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President Bush said it is naive and a mistake to think that the war with Iraq has worsened terrorism, disputing a national intelligence assessment by his own administration. He said he is declassifying part of that report.
More on this report: Bush to Declassify Part of Iraq Intelligence Report
Update:
Author and expert on African terrorism, Douglas Farah posts his take on the NIE at the CounterTerrorism blog.
TSA has posted details on the recent changes to the ban on liquids, gels.
Information also includes:
A poll conducted by the nonprofit organization, Terror Free Tomorrow, shows that despite high levels of anti-Americanism, positive American leadership, particularly humanitarian assistance, results in a more favorable view of the United States.
For the full details on the poll, click here.
A french paper is reporting that the Saudi government believes that Osama bin Laden has died of typhoid fever, probably in late August.
According to the l'Est Republicain newspaper, the report stems from an intelligence document produced by the French foreign intelligence service.
Of course, this has not been confirmed by French or any other intelligence sources. The French defense ministry is calling for an internal investigation of the document leak.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the media as the story develops.
Former President Clinton says Iraq War"hasn't helped" the broader global fight against terrorism.
Excerpt from Bloomberg News
The conflict particularly has strained the U.S. effort in Afghanistan and the search for al-Qaeda Osama bin Laden, Clinton said in an interview in New York.
"It's kind of taken our eye off the ball in Afghanistan and the hunt for bin Laden and also reduced our manpower and resources available for that purpose,'' Clinton, 60, said.
While Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a menace, he said, the bigger threat was and still is from terrorist groups.
"Saddam Hussein was a very bad guy,'' Clinton said. Still, ``even the Republicans have said he was hostile to al-Qaeda in Iraq and had nothing to do with 9/11, nothing to do with terrorist groups."
Read Full Story from Bloomberg News
Do you think Pope Benedict XVI's remarks about Islam crossed the line? Or do you think that he sincerely wanted to move Catholics and Muslims toward productive dialouge?
James Zogby, a guest blogger for The Huffington Post, thinks it was a grave error.
What's your take on it? We want to hear from you.
Commentary and Analysis by John Cote MSSI, CPP
So, who’s behind this latest terrorism threat that happened in London this past week? Is it Al-Qaeda?
From the best intelligence I can gather from open sources, the liquid bomb plot appears to be a version of an airline bomb plot linked to Al-Qaeda called “Bojinka” which was uncovered in 1995.
The Bojinka Plot, (Bojinka is said to be slang in certain Arabic dialects for something like "big bang"), called for terrorists to board 11 United States-based airliners and place liquid bombs in the life preservers under seats. (At that time the liquid was disguised as contact solution.)
Ramzi Yousef, the man who masterminded the World Trade Center bombings in 1993, actually tested this on one plane and a single man was killed when his explosive detonated.
Officials suspect this current group was in the dry run stage of the attack which is carried out during the pre-attack surveillance phase.
Terrorist attacks have five phases:
1. Planning
2. Target Selection
3. Pre-Attack Surveillance
4. Attack Phase
5. Lessons Learned
In the current plot, the terrorists were planning on smuggling the liquid on board by way of power drinks with a fake bottom. The top of the bottle would contain actual power drink and the lower portion would have the liquid explosive. This allowed for the attacker to clearly demonstrate that the liquid was drinkable.
Although there are enough similarities to lead one to believe that both of these liquid bomb plots are the doings of an Al-Qaeda cell, one of the key plot differences to note is that the U.K. plan recently thwarted seems to have been reliant on suicide bombers.
The Bojinka plot was built around operatives leaving explosives and timing devices on aircraft in inconspicuous locales.
Police and security forces had been monitoring this U.K. terrorist cell for months and determined that it was about to carry out one of its dry runs on the 16th of August.
By John Cote MSSI, CPP
If we are truly fighting a war on terrorism then its time we start fighting like we are. Our military has taken on the doctrine of “leave no man behind” and it is this doctrine which is getting our men killed. In time of war, you need every fighting man you can equip to fight. We can’t afford to loose the investment we put into our fighting forces.
The doctrine was established back in Viet Nam; a different time, a different war. The concept is that if a soldier should fall (die) in combat, the body would be recovered at all costs and if a solider was captured, he would never be left behind.
If you look at history though, we did exactly that in Viet Nam. Who knows for sure how many POWs were left behind there in the war which spawned the concept of leave no man behind?
What’s so wrong with the doctrine of Leave No Man Behind? For starters it’s an old doctrine for an old war. The war on terrorism is a new type of war. It’s is being fought by groups using asymmetric warfare. Our enemy has studied us and understands how we fight inside and out.
Our fighting men need to learn how to save themselves and not rely on someone coming to get them. One only needs to look as far as the Jedburghs of World War II . These men were trained how to survive behind enemy lines on their own.
How long does it take to fully train an American soldier? Some people would say eight weeks at boot camp. Boot camp is just the process of taking a civilian and turning them into GI’s. A soldier needs to go to his or her specific school which they signed up for. Even your regular infantry grunt needs to go to infantry school. Once a soldier finishes his qualification school he is then assigned to his unit. At the unit he must learn the specific ins and outs of the unit. The first time they are deployed with their unit in a hostile situation it will take them a year to become truly tactically aware of that particular area of operations. Take Iraq present day. The area of operations is full of hazards, IED’s, snipers, the general HEAT, unit politics to name just a few. It takes a soldier at lest one year to become completely situational aware of his surroundings in his current Area of Operations. With all the time and money invested in our soldiers today we need to maximize their usage.
The problem today is that our fighting forces expect to be saved by their teammates. This type of thinking is just plain wrong. We need to train all of our soldiers to be able to fight their way out of a situation or die trying.
If our enemy is willing to lay down his life in order to destroy us we must be willing to do the same or perish. The doctrine of ‘leave no man behind’ should be dead and buried. We need to stand toe to toe with our enemy and beat him at his own game.
By no means am I suggesting that we deploy our own suicide bombers, I am just saying that we need to be ready to fight our enemy on a level playing field. We can level that field by training our soldiers to fight until they win or die trying. Our soldiers can’t always rely on others coming to save them. They need to be trained well enough to know that when things start to get rough they can use their brains and fight smarter than the enemy.
Our enemies know us way too well. They know our capabilities, our weapons, and our tactics. We taught most of them our tactics at one time or another. Remember back in 1980, when Russia invaded Afghanistan? We taught the mujahideen how to fight Russia.
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