Rummy - "Are we fighting War on Terror well enough?"

I was going to post it, but i wanted to preface it with one of your or johnheath's "we are winning the war on terror and have turned the tide and Al qaeda is on the run!" posts first but didn't feel like looking it up.

as for your points

1. Thre's only so much fear to go around. We can't invade everybody at once. Plus, the two biggest problems are Pakistn and Saudi Arabia, which we can't sway because they know wew can't invade them, don't have the manpower. Disagree about State, the public pantsing of State by DoD and NSC has made their jobs harder, plus they have credibility issues now.

2. agree

3. agree, but those problems go to the top. You think the Administration wants to put pressure on Saudi Arabia but the State Dep't won't let them? No way. The ties between the bushes and the house of Saud run much deeper than that. Remember the 9-11 report that deleted the portions that referred to the Saudis?

4. agree

5. disagree, we are a debtor nation and the potential for abuse here is huge. We already don't have any money, and we have a huge fiscal crisis looming in the near future. It's not the time to start giving stuff away.

6. agree.

 

I can't argue with SamFisher's comments,...good point and thankyou treeman for bringing your insight and common sensed-educated opinion about what needs to be done...Rumsfield made a good point where I saw (on television) he stated we have made progress, but we have not made a big splash...Perhaps this is his way to signal senior state and DoD officials to loosen the reigns in tactical procedure...

 

) Capitalize on the feelings of fear that the Iraq war has created in its neighbors - this is central to the overal strategy of the Iraq battle, ie, spreading change throughout the ME. But if Iraq's neighbors - Saudi, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, and Yemen - do not feel afraid,

Had to laugh at that one. As we can remember that was an argument against the war. Iraq's neighbors, except Israel, no longer feared the Iraq that had been weakenened by containment. These countries simply didn't support the neocon's war.

Set the Special Forces loose - and let them do their jobs. Again, we appear to be afraid to do play dirty

This was didn't give me a laugh. I guess he wants an assassination program like Operation Phoenix. like we had in Vietnam or perhaps along the lines of the Tiger Force as detailed in this recent story.
********
An elite American military unit killed and mutilated hundreds of unarmed civilians, tortured prisoners and severed ears and scalps for souvenirs during the Vietnam war, according to a newspaper investigation.

The unit, Tiger Force, was sent on a six-month spying operation in areas controlled by the North Vietnamese. Members of the unit have revealed details of a rampage that began in May 1967 in which they dropped grenades into bunkers where villagers, including women and children, were hiding.

link

Here's a cite with info on Operation Phoenix.
**********
Created by the CIA in Saigon in 1967, Phoenix was
a program aimed at "neutralizing"--through
assassination, kidnapping, and systematic
torture--the civilian infrastructure that
supported the Viet Cong insurgency in South
Vietnam. It was a terrifying "final solution"
that violated the Geneva Conventions and
traditional American ideas of human morality.

The CIA destroyed its copies of the documents
related to this program, but the creator of
Phoenix gave his personal copies to author
Douglas Valentine. He, in turn, has given them to
The Memory Hole. They have never previously been
published, online or in print.

These extremely rare and revealing documents are
being posted at The Memory Hole, a Website
dedicated to rescuing knowledge and freeing
information. The site's publisher and editor,
Russ Kick, says: "I had worked with Doug before,
and I knew that he had lots of documents on
Phoenix, one of the CIA's most controversial and
hushed-up programs. When I asked if I could post
them, he immediately agreed. He was even kind
enough to write introductions to each document
and to Phoenix in general especially for the
site."
link

more***********
Vietnam, 73 According to Defense Dept official 26,369 South Vietnamese civilians killed under Phoenix while op under direct U.S. control (Jan 68 thru Aug 72 ). By same source, another 33,358 detained without trial. Colby in 73 admitted 20,587 deaths thru end 71 , 28,978 captured, and 17,717 "rallied" to Saigon gvt. Thus approx 30% targeted individuals killed. All Phoenix stats fail to reflect U.S. Activity after "official" U.S. Control of op abandoned. Counterspy spring/summer 75 8.

link

 

The military does need to be reconfigured to fight terrorism. Scrap that stupid missle defense shield. Cutback on fancy new gadgets geared toward fighting conventional wars. We are already capable of winning those with what we have.

Spend that money on training infiltrators, paying off informants, and getting real intel sources that we can count on. We need to get folks inside these organizations. Training should be focussed on that. Then spend money on security measures, studying tactics of terrorists, and preventing those tactics.

Once we have the information we need we can thwart their plans, arrest members we need, and shut these guys down.

 

Thanks for the link, treeman. I like Rummy the thinker; the only Rummy I really despise is Rummy the diplomat (sic).

Some odd things have happened around here this week (this BBS, that is). In this thread, SamFisher and treeman are in 66% agreement.

 

Here's the article so you don't have to link...
________
Rumsfeld Sees Need to Realign Military Fight Against Terror
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has told military commanders that the Pentagon is ill suited to combat terrorism and suggested that a new, more agile security agency may be needed to overcome the global threat.

"It is not possible to change D.o.D. fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror," Mr. Rumsfeld said in a memo dated Oct. 16, using initials for Department of Defense. "An alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution, either within D.o.D. or elsewhere — one that seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several departments and agencies on this key problem."

In an unusually blunt assessment of the campaign against terrorism, Mr. Rumsfeld wrote, "We are having mixed results with Al Qaeda, although we have put considerable pressure on them — nonetheless, a great many remain at large."

In the memo, published Wednesday in USA Today, he also said the United States, while successful in capturing many top Iraqi leaders, "has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban," who had offered sanctuary to Al Qaeda before 9/11.

Of the two major wars fought on his watch — conflicts whose victories have evolved into complicated, bloody peacekeeping and reconstruction missions — Mr. Rumsfeld wrote, "It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog."

Mr. Rumsfeld has often warned that the fight against terrorism will be lengthy and costly, with victory against a shadowy adversary difficult to define. He is known for trying to provoke debate by asking pointed questions. But he and other senior administration officials rarely speak as bluntly in public as he did in the internal Pentagon memo.

The White House defended the memo and Mr. Rumsfeld. Traveling with President Bush in Australia, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said the memorandum was "exactly what a strong and capable secretary of defense, like Secretary Rumsfeld, should be doing."

"We appreciate the job the secretary of defense is doing, working with our military leaders, to make sure we are adapting to defeat the terrorists," Mr. McClellan said.

The memorandum was sent to Gen. Richard B. Myers and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, and Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary for policy. Mr. Rumsfeld wrote that the document was a compilation of thoughts previously shared with the regional combatant commanders.

In its format, the memo is similar to the questions, comments and criticisms Mr. Rumsfeld is known to send on an almost daily basis to subordinates in the Pentagon — and even to officials at agencies beyond his direct purview. Known at the Pentagon as snowflakes, these Rumsfeld missives rarely land with lightness.

In recent months, at least two other internal Rumsfeld memos of similar sweep became public, one posing dozens of questions about ways to reduce the stress on the armed forces as they fight terrorism, another laying out fresh guidelines for the use of military power.

One senior government official described Mr. Rumsfeld's discussion of forming a new national security institution as "an idea in birth."

"Who was responsible for winning the cold war? The military," this official said. "Who is responsible for winning the global war on terror? Everybody. The military. The State Department. The Central Intelligence Agency. Justice and Customs have a big piece.

"When everybody is responsible," the official said, "nobody is accountable."

Pentagon and administration officials said discussions of a new force are only at the most informal phase.

Mr. Rumsfeld has sought to broaden the role of the Pentagon's Special Operations Command to take a lead in capturing or killing terrorists without regard to the division of turf given to regional commanders.

But his memo cautions: "We have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?"

________________

"An alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution, either within D.o.D. or elsewhere — one that seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several departments and agencies on this key problem." This is quite interesting. He's saying "Hey, you can't blame me for anything bad that might happen because the Army is configured to fight big wars. I need my own organization." It's a response to the recent Condi flap and a plea for the control to stay within DOD and under Rummy.

"We are having mixed results with Al Qaeda, although we have put considerable pressure on them — nonetheless, a great many remain at large." This pretty much undercuts everything that's come out of the president's mouth regarding the Terror War.

"It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog." Awaiting the elegant constructions from the right that will establish the great differences between a long, hard slog and a quagmire. I guess the former is different in that it is based on unsubstantiated hope that we will make it to the end of the road while the latter means we are just stuck. Neither quite upholds the picture painted before the invasion.

The most amazing thing abou the memo is there is no consideration that the strategy is flawed. Indeed, there is no discussion of strategy. It is just tackles tactics. There is also no sense that past decisions may have been wrong or misguided. Remarkable, really.

 

I'm not talking about actually invading anybody. Just making them think that you might actually do it. Big difference. Treeman.

We could easily invade the tribal areas of Pakistan (the only areas we're interested in), and Saudi would be far easier than Iraq was to invade. They have a very small army and only a couple of relevant population centers, with nothing on the scale of Baghdad. Treeman.

Can anyone see a logic here? How believeable is the first statement?

how dare they lay a finger on you buddy Saddam? Treeman.

Where's the cite to that cartoon about a conservative's guide to defending the Iraq War? What can I say on an equivalent level?

Yep, what can I say. Sadam is really a great guy when you get to know him. Should I share some of our correspondence throughout the long years of our friendship? Sadam and I like to take in Rocket games on the tube, when we can get them; When we see each other we also like to hang out at the oasis for a few breskies to cool off from the desert heat. Sadam's great about picking up the tab for his Texas buddy.

 

You made some excellent points. Maybe you need to give Rummy a ring?
The State Dept. has always been a bunch of weasels. Back in 1983, the SEALs recommended that the State Dept. security guys install these radio transmitters that would detonate car bombs near our embassy in Beirut (because in case the Islamic whacko driver chickens out, the bomb can be remoted detonated by his fellow terrorists. These devices would activate that transmitter before it could hurt friendlies).

Well, the State Dept morons told the SEALs that they couldn't do it because "it would cause too much collateral damage!" So in other words, these limp dicks would rather Americans get killed for a change. So they refused to emplace the transmitters and voila.....the Muslim whackoes put a car bomb through the gates, past an unarmed guard (wouldn't want to offend the locals, the ambassador said) and blew the place to smithereens, killing many Americans.

 

Another analysis of the "Rummy Papers":

Rumsfeld's Pentagon Papers
His leaked memo is the most astonishing document of this war so far.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, October 23, 2003

Donald Rumsfeld's war-on-terror memo—which was leaked to USA Today on Wednesday and picked up by the rest of the media, for the most part with a shrug, on Thursday—may be the most important, even stunning official document yet to come out of this war.

It puts the lie to the Bush administration's PR campaign that postwar Iraq is progressing nicely and that the media are exaggerating the setbacks. (If the media are exaggerating, this memo indicates, then so, too, is Secretary Rumsfeld.) It reads eerily like some internal mid-'60s document from The Pentagon Papers that spelled out how badly things were going in Vietnam (just as President Lyndon B. Johnson and his defense secretary, Robert McNamara, were publicly proclaiming tunnel light and victories). To use a phrase coined during LBJ's tenure to describe the ever-widening fissure between rhetoric and reality, Rumsfeld's memo marks the first unconcealable eruption of a "credibility gap" in the wartime presidency of George W. Bush.

(memo)...

Another question might be added to this list: Have you ever read a more pathetic federal document in your life? What is being stated here can be summed up as follows: We'll probably win the battle for Afghanistan and Iraq (or, more precisely, it's "pretty clear" we "can win" it, "in one way or another" after "a long, hard slog"), but we're losing the struggle for hearts and minds in the broader war against terrorism. Not only that, we don't know how to measure winning or losing, we don't have a plan for winning it, we don't know how to fashion a plan, and the bureaucratic agencies put in charge of waging this war and drawing up these plans may be inherently incapable of doing so.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan, when asked Wednesday about the leaked memo, tried to put the best spin on it, extolling the quality of questions that Rumsfeld had posed in the memo. "That's exactly what a strong and capable secretary of defense like Secretary Rumsfeld should be doing," McClellan said with a remarkably straight face.

Maybe so, but it's a shame Rumsfeld and his crew—who, after all, have been running this operation—weren't asking such questions two years ago or five months ago or, for that matter, five weeks ago. His questions about the madrasahs—the schools where fundamentalist clerics indoctrinate the next generation of Muslims in anti-Western militancy—are truly cogent. But he seems unaware that his current style of neutralizing these institutions may be heightening their appeal in the region's most susceptible quarters. What to do about this cultural dimension of the war is a genuine dilemma, perhaps the crucial dilemma of our time. But Rumsfeld's bull-session recipes—creating a private foundation to entice moderation, drafting a "new finding" for the CIA (which means what—an executive order that broadens the scope of permissible assassinations?)—are thin brews.

What makes the Rumsfeld memo a major document, however, is that it confirms much of the news reporting coming out of Iraq—the same reporting that Bush officials (including Rumsfeld) have publicly derided as biased. NPR's Deborah Amos reported Wednesday morning that Donald Evans, Bush's secretary of commerce, came to Baghdad recently and admonished the American reporters there to start paying more attention to the good news about the occupation. "The American people have a far different view from the reality that we all know is here," Amos quoted Evans as saying, "You should report what we're really seeing." How long had Evans been in Iraq? About 24 hours. Where did he sleep that night? In Kuwait.

Rumsfeld's memo makes plain that our top officials suffer no illusions about the war. They are trying only to sell illusions to the rest of us. The leaking of Rumsfeld's memo puts a tailspin on the sales pitch.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2090250/

 

Originally posted by treeman
.......................
2) Set the Special Forces loose - and let them do their jobs. Again, we appear to be afraid to do play dirty or offend anyone in this war, and because of this, we have not set our most powerful asset in this war loos on our enemies. Knowing what I know about SF and how they operate, there is no doubt in my mind that if we simply set these guys loose and gave them whatever they asked for, we would have gotten (killed) both Saddam and Osama by now, Al Qaeda would effectively no longer exist as a viable, operationally capable terrorist organization, the opposition in Iraq would be about finished, and Iraq's neighbors would be sh*tting bricks, unable to pass reforms fast enough. I know what those guys are capable of, and they are not being allowed to do their jobs. That is both State's and DoD's fault.

Deckard:
I can't argue with this. I'm not sure if we would have gotten the two top targets by now... they're damned slippery bast*rds, but we might have gotten lucky.


3) Punish any government that has any links to terrorists. I am not talking about invading; more along the lines of sanctions, blockades, embargoes, and asset freezes. This should include Iran and especially Saudi. Again, both State's and DoD's fault.

Deckard:
Wasn't this what we were doing, and could have continued at an enhanced level if needed, in Iraq?


4) Get tough with the Pakistanis - tell them that either they clean out the tribal areas, or we will, and if they do not then send in the 101st and wipe the place clean. Afghanistan will not be stabilized until the tribal areas cease to be a haven for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Again, both DoD and State dropped the ball here (mostly State).


Deckard:
Think of how much easier it would have been to do this if we were fully engaged in Afghanistan, not in Iraq, and had the forces in the Afghan theatre to do this? And had been using a much larger force inside Afghanistan to crush the remnants of the Taliban and the foreign combatants that plague the country still? And had not had to siphon off intelligence assets to fight the war in Iraq?

You talk about fear and threatening countries in the region. I think what we did so easily in Afghanistan, compared to what the Soviets were able to do, did just that. And with those assets we have in Iraq only partly committed in Afghanistan... I think our potential enemies, like the fundamentalists with Iran in their grip, against the wishes of the Iranian majority, and the mad regime in North Korea... would have far more fear of a US attack knowing those forces were on the table and not bogged down where they didn't have to be.

And with Pakistan fearful of their eastern borders, how are they credibly going to stop us cleaning up the tribal areas? Not that it would be easy... but worthwhile and something the current Pakistani Government would welcome... protesting in public.

Wars have unintended consequences. What you have pointed out as possible actions points out to me ever more strongly the folly of invading Iraq when we could have waited.