Three time zones, 3,000 miles, and a cultural galaxy apart, New York and Los Angeles face a common threat: along with Washington, D.C., they’re the chief American targets of Islamic terror. And both cities boast top cops, sometime rivals—the cities are fiercely competitive—who know that ensuring that a dog doesn’t bark will determine their legacies. After investing millions of dollars in homeland security, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly of New York and Chief William J. Bratton of L.A. can both claim counterterror successes. What can we learn from their approaches? And will they be able to continue preventing terrorist attacks in their cities?
I remember one incident well. Bilal lived above a Bengali restaurant. The other guy in his flat used to sing and play guitar, diabolically out of tune. I went round one day to Bilal's and heard this guy singing and wailing. I said, "What's this?" Bilal called him a "waster" and boasted to me that a few days earlier he had brought the guy into his bedroom. He sat him down and told him he needed to pray. He told him: "If you ever play again I'm going to smash the guitar." He then put on a video of al-Zarqawi beheading one of the hostages in Iraq. "If you think I'm messing about, this is what we do. This is what our people do - we slaughter." Bilal laughed when he recounted the story. I laughed with him, although I remember thinking the word slaughter was a bit disproportionate.
You, too, can learn to fight terror without getting out of bed or missing an episode of Desperate Housewives.
Western governments lag behind in Internet cyber-warfare with Al-Qaeda. If they do not catch up, they will not gain the upper hand in the war on terror.
A brief memoir of the trials and tribulations of an amateur counterterrorism expert.
I created my first terrorist cover identity on the Internet on March 13, 2002.
Plunging in, I started making headway into the world of counterterrorism.
On May 12, 2003, four days after I had tipped off the FBI, Al-Qaeda carried out its attacks.
Democrats, and a growing number of Republicans, are determined not to wait until September for the president to report on whether the surge is working. The American people have had enough. They want out. As we move into the endgame, though, the public needs to understand that neither Republicans nor Democrats are presenting them with a realistic strategy.
We need to determine — now, today — whether this is a fight that can be resolved or a riot that we need to build a wall around and wait until it exhausts itself.
The Real Surge: Preparing for Operation Phantom Thunder
Topic: War on Terrorism
8:50 am EDT, Jul 10, 2007
On June 15, 2007, Generals David Petraeus and Ray Odierno launched the largest coordinated military operation in Iraq since the initial U.S. invasion. The campaign, called Operation Phantom Thunder, aims to expel al Qaeda from its sanctuaries just outside of Baghdad. Denying al Qaeda the ability to fabricate car bombs and transport fighters through the rural terrain around Baghdad is a necessary prerequisite for securing the capital city, the overarching military goal for Iraq in 2007.
Operation Phantom Thunder is the first co- ordinated, offensive campaign against the insurgency in Iraq.
Phantom Thunder is unusual in the annals of counter-insurgency for its scale and its combination of multiple, complex movements over a large area, all of which focus on essential tasks of counter-insurgency.
The operation has been designed to avoid the pitfalls of previous approaches, denigrated by some critics as a “whack-a-mole” strategy that allows defeated insurgents to flee to safe havens and reconstitute.
A war this large and complex will not end with a single battle or campaign. The art of military command in such conflicts lies in tying multiple, simultaneous, and successive operations together over time. If these operations work properly, they will steadily improve the situation on the ground. The preparations for Operation Phantom Thunder have already done so. The current operation aims to do more. Future Iraq Reports will de- scribe Phantom Thunder in greater detail, as well as the subsequent operations that will surely fol- low.
The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11
Topic: War on Terrorism
8:50 am EDT, Jul 10, 2007
With enactment of the FY2007 supplemental on May 25, 2007, Congress has approved a total of about $610 billion for military operations, base security, reconstruction, foreign aid, embassy costs, and veterans’ health care for the three operations initiated since the 9/11 attacks: Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) Afghanistan and other counter terror operations; Operation Noble Eagle (ONE), providing enhanced security at military bases; and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).
For the first half of FY2007, CRS estimates that DOD’s average monthly obligations for contracts and pay is running about $12 billion per month, well above the $8.7 billion in FY2006. For FY2007, obligations are about $10 billion in Iraq, $1.9 billion in Afghanistan, and less than $100 million for enhanced security.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that additional war costs for the next 10 years could total about $472 billion if troop levels fall to 30,000 by 2010, or $919 billion if troop levels fall to 70,000 by about 2013. If these estimates are added to already appropriated amounts, total funding for Iraq and the GWOT could reach from about $980 billion to $1.4 trillion by 2017.
This is a week old now, but somehow I'd missed it.
A secret U.S. law enforcement report, prepared for the Department of Homeland Security, warns that al Qaeda is planning a terror "spectacular" this summer, according to a senior official with access to the document.
"This is reminiscent of the warnings and intelligence we were getting in the summer of 2001," the official told ABCNews.com.
Click through for the pictures, I'm told; the writing is apparently somewhat hyperbolic. More photos here.
When I began reporting from Iraq in 2002, I was still a wild and somewhat naïve twenty-four-year-old kid. Five years later, I was battle-weary. I had been there longer than the American military and had kept returning long after most members of the “coalition of the willing” had pulled out. Iraq had become my initiation, my rite of passage, but instead of granting me a new sense of myself and a new identity, Iraq had become my identity. Without Iraq, I was nothing. Just another photographer hanging around New York. In Iraq, I had a purpose, a mission; I felt important. I didn’t want to go back, but I needed to—and for the worst possible reason: I wasn’t ready for it to end. After twelve months away, I had a craving that only Iraq could satisfy.
A rotting corpse is devoured by dogs after having lain there for at least nine days.
Counterinsurgents Should Consider a 'Fabrication Cell'
Topic: War on Terrorism
12:28 pm EDT, Jul 6, 2007
Consider the implications of the fact that a suite full of inexpensive machines -- say between $5,000 and $25,000 in cost -- can be used to fabricate just about anything, given a little training on the machines and a good bit of ingenuity.
The author focuses on the power of his team getting a fablab. I would ask, consider the implications of a fablab-powered insurgency. Whereas Negroponte seeks one laptop per child in Africa, a wealthy extremist might establish a One FabLab Per Jihadist program throughout the Middle East. Maybe it would even be a BioFabLab.
Four years after the US invaded Iraq, a group of the war's veterans invaded the streets of New York. In a Memorial Day exercise, members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) donned their gear and reenacted military scenarios commonplace in the streets of Iraq. Using their hands as rifles, they shouted commands and crept around corners. Some scoured the streets for "Iraqi citizens," forcing them to the ground, cuffing, and hooding them.
The performance, captured in a video posted on the Nation, was meant to penetrate the detached and filtered haze that defines how most Americans view the war.
