For Tom.

Avian influenza poses a complex threat, having the potential to cause a significant health crisis and to cripple the global economy. Containing the disease's spread and mitigating its impact requires a multi-pronged approach. To better provide sound policy solutions for combating avian influenza's challenges, CSIS has aggregated its many resources into one location.

You may question my selection of topic for this entry. I will simply say that humans do not hold a monopoly on evil. And as a free people, it is our solemn obligation to confront and obliterate such evil wherever it may threaten to exist.

I realize that these flu-ridden birds are something of an extreme offshoot and that they are not representative of the vast majority of their culture, which is naturally peace-loving and vaguely libertarian, notwithstanding their strong sense of territoriality.

Nevertheless, our obligation remains clear. I look forward to establishing a strong and lasting partnership with moderate leaders of the avian community.

Thank you, and God bless.

Preparing for Avian Influenza

Did you hear this?

"This bill also will help protect Americans from the growing threat of methamphetamine. Meth is easy to make. It is highly addictive. It is ruining too many lives across our country."

As if there has long been a well-known threshold, and recently we've crossed it, thus making this legislation necessary.

"The bill introduces common-sense safeguards that would make many of the ingredients used in manufacturing meth harder to obtain in bulk, and easier for law enforcement to track. For example, the bill places limits on large-scale purchases of over-the-counter drugs that are used to manufacture meth. It requires stores to keep these ingredients behind the counter or in locked display cases.

Oh, right -- like an M-rated Playstation game!

The bill also increases penalties for smuggling and selling of meth. Our nation is committed to protecting our citizens and our young people from the scourge of methamphetamine."

Apparently it's their addiction to meth that drives extremists to terror.

Before the Patriot Act, it was easier to track the phone contacts of a drug dealer than the phone contacts of an enemy operative. Before the Patriot Act, it was easier to get the credit card receipts of a tax cheater than trace the financial support of an al Qaeda fundraiser. The Patriot Act corrected these double standards, and the United States is safer as a result.

The Patriot Act is about civil rights, but not in the way you thought.

"What we've done, you see, is, we've raised the bar on probable cause when it comes to wiretapping drug dealers, and we've established a separate court staffed by specially trained jurists who will carefully review all requests to wiretap the phones of drug dealers. And we've decided that from now on, tax cheaters will lose their Mastercard privileges. I know that sounds harsh, but it had to be done. The Patriot Act is all about fairness and equality. Do you think Osama has a Mastercard? Well, there you go."

President Signs USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act

Terrorists know they can't defeat the United States militarily, but they're still dangerous, Bush said. "They do not have an ideology that is appealing to people, but they do have the capacity to kill innocent life, and they're willing to do so all attempting to shake our will and cause us to leave the Middle East, so they can find safe haven from which to launch attacks," he said.

"My ideology, on the other hand, is quite appealing."

Doesn't he realize that "ideologue" has become an epithet?

Never mind the implication that a Middle East without the United States is inherently a "safe haven" for terrorists. (Or that Pakistan is about as safe as it gets for a terrorist, despite our regional presence.)

"That is what they have said, and as your president, it is important for me to see the world the way it is -- the realities of the world, not the way some would hope it would be."

Oh, okay. Good looking out!

But wait -- I guess he must have missed the obvious fact that the terrorists' havens in Iraq are sufficiently safe to support the launching of attacks.

Bush: My Ideology Is Better Than Your Ideology

Chapter 5 of the McGraw-Hill Homeland Security Handbook details various models of al-Qaida may be using to attract new members; approaches to recruitment; characteristics of potential recruits; and nodes-centers of activity, such as mosques, universities, and charities-where al-Qaida’s recruiters seek new members and where potential recruits are likely to become acquainted with the radical jihadist world view.

Al-Qaida: Terrorist Selection and Recruitment

Chapter 8 of the McGraw-Hill Homeland Security Handbook offers a perspective on significant trends in terrorism over the past four decades. Terrorism has become bloodier, is less dependent on state sponsors, has evolved new models of organization, has become adept at exploiting new communications technologies, involves global campaigns, and has had a strategic impact. None of these trends will allow prediction or extrapolation. Also, terrorists have yet to achieve their stated long-range goals, and terrorists’ use of weapons of mass destruction have not materialized.

The New Age of Terrorism

Chapter 72 of the McGraw-Hill Homeland Security Handbook addresses the important issue of the ideological differences between the United States and al-Qaida and the necessity to win the war of ideas. This chapter outlines the ideology promulgated by al-Qaida and associated terrorist groups. It examines recent attempts by the United States to combat al-Qaida’s worldview and compares this effort with America’s global propaganda campaign against the Soviet Union. The chapter concludes with some preliminary ideas about waging an effective counterpropaganda campaign against al-Qaida, including potential themes and approaches.

Waging the “War of Ideas”

The recent escape of 23 suspected al-Qaeda inmates from a maximum security facility in Yemen has spawned some baroque theories about their prison break. One theory presently circulating in Yemen is that the escape was orchestrated to transfer them into U.S. custody, thereby circumventing extradition laws.

One of the most corrupt states in the world, Yemen is plagued with embezzlement, smuggling, mismanagement, and corruption, which in the aggregate have ruined its economy. Unemployment and poverty rates are very high. Land ownership, business ownership, political and military power are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small elite.

The E.U. has called Yemen "the forgotten crisis."

Of the four million children under the age of five, half are physically stunted from malnutrition, half never enter first grade, and 11 percent die before their fifth birthday-about half of those deaths from diarrhea. Nearly 90 percent of the population does not have access to clean water.

You think maybe that Brilliant Guy at Google could do something about Yemen?

The Two Faces of Yemen

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point is pleased to present this report, "Harmony and Disharmony: Exploiting Al-Qa’ida’s Organizational Vulnerabilities." Based on a collection of al-Qa’ida documents that have recently been released from the Department of Defense’s Harmony Database, this report provides an analysis of al-Qa’ida’s organizational vulnerabilities. These documents, captured in the course of operations supporting the GWOT, have never before been made available to the academic and policy community. "Harmony and Disharmony" includes a theoretically informed analysis of potential opportunities to exploit al-Qa’ida’s network vulnerabilities, a case study of jihadi operational failure, and specific recommendations for effectively addressing the evolving al-Qa’ida threat. We have provided brief summaries of each of the released documents, and the full texts of the released documents can be accessed via hyperlinks within the report, both in their original Arabic and in English. We hope that this report will provide a useful resource in our collective efforts to better understand and combat al-Qa’ida and its affiliated movements.

Be sure to click through on Harmony Document List (with linked summaries) for more documents.

In addition, the CTC report "Stealing Al-Qa'ida's Playbook" is available.

Harmony and Disharmony: Exploiting Al-Qa'ida's Organizational Vulnerabilities

Sweet. Although I would have appreciated a proper typesetting.

When Algerian nationalists launched a rebellion against French rule in November 1954, France, mired in similar wars for independence in its colonial territories, was in a poor position to cope with further upheaval. The Algerian strategy encompassed varying approaches and was more adaptable than that of the French, necessitating a rethinking of traditional counterinsurgency methods.

In this volume, originally published in 1963, David Galula reconstructs the story of his highly successful command in the district of Greater Kabylia, east of Algiers, at the height of the rebellion, and presents his theories on counterinsurgency and pacification. In the process, he confronts the larger political, psychological, and military aspects of the Algerian war, and provides a context for present-day counterinsurgency operations.

This groundbreaking work, featuring a new foreword by Bruce Hoffman, retains its relevancy as a challenge to traditional counterinsurgency tactics and presents approaches to predicting, managing, and resolving insurgent and guerilla conflict. The parallels between the Algerian war and modern warfare are striking, and lessons can be extracted from French successes and failures in its drive to contain and manage the Algerian uprising.

Pair it with The Battle of Algiers.

Pacification in Algeria, 1956-1958 | RAND | Monographs

This is a roundup about the new book by James Risen, "State of War : The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration", published on January 3 and currently in the overall top 50 on Amazon and number 16 on the NYT nonfiction list.

In the latest issue of The New York Review of Books, Thomas Powers reviews the book and offers additional commentary in his article, The Biggest Secret. He writes:

Far from being a "vital tool," as described by President Bush, the program was a distracting time waster that sent harried FBI agents down an endless series of blind alleys chasing will-o'-the-wisp terrorists who turned out to be schoolteachers. And far from saving "thousands of lives," as claimed by Vice President Dick Cheney in December 2005, the NSA program never led investigators to a genuine terrorist not already under suspicion, nor did it help them to expose any dangerous plots. So why did the administration continue this lumbering effort for three years? Outsiders sometimes find it tempting to dismiss such wheel-spinning as bureaucratic silliness, but I believe that the Judiciary Committee will find, if it is willing to persist, that within the large pointless program there exists a small, sharply focused program that delivers something the White House really wants. This it will never confess willingly.

...

The systematic exaggeration of intelligence before the invasion of Iraq and the flouting of FISA both required, and got, a degree of resolution in the White House that has few precedents in American history. The President has gotten away with it so far because he leaves no middle ground—cut him some slack, or prepare to fight to the death.

The book is also reviewed, here by Walter Isaacson, in today's New York Times.

This explosive little book opens with a scene that is at once amazing and yet not surprising. It is riveting, anonymously sourced and feels slightly overdramatized, but it has the odious smell of truth.

Risen appears to feel that if something is secret and interesting, it should be exposed.

Risen's archvillain is George Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, whom Risen portrays, through a brutal procession of leaked anecdotes, as so eager to be liked by Bush that he prostitutes his agency.

So what are we to believe in a book that relies heavily on leaks from disgruntled sources?

As long as we remember that the truth these days comes not as one pronouncement but as part of a process, we can properly value "State of War" for being not only colorful and fascinating, but also one of the ways that facts and historical narratives emerge in an information-age democracy. So let the process begin!

NYT offers an excerpt from ... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]