criminal law (they may well be, but that's not the overriding consideration).

Money quote(s):

"The current administration is making some horrendous errors in its misguided quest to treat the terrorist threat against us as a civil police matter. They are dead set on trying captured terrorists with no ties to the US and who committed acts of terror far from our country in US courts. This will imbue them with all the rights and privileges of US citizens and sets up scenarios where the ghost of Johnnie Cochran is floating around NY courtrooms intoning "If the suicide belt does not fit, you must acquit". The cognitive dissonance of this foolishness is painful to contemplate and it has led to some of the most convoluted maneuvering imaginable."

7/25

re: "State Department war lords"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") commented on some alarmist hyperbole.

Money quote(s):

"(T)he State Department is getting into the Army business in Iraq. Since we have agreed to move all of our combat forces out of the country the remaining folks need some kind of security and State is taking the lead with a force of some 5,000 private security guards. We have built a gargantuan embassy there and while it is no longer the most dangerous place on Earth, it is hardly a shangri la. I have reservations about the idea of that many armed folks under the command and control of a non-military agency, but is this really a major problem?"

It's a valid concern. While DS (the Bureau of Diplomatic Security) has considerable experience managing local guard forces at embassies and consulates around the world, the shear scale of the security effort required to support our diplomatic establishments and missions in Iraq represents a non-trivial upscaling of scope and span of control.

"I guess he is down with the whole calling security guards a mercenary army idea. As I said there is room to question whether this is a good idea, but characterizing like this is hardly fair and he goes on to blame the shootings in Nisoour Square, where 17 Iraqis were killed, on poor oversight."

CAA takes this opportunity to condemn the labeling of legitimate contractors, even security contractors, as a mercenary army.

(Of course, CAA used to be a security contractor, although not one of this type.)

"This incident, while tragic, was a case of mistaken intention not poor control as I wrote about extensively based on information from a State Department employee with direct knowledge of the case. His main concern is that the State Department IG with responsibility for Iraq has not been given the access he feels he needs to the process of fielding this force. OK that may be a problem, but all of the over kill calling them a combat brigade and hired guns and a mercenary army is a tad bit excessive eh?"

Just to be clear, CAA is not the "State Department employee" to whom Uncle Jimbo is referring.

Also, while numerically a combat brigade is in the neighborhood of having 5,000 personnel, little things life organization, command & control, equipment, training & doctrine, and mission make this security force (or forces) a horse of a different tincture.

7/22

re: "We all know Saddam had no WMDs"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") understands that the major media (and much of your government) has been in major denial for years.

Money quote(s):

"The author got this info from the Duelfer Report and notes that most people only read the exec summary. There was plenty of nastiness, and while he wasn't linked to the 9/11 attacks he played with plenty of terrorists. The left loves to whine about WMD lies, false reports and no ties to terror. Yeah well that is just BS. He was a menace, murderous tyrant and a known user of chemical weapons. We were and truly justified in taking him out and the world ought to be thanking us."

If you have the opportunity to chat with anyone in, for instance, the EOD community who served in Iraq, you can get an earful about all the "no WMD in Iraq" they disabled.

9/15

re: "Israel about to denuke Iran?"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") asked a question about which the clock is ticking.

Money quote(s):

"I find Netanyahu's unveiled threat to be quite refreshing given the usual nature of diplomacy as formalized lying in formal wear or the ever popular nibbling of petit fours and sipping of mint tea by the hotel pool. This was the equivalent of a shotgun blast from the front porch telling would-be thugs this ain't the house you want to be messing with. The fact that Israel has a history of following up warning shots with decapitating strikes makes this all the more believable." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

UJ likes to describe diplomacy thusly; at certain rarified levels it has an uncomfortable ring of truth to it. For my part, the only time CAA has worn formal attire in the line-of-duty as a diplomat was to attend a USO-sponsored event while accompanying my ambassador.

"The public statements by Netanyahu are obviously aimed at both the Iranians and the "international community" as a last chance to avoid the logical and likely action to come. Iran has picked this fight and I think soon it may learn something others in the area have, Israel doesn't play."

The preliminaries, presumably aimed at forestalling the need for truly escalatory measures, may already be underway. Or all those lab explosions and inconveniently deceased Iranian nuclear scientists may just be coincidence.

(And I have a bridge to sell.)

11/3

re: "Biden calls Republicans terrorists"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") is all out of love for the vice president.

Money quote(s):

"I realize that politicians sometimes wrestle with difficult issues and tempers can flare, but the number of times that Democrats have compared the opposition to terrorists during these debt discussions is disgraceful. It is low and shameful, and I wish I could say I expect better. But I don't, even from the second highest office holder in the land, a man elevated far above his abilities."

&

"As for the rest of the Dems who think that fiscal responsibility equates to slaughtering innocents, well prepare yourselves for the chopping block come next November. The American people are sick of a bunch of jackasses who think that they have first claim on the fruits of our labor. Wrong answer. We the people do not owe Washington our earnings with whatever they feel they don't need grudgingly returned to the productive class. Looters and moochers have overstepped their bounds. Time to set them straight and shut the redistribution of wealth machines down."

re: "Obama to give Re-Election speech on A-Stan tonight"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") has concerns about our strategy in Afghanistan.


Money quote(s):


"When fighting an enemy that thinks in centuries and millenniums, announcing that you only have the vision and fortitude to manage a year and a half to oppose them is nearly criminal.

Afghanistan and the larger war against Islamist extremists is one we are quite poorly suited to fight. They have a long war mentality and know this is a clash of civilizations"

The Huntington question is one I'm still undecided about.

One of the reasons is that it's difficult, frankly, to credit tribal Afghanis with being part of any civilization to speak of, at least in other than the most broad and general of definitions.

"(E)very weakness that al Qaeda and the rest have properly stated about us; we don't have the will or intestinal fortitude as a nation to fight them as they do to fight us. They don't have to beat us to win; they simply have to outlast us"

The flip side to this is that all we have to do is not lose.

"They were slaughtered in the thousands by the Soviets, and yet they simply cringed away, licked their wounds and returned. They were toppled by us in one of the most amazing uses of Special Operations force multiplication in 2001, and yet they simply cringed away, licked their wounds and returned. Now we have again dealt them crippling blows and even finally killed their head goat-raper, does anyone doubt they will again cringe away, lick their wounds and return? Who will stop them, the kleptocracy of the Karzais, the Afghan Security forces, the international community? Hell no!"

One of the advantages of being part of an only nominally literate culture is that your institutional memory has a very short shelf life. Usually that's a disadvantage, but if keeping up your tribe's will to fight requires that you have a fairly short memory for the times you got your butts kicked, it can work in your favor.

"If we had left in 2002, we could have claimed a victory and then proclaimed that we will bomb the living hell out of any Islamist bastards who pop their heads up. We didn't and in staying we planted a flag in the ground." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

The "Pottery Barn" rule is so much horseshit. The West, collectively, has forgotten the merits of the punitive raid or action. After all, it's hardly "reconstruction" if you're building something they never had to begin with.

"(W)e did fight them and killed them in bunches, but that was a tactical victory for the prowess of American fighters. This battle in the greater war? That we will watch al Qaeda and their allies claim for a win."

The demographic reality of high birthrate cultures mean our enemies have some advantages in the long run. Doesn't mean they're guaranteed a win in the end, but that's how they're betting at any rate.

re: "War Powers hypocrisy plus incompetence equals..."

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") hasn't been impressed with much of what passes for strategic thinking in recent years.

Money quote(s):

"(I)t is entirely fair to note that the plan for the post-invasion phase was mind-numbingly foolish. And yes that blame lies squarely at the feet of Donald Rumsfeld. I skipped meeting him when he was pimping his book at the recent Milblog conference and I think he has failed to properly accept the fact that his idea of a central government in a tribal and honor culture was beyond naive absent a tyrant like Saddam to crush any dissent. That plus staffing the effort with a collection of country club wankers and the dumbass cousins of big Republican donors apporoaches criminality. And yes I am calling most of the folks who ran the immediate aftermath incompetent. If you happened to be one of them and don't think that describes you, then think of the two people on either side of you when you were there. Two of the three of you ought to have stayed home to entertain Buffy and Muffy and Tad."

Two points:

The first: I never did get the feeling that "Phase IV" was ever fleshed out beyond the initial PowerPoint (TM) slide that mentioned it. It was underwear-gnomes on steroids. Hope very definitely was the plan, with a side order of wishful thinking.

The second: even the language qualified folks whom State lent to the CPA ("Can't Produce Anything") really weren't the ones who should have been sent. Great guys, generally, some of whom I count as friends, but at that point in their careers they were simply too junior, and too inexperienced, to accomplish much more than not getting killed.

A decade on, and these same officers probably, knowing now what they didn't yet know then, would have made a huge difference. Strangely, the qualified and experienced officers then were not the ones who were sent. Odd, that.

For some reason, that reminds me of a phrase I had to invent to explain a lot of what I saw during OIF 1, i.e.,: "Resourced to fail."

"(W)e have a mission.... now entering its third month without the defining characteristic of a mission.....a freaking goal. We are bombing Libyan warships, its capital and trying to "accidentally" kill the damn tyrant we don't have the stones to publicly call out. All the while Syria slaughters its citizens, Iran builds away on the Islamic bomb and O rewards the Palestinians for forming a unity government that, apparently, still thinks those pesky Jooooos could use a bath in the sea."

Many's the time in the course of my military and governmental careers that I've had to perservere onward, and as a leader persuade others to do the same, in the hope that while certain decisions might not make sense at the ground level, the people making the decisions had a lot more information available to them than was available to us, the big picture as it were. Perhaps that was hoping against hope.

"I believe that the War Powers Act is likely un-constitutional, but I believed that when Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and even Obama were President. That is a principled stance"

So it is.

re: "Our barbarian allies kill UN workers in Kabul"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") says no to submission.

Money quote(s):

"There are those who believe that their religion supersedes all earthly existence. They are willing to kill you if you simply disagree with them, and they claim the right to be free from offense by everyone else on the planet. They are not a simple minority hiding on the fringes of Muslim society. They are running the mosques, they are indoctrinating their flock, they are inculcating hatred, racism, xenophobia and they are directly inciting murderous violence.

Their demand is simple.......Submit. We can either do so, or we need to resist. I reject the right of anyone to claim they can choose to limit my freedoms based on their personal religious beliefs."

re: "Dept. of Skullduggery open for business?"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") examines a convenient leak.

Money quote(s):

"(T)his is yet another leak of classified info for political gains. But who did it and why?"

Cui bono? (As our Roman forebears might ask.)

"If we are covertly, well I guess more overtly now, helping the rebels then the whole bold-faced lie he told on television was a bold-faced lie. I mean you can call it misdirection or discretion and you would be correct. But you can dang sure call it a prime time prevarication and it makes it impossible to pretend we are just refueling some planes for our buddies the French."

This puts me in mind of a recent online discussion I had the good sense to quickly withdraw from, particularly since it was under my right name. Sometimes diplomats (not so often as politicians or journalists, but still) are called upon to utter the untrue. Not for fun, not for personal gain, but because sometimes the diplomatic thing to do is fudge (or even fabricate) the truth a bit (or a boatload).

"(L)et's enjoy this rare moment of transparency and just be happy that O is willing to allow the skulking about with satchels of cash and supressed weapons that really makes the best diplomacy."

Department of Skullduggery, Bureau of Lawyers, Guns and Money; how may I direct your call?

re: "This Is Why We Have Meetings...."

Deebow at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") explains why one should avoid working with amateurs.

Money quote(s):

"It is my belief that if this "bong hit diplomacy" continues (one of my favorite Uncle Jimbo-isms BTW), we are in for at least a generation of rebuilding our character and relationships around the world, because this President can't seem to be able to order an omelet without having to first check the poll numbers (would mushrooms be offended if ham and onions were not included?), consult what MSNBC thinks about eggs (too much cholesterol--have some granola instead), ask the UN if it violates the eggs rights, get the buy in of our allies to ensure the omelet has the right amount of calories (can't have a "heavy" package omelet--allies might not like it), minimize collateral damage to chicken farms and on and on....

I had an old platoon sergeant who I watched tell my new platoon leader during an unguarded moment while training "Sir, you need to lead, follow or get the hell out of the way." Exactly.... "

re: "A new use of military force doctrine"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") is looking for the silver lining, and finds some doctrinal clarity.

Money quote(s):

"Out of the great and ongoing dithering, world sports & war by remote control tour some good may come. If the Libya no fly zone goat rope showed one thing it's that we have no coherent established and articulated policy for the use of military force. We have what seem to be some fairly clear guidance in the Constitution and the War Powers Act, and yet we don't seem to feel like holding our Presidents to the letter of those laws. We seem to recognize that a Commander in Chief needs some freedom of maneuver before having to herd those cats of Congress into a formal declaration of war or some lesser writ of ass kickery."

"Writ of ass kickery" is just pure gold.

Uncle Jimbo concludes, therefore, that:

"The President can, when he deems it necessary, under his Article II constitutional authority as CinC occasionally pummel bad actors, tyrants, terrorists, genocidists etc. as long as he does not roll tanks. It has been common practice for long enough now that we ought to just be able to nod our heads and agree. I don't want any President to have to ask Congress if he can whack a terrorist camp, or send a friendly cruise missile reminder to bad guys. These things can help focus the bad guy's minds on consequences and therefore avoid actual open conflict."

The problem is that these are acts of war, whether legal or Constitutional or not, and the adversary isn't likely to parse the nuances, dontchaknow.

The flip side of that is that the typical adversary has likely been waging war on us already, on the quiet and on the cheap, and didn't ask our Congress for permission to do that either.

re: "Blood money paid for release of CIA operative"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") looks at the big picture in terms of the laws of nations.

Money quote(s):

"There are many reasons that this is a tremendous blow to the safety and security of all Americans overseas and our countries security. First it completely undermines the concept of diplomatic immunity and will certainly result in kidnappings, captures and threats against State Department personnel world wide. Davis shold never have been taken into custody; the second he flashed that special passport, the Pakistanis should have said "Crap!" and then turned him immediately over to us. They would have had every right to boot him from the country, but they had an obligation to release him. This alone sets an awful precedent and if the mighty US can be forced to pay blood money for the release of protected personnel, what about the rest of the countries? Their diplomats are now fair game as well."

This is why our diplomats should be armed, as Mr. Davis was. If it's okay to bring back the Anglo-Saxon custom of Wergeld (and we should call it that, rather than qisas), it's okay to bring back the Anglo-Saxon custom of self-defense.

"(N)ow we have subjugated US and international laws and treaties to the religious extremism contained in sharia law. WOW! What an absolutely insane precedent to set. It is one thing for Hillary to throw on a scarf when she is parleying with some of the marginally-civilized, misogynistic bastards we deal with and even sometimes call allies. It is quite another to overturn centuries of hard won safeguards for diplomatic personnel that enable us to deal with friends and enemies to hopefully avoid continuations of diplomacy by other means. Now that Islam has the last word, we might all want to do some boning up on Ilsamic do's and don'ts in case we decide to set foot outside the US.

And of course this is another example of the gutless, cringing whipped-dog, bong hit diplomacy our President specializes in. The correct answer to the Pakistanis when the took custody of Davis would have been the ticking of a clock counting down. If an ally is willing to do this, then they no longer need to be an ally."

Pakistan, like Saudi Arabia, often tries to have it both ways with us. This is not to be encouraged.

re: "Leader of Free World recognizes Libyan transitional govt."

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") once again expresses a delightful phrase:

"the world's foremost practitioner of bong hit diplomacy."

re: "Our defense strategy"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") is following SecDef Gates' debate with himself.

Money quote(s):

"When I took early retirement from Special Forces I served several years as a First Sergeant in the Wisconsin Guard and when asked in 1999, I told my troops "There is absolutely no way we will be in any land war that requires National Guard Infantry to be called up". It pays not to make absolute statements."

It's unclear to me how, as late as 1999, Uncle Jimbo could have thought this. We'd already been through Desert Storm, where, to be fair, no sizeable NG infantry formations were deployed, and through three years of Balkan involvement (Operation Joint Endeavor, IFOR, SFOR, &tc.) which had heavy reserve component involvement.

"MacArthur managed to limit his limiting of Presidential and Congressional authority to simply crossing Asia of the list of places we should do land war. Gates has upped the ante and eliminated two continents and the most volatile region on Earth. I think he was right the first time and that since we don't know who and where we may end up fighting then we should make sure to maintain our best deterrents and combat systems."

re: "Pirates as plunder"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") opines on options for anti-piracy operations.

Money quote(s):

"We have been letting the pirates run the ocean for too damn long. Our occasional feats of brilliance, like when the SEALs wished the Maersk hijackers a Happy Easter, are brutally overshadowed by episodes like the recent slaughter of four Americans while we motored along behind them, and the more recent capture of seven Danes. We have had a few successes trying these wankers either in African courts or bringing them to the US, but both of those plans are full of holes. Kenya decided they didn't want to be our trash disposal service and for most of these Somalis, US prison would be a Shangri La."

This is a real problem. Naturally enough, Americans assume that sending someone to prison is a bad thing for them. However, in the Somalian paradigm, it's an improvement.

(Ironically, the same often holds true for female suicide bombers. But I digress.)

"I am not holding my breath that our government is going to unleash the SEALs of War against these parasites, it goes against too many diplomatic and international niceties for our timid leaders. You would think this is the simplest of problems and custom-built for one of these trans-national collections of tea-sippping, petit-four nibbling, meddlers telling formal lies in formal wear. I mean if we can't agree that piracy is a scourge and all necessary means should be employed to stop it, then WTF good are these groups? I answer my own question." (Typeface not bolded in original. - CAA.)

&

"We have quite a few well informed, experienced folks around here who think that Congress ought to be cranking out a few Letters of Marque for pirate hunting."

I recommend to (both) my readers Tom Kratman's new military adventure "Countdown: The Liberators." The (good) colonel's fictionalized account of how to effect a hostage rescue permits considerable insight into the conditions and mentalities of our pirate adversaries.

re: "The difference between pacifism and non-violence"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") has a suggestion.

Money quote(s):

"We need to have a national policy that allows us the flexibility to support national sovereignty movements and finally give up on the Realpolitik of supporting the least heinous of the bastards in a particular region. Isn't that the perfect job for our moral superiors on the left? Shouldn't they jump at the chance to community organize actual oppressed people, instead of working the faux victim racket here at home? Let's give them the chance. That is why there is a USAID, a State Department and hordes of NGOs and other agencies. Let's decide to actually mean what we say about all men being created equal and endowed with certain rights. That would require a way to support non-violent means of resistance, but it should also come with a reminder that we don't cotton to those who slaughter non-violent protesters.

It never hurts to be on the side of freedom & liberty in a war of ideas against submission and oppression."