Posts with the tag 'intelligence'
In spite of what you might have heard from the left, under President Bush’s leadership, we have vastly improved our ability to track terrorists and keep America safe:
In the six-and-a-half years that the U.S. government has been fingerprinting insurgents, detainees and ordinary people in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa, hundreds have turned out to share an unexpected background, FBI and military officials said. They have criminal arrest records in the United States.
There was the suspected militant fleeing Somalia who had been arrested on a drug charge in New Jersey. And the man stopped at a checkpoint in Tikrit who claimed to be a dirt farmer but had 11 felony charges in the United States, including assault with a deadly weapon.
The records suggest that potential enemies abroad know a great deal about the United States because many of them have lived here, officials said. The matches also reflect the power of sharing data across agencies and even countries, data that links an identity to a distinguishing human characteristic such as a fingerprint.
“I found the number stunning,” said Frances Fragos Townsend, a security consultant and former assistant to the president for homeland security. “It suggested to me that this was going to give us far greater insight into the relationships between individuals fighting against U.S. forces in the theater and potential U.S. cells or support networks here in the United States.”
The fingerprinting of detainees overseas began as ad-hoc FBI and U.S. military efforts shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It has since grown into a government-wide push to build the world’s largest database of known or suspected terrorist fingerprints. The effort is being boosted by a presidential directive signed June 5, which gave the U.S. attorney general and other cabinet officials 90 days to come up with a plan to expand the use of biometrics by, among other things, recommending categories of people to be screened beyond “known or suspected” terrorists.
Fingerprints are being beamed in via satellite from places as far-flung as the jungles of Zamboanga in the southern Philippines; Bogota, Colombia; Iraq; and Afghanistan. Other allies, such as Sweden, have contributed prints. The database can be queried by U.S. government agencies and by other countries through Interpol, the international police agency.
Couple points:
1. The “dirt farmer” in Tikrit who turned out to be wanted in the US: all through this post-liberation battle in Iraq we’ve heard endlessly from the left that those fighting us are just Iraqis who want us out…and how do they know this? Because it was reported in the news…as if a western MSMer who spends most of his time in the Green Zone can tell the difference between an Arab from Tikrit and an Arab from Damascus. Certainly, plenty of Iraqis - for a while - joined the fight against us and the Iraqi government, but the vital leaven in the enemy forces, the thing which kept the fight hot, was the foreigners who came in with money, expertise (its not like Saddam actually trained his people to defend themselves, ya know?) and the will to fight. One wonders how many “Iraqis” in the news voicing opposition to the US were really Iraqis…
2. The fact that many of these people have turned out to be wanted in the US for various crimes gives one pause about claims of innocent people winding up in Gitmo - once again, how would an MSMer really be able to find out that the “innocent detainee” he’s interviewing is really someone innocent? Obviously, if someone is wanted in the US but is out and about in, say Somalia, then he’s already tangled with the law and got out of it by one means or another. Unless one wants to subscribe to the theory that our soldiers and intelligence agents are stupid thugs, one must give the benefit of the doubt to our side and discount media stories about allegedly innocent detainees. Not that an innocent person cannot have been picked up, but that the chances of a completely innocent person winding up in Gitmo are very small and would be the exception proving the rule.
3. What a good idea, huh? Everyone who is detained by us is fingerprinted and we gather forensic data from terrorist attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere and slowly build up a picture of who is doing what to whom. Over time this would give us a very good picture of what we’re up against (in terms of numbers, skills, effectiveness, etc) and allow us to subvert the terrorist groups from the outside and derail their efforts through misdirection.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama and his Democrats are saying that we have to get out of Iraq - at least, they’re saying it “pre-refinement”; we’ll probably see a changed tune soon, however - because Iraq has distracted us from the “real” war on terrorism…thing is, under President Bush we’ve managed to win in Iraq, win in Afghanistan, kill or capture many thousands of terrorists, build up a data base on global terrorism, de-fang Libya, end Pakistan’s “Nukes R Us” market, secure a growing alliance with India, Eritrea, Djibouti, Georgia and Poland, watch as France, Germany and other European States figure out that we’re doing the right thing in the War on Terrorism, increase the size of our military, re-equip our forces with the most modern weapons and materiel available, beef up our intelligence agencies, start to secure the border…and this is just the stuff we know about; there’s probably a lot which is still classified and we might not find out about for 50 years. Not a bad job for the man the left considers to be an evil idiot.
HAT TIP: NRO’s The Corner
Tags: Afghan Campaign, border security, Defeaticrats, intelligence, Iraq Campaign
July 7th, 2008
When the CIA was founded in 1947, a large portion of the initial personnel were recruited from the World War Two-era Office of Strategic Services (OSS). An unfortunate fact of life about the OSS is that it was heavily staffed with communists and fellow travellers. The reason for this? Simple - we were fighting on the side of communist Russia in WWII, and a communist OSS operative would (a) likely never voluntarily surrender to the Nazis and (b) would never turn traitor for the Nazis. Of course, these communists were not at all adverse to working for communist Russia once the United States and Russia came into a post-WWII collision course.
Essentially, CIA was founded with a built in series of moles who were highly placed - and not only able to provide secrets to the communists and deceive American policy-makers, but they were also able to continually recruit and advance like-minded individuals in the CIA over the years. It should be kept in mind that when CIA was founded and the FBI suggested background checks on employees of the new agency, CIA said they would take care of it themselves. As far as I know, there has never been an indepedent audit of CIA personnel - and given the number of moles which have emerged in the CIA over the past 60 years, it seems very likely that a certain percentage of CIA employees continue to give their loyalty to persons, nations and movements other than the United States of America.
Robert Novak notes a growing dismay - partially bi-partisan - over the way the CIA is behaving as a policy-making rather than advisory-and-executive organization on matters of intelligence. The recent NIE on Iraq - while a multi-agency product - is heavily CIA in content and was clearly designed to influence policy rather than offer dispassionate advice. I believe this and other outrages and failures of the CIA is attributable to a continuing fifth collumn (as it were) in the CIA - and it is good to understand that once a spy, always a spy; once a foreign entity recruits you, you can’t un-recruit yourself save by turning yourself in to the authorities, with all its risk of long-term incarceration. It doesn’t matter that the USSR which originally penetrated the CIA is no more - the Republic of Russia retains its spies, who are traitors whether they are working for the USSR or the Republic of Russia. Russian policy vis a vis Iran is to thwart US action against Iran’s nuclear program - and its just too neat a coincidence that just as crunch time is coming on Iran’s nukes, a NIE comes out saying, in effect, “no worries”.
Of course, I could be wrong - the recent NIE could be the absolute truth of the matter. But I don’t know - and I don’t know because there is no reason for anyone to place any reliance on information which comes from - or is influenced by - the CIA. Too many traitors have been proven to be there for us to have anything other but very strong doubts. The only way to break this particular logjam is to just abolish the organization.
It is certain that most of the employees of the CIA are dedicated Americans who want what is best for the nation - and we can re-hire them at a successor agency, but only after an exhaustive background check not just on themselves, but on who hired them and promoted them over the years. America needs a central intelligence agency, but we can’t afford to retain the CIA - better to amalgamate the Defense Intelligence Agency with people from State (for foreign political intelligence) and Treasury (for foreign economic intelligence) into a new intelligence group, with the pick of the litter from the defunt CIA to fill out the organization.
The need for good intelligence for both the Executive and Legislative branch is too important for us to have any doubts - we must be certain that our lawmakers and Administration are working on the best data available, presented without any agenda, and without any leaking to the MSM (no intel agency should ever release any info to the press - such releases of info should only come via the Executive or the relevant intel committees in the House and Senate). Abolish the CIA - start over from scratch; and start to build America the sort of intelligence agency its needed, but sadly lacked, for the past 6 decades.
Tags: CIA, intelligence, NIE
December 26th, 2007
I don’t have a lot of time to post tonight, but just a few thoughts on the day…
First, when I heard the NIE’s report the other day that Iran hasn’t been seeking nukes since 2003, it hit me as just a little bit more than a brain disconnect. After all, it flied in the face of everything I’ve been hearing, since 2001 (this year included).
The report concludes that Iran “bowed to (international) political pressure” in its decision to supposedly halt its nuclear program in 2003.
My question: If Ahmawhackjob did indeed bow to international pressure in Iran’s decision to halt its nuclear ambitions, ostensibly to give the message, “Hey, don’t invade us–we’re really not all that bad!” then why the even-recent rhetoric to “blow Israel off the map?” If one abandons nukes because they’re afraid of international pressure, then wouldn’t it be defeating the purpose by continuing to talk as if you had nukes or were still looking for them? Wouldn’t that be the same kind of denial that ultimately got Saddam into trouble? Wouldn’t a government wishing to avoid an invasion rather take a Qaddafy-like approach?
The more I look into this matter, the more putrid-smelling it becomes.
My main man Fred Thompson makes the most sense of anyone I’ve read or heard on the subject.
______________________________________
Next on the agenda–the long-awaited Romney “JFK’esque ‘Don’t be afraid of my religion” speech.
Truth be told, I was never afraid of Romney’s Mormonism. I was more (and continue to be more) afraid of his having been a “successful” governor of one of the most liberal states in the Union. The perpetual home of Sens.- for- life Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, for cripe’s sake!
For all we know, a Romney candidacy will be George Bush v. 2.0 in terms of social spending and lack of immigration enforcement, and without George Bush’s lifelong convictions on the abortion issue, to boot!
As far as I’m concerned, Romney’s got a lot more ’splainin’ and cowtowing to do in those departments than WRT his possible allegiance to the ideals of Joseph Smith.
At the very least, Romney sucked up all the political oxygen for the day, which was a brilliant move on his part in keeping his name at the forefront of the news cycle.
When it comes down to it, I truly suspect that’s what it was all about to begin with.
Tags: 2008 Campaign, abortion, intelligence, Iran, President Bush
December 6th, 2007
