Comments on: “Open Source” Insurgents Rise

By: downey

downey — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 12:55:29 +0000

By: Yasonyacky

Yasonyacky — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 23:24:01 +0000

For those of you who wish to complain about the losses we suffer over there, REMEMBER THAT THOSE MEN AND WOMEN GAVE UP THEIR LIFE WILLINGLY SO YOU CAN SIT SAFE IN THE STATES WITHOUT A TERRORIST DETONATING A BOMB IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD.
This is a variation on the old “Walk and Chew Gum” argument combined with the so-called “Flypaper” strategy, and it is devestatingly inaccurate. This idea is based on a false perception of scarcity. The argument goes something like this:
Because the U.S. military is fighting a broad, disparate insurgency (which is made up of both nationalist “resistance” guerillas as well as Al-Qaeda-type international terrorists from other countries) in Iraq, terrorists will not be able to attack us in the U.S.
Think about it for a second — why the hell not? Even if one million or two million or three million terrorists flock to Iraq to fight U.S. soldiers there (and we are NOT seeing anything close to numbers of this magnitude), why would this prevent five, ten, or twenty terrorists from entering the U.S. to attack us here? In fact, I believe the prevalence of this half-baked idea makes it more likely that we will be attacked while the war in Iraq is going on. Think about it from the perspective of information war — if the U.S. public believes we can’t be hit while we’re fighting overseas, and media types and government officials keep saying it on TV (which is broadcast around the world 24/7), isn’t it at least possible that some AQ or other terrorist network cell member thinks to himself: “Oh yeah? You can’t be hit? I’ll show you!“
That may be farfetched, so I’ll back down from that precipice to a much more stable one — the belief that we can’t be hit with another terrorist attack while we’re at war in Iraq makes us, as citizens, complacent, and complacency is dangerous.
News flash: We CAN be hit again, no matter how many terrorists are in Iraq fighting us.
Our soldiers are brave and they’re doing a great job with the crappy hand they’ve been dealt. But that doesn’t mean the military’s civilian leadership is pursuing sound policy (see, for example, “flypaper strategy”).
Sorry for the rant.

By: Wild Bill

Wild Bill — Sun, 14 Aug 2005 03:59:30 +0000

Folks, let me ask you a question.. Could it be, that the question is not whether we are smart enough, but, are we out smarting ourselves?? I often wonder if it is not possible that we are forever seeking some grande, extraordinary new defensive/offensive weapon to cause a spectacular end to all conflict.. Much as was the case in the ending of WW2.. Could it not be, that there is a perfectly simple, noncomplex solution out there, that would leave all the Great Military Minds scratching their heads, and saying “why didnt I think of that” ?? With all the nanotech, backscatter, jamming, and impulse systems coming of age, could it not be that we just need to pull the door to get it open, instead of push it ??

By: aam8234

aam8234 — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 16:59:31 +0000

“The vast majority of “terrorists” fighting us now in Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and had never done anything hostile towards us before. We’re now *creating* “terrorists” (people who have a reason to hate us) faster than we’re killing them.” Posted by: Ed Cogburn at August 12, 2005 05:08 AM
Terrorist attacks before 9/11
August 9: A suicide bomber in Jerusalem kills seven and wounds 130 in the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing; Hamas and Islamic Jihad claim responsibility.
2000
October 12: USS Cole bombing kills 17 US sailors.
The last of the 2000 millennium attack plots fails, as the boat meant to bomb USS The Sullivans sinks.
1999
December 14: Ahmed Ressam is arrested on the United StatesCanada border in Port Angeles, Washington; he confessed to planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots
December: Jordanian authorities foil a plot to bomb US and Israeli tourists in Jordan and pick up 28 suspects as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots
1998
January 3: Gunmen open fire on Shi’a Muslims worshipping in an Islamabad mosque, killing 16 people injuring 25.
1997
November 17: Luxor Massacre Islamist gunmen attack tourists in Luxor, Egypt, killing 62 people, most of them European and Japanese vacationers.
1995
Bombings in France by a GIA unit led by Khaled Kelkal kill seven and injure more than 100.
1994
December 24: Air France Flight 8969 is hijacked by GIA members who planned to crash the plane on Paris but didn’t succeed.
1993
June: Failed New York City landmark bomb plot.
February 26: World Trade Center bombing kills 6 and injures over 1000 people.
1986
September 5: Pan Am Flight 73, an American civilian airliner, is hijacked; 22 people die when plane is stormed in Karachi, Pakistan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents
It goes on ED COGBURN… With Libya being a major player before that. We didn’t create these people. WE have forgotten what they have already done. Take the time to follow up each of these incidents with the link provided and understand who the participants are how they are rleated and how some of the attacks were building blocks for attacks like the world trade center and 9/11. It’s not just about us as Americans it’s about the world as non Islamic radical believers.
The groups we still fight in IRAQ today are ones that buy into the ideological crap that is espoused by the members from previous groups. These are related entities through ideology and with the Internet are now effectively bound together, rather than loose groups with less efeective means of communication and have less of a communications asset. This form of communication is a great asset to them, just as it has been for the women of Iraq.

By: Robert David Steele

Robert David Steele — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 14:46:42 +0000

The over-all article and its links is the better value than the original inspiration from the Marine Major. Although the comments on the original article are correct with respect to the dramatic increase in foreign fighters in Iraq (OSS and its partners have done an OSINT study of the foreign fighter population), the Major’s core idea is correct and consistent with what we are seeing elsewhere.
Answering the person that asked why we can’t mobilize distributed hackers to support CIA and the Pentagon, and why American computing power cannot be applied, there are three aspects to this:
1) 90% of the world, including US hackers, want nothing to do with CIA lawyers and CIA security, both of which are so entrenched in Cold War mind-sets as to make them virtually dysfunctional if not pathological in modern open society.
2) CIA and the rest of the IC are stove-piped bureaucracies–cows lcoked into a feeding trough that secrets are put into–they are no more capable of turning into mustangs grazing the range than George Bush is of morphing into Jimmy Carter.
3) US computing power today is largely broken because it is too expensive, too proprietary, too isolated, and too narrowly focused. Only Google offers a scalable distributed global web architecture for multinational multiagency multidisciplinary multidomain information sharing, and this (M4 IS) is heresy in the eyes of the US intelligence and conventional military mind–they would rather lose than go open source.

By: nightgod

nightgod — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 06:04:08 +0000

Anyone else noticing the irony of hating the United States and everything its stands for while using the very technology that the US military made possible to spread that hate?
I can’t be the only one that sees that…

By: John

John — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 03:56:57 +0000

There were a lot of FUBAR’s going into this, BUT (and this is a big BUT) the Marine is right. It was a conscious choice made on the part of the administration. If we had taken the time to build up our forces first, the terrorists could very easily have regrouped and attacked us again. War is hell. That is a simple and greatly understated fact. For those of you who wish to complain about the losses we suffer over there, REMEMBER THAT THOSE MEN AND WOMEN GAVE UP THEIR LIFE WILLINGLY SO YOU CAN SIT SAFE IN THE STATES WITHOUT A TERRORIST DETONATING A BOMB IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD. I do not pity our soldiers. I do not cry when they die. I rejoice that they were brave enough and loved this country enough to die so that my wife and daughter can be safe. In Biblical terms, Jesus said, “Greater love hath no man than this, to lay his life down for another.” The soldiers of this great nation do not just love the U.S. but they love us. And they are willing to pay the ultimate price for us to live. So stop complaining and whining! Be thankful that someone was willing to die for you. As for the insugency; they are becoming more technologically advanced, they are adapting at a rapid rate, and they are waging a PR compaign against us. Yes we need to wage a better PR war. Yes we need to wage a better technological war. Yes we need to adapt faster. AND WE ARE! The problem is not with the administration or with the military or even with Iraq. IT IS WITH US! Americans in general have an attention span that can be measured in minutes, hours and days. We have forgotten why we went over there. As far as I am concerned, the media should be forced to reply the 9–11 attacks at least once a week to remind us. They took them off the air because they were considered too graphic. Have you taken a look at video games, or movies or even television lately? Violence is something today’s youth understands. Do not insult our soldiers, their families, the victims of 9–11 or this nation by forgetting why we are there because I can guarantee you that they haven’t.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 06:30:55 +0000

b and ALex suggest that the web will be AQ’s undoing becouse it can present opportunites to argue the potential terrorist away from violence. I disagree.
Once your into the world of AQ terror sites you can ignore the web pages with counter arguements that you done want to hear.

By: AF

AF — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 03:08:21 +0000

Agree with you on John Robb, he’s been a fav of mine for a while.
Hey, maybe you covered this already — could you say the techniques our military uses, as described in the New Yorker’s story from last year, Battle Lessons: What the generals don’t know qualify as open source too?

By: Maj David High

Maj David High — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 21:37:03 +0000

Just so happened that Iraq was very conveniently located between Syria and Iran, and nobody would cry over their leader (outside of Chirac and Kofi Annan). As trite as “I’d rather fight ‘em there than in Kansas” sounds, I think there is a grain of truth to it. As JSAllison so aptly says above, I guess we just have to keep stomping.