Iraq Between Federalism and Collapse

A new study by a German think tank weighs in on the future of Iraq.

Der Irak zwischen Föderalismus und Staatszerfall: Interessen und Handlungsoptionen irakischer und regionaler Akteure (31 page PDF-- German only).

"Already today, the main priority is to prevent Iraq from breaking apart completely." That is the sober conclusion of a new study released Wednesday in Berlin on the situation in Iraq. Called "Iraq Between Federalism and Collapse," the study argues that there is little hope of a centralized power in Iraq and that the country's future depends on walking the fine line between decentralizing power and civil war.

The report, written by terror and Middle East expert Guido Steinberg under the auspices of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin, says that a far-reaching decentralization is the country's only hope. And if it fails, the result could be devastating, including the possibility of full-scale civil war complete with foreign intervention.

"The basic assumption of this study," Steinberg writes, "is that a federalist solution will be the only possibility to maintain Iraq as a single country. The most important role of German and European policies should therefore be that of supporting steps toward a peaceful federalist solution." ...

The sectarian wrangling means, the study says, that the best solution -- that of a federalism free of ethnic and religious divisions -- has largely been rendered impossible. But even a federalism resting on the ethnic divisions that have been established seems challenging given the opposition from within the Shiite and Sunni factions to such a solution.

And that's not to mention the opposition of other countries in the region. "The discussion within Iraq is influenced to a large degree by the interests of neighboring countries," the report states. "Due to their potential to become involved, the Iraq federalists have to take their positions into account. And Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Syria all reject the ethnic-religious federalism model out of hand." Military intervention from Iraq's neighbors to protect their interests, particularly from Turkey in the north, is a very real possibility, the report warns. ...

All of which makes the immediate future in Iraq look bleak, Steinberg writes. The alternative to a successful federalism solution, he indicates, is chaos, more violence and a Shiite dictatorship. "Iraq is a failed state," the report concludes, "and will remain unstable for the foreseeable future."

For those who require a more optimistic assessment of the situation, you need look no further. In an article about the increased use of house-borne IEDs against American troops in Iraq, a PAO suggests we interpret the development as another sign of progress:

Officials attribute the increasingly sophisticated attacks to desperation on the insurgents' part after troops became too successful at finding roadside bombs and other explosives.

"It's a clear sign that they could not get to us by other means, and that's a good sign," said Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, a spokesman for the American operation in northern Iraq, describing the pattern of house bombs in that area. "Obviously we're countering the improvised explosive devices, and force on force, they know that they can't fight us."

But ambushes and rigged houses can cause many more casualties than smaller improvised explosive devices, which rarely kill more than one or two people at a time. Increasingly, Donnelly said, insurgents are creating a "daisy chain" of house bombs, in which an initial explosion can trigger blasts up and down a block.

Additionally, house bombs can be some of the most difficult explosives to detect because of the myriad ways they can be activated, Donnelly and others said. Some insurgents use powerful bombs or other munitions; others rely on homemade explosives. The blast can be set off by a trip wire, a pressure plate or a remote device. ...

Donnelly said that as U.S. troops become more skilled in identifying house bombs, al-Qaeda in Iraq will probably develop even more advanced techniques for attacking soldiers. But the American military's counterinsurgency abilities, assisted by increased cooperation from Iraqi citizens, would prevail, he said.

"There is no question that there is still a serious threat," Donnelly said. "But the gains we have made are tremendous. In the end, we will win, and they will be marginalized and pushed out."

Congress Holding Up Funds For Strategic Communication

We're talking about "chicken feed" for the DOD here. Yikes!

Before lawmakers left for the summer recess earlier this month, two key congressional defense committees recommended cutting funds for an effort at the Defense Department to implement what officials there call strategic communication.

That term describes concerted communication programs aimed at helping the military "understand and engage" what Pentagon officials consider key audiences worldwide, according to DOD budget documents released in February. The idea, the documents state, is to "advance national interests and objectives through the use of coordinated information, themes, plans, programs and actions synchronized with other elements of national power." ...

In the defense budget request for fiscal 2008, DOD wants $3 million for a line item called “strategic communication and integration.” The item is part of the request for the office of the undersecretary of Defense for policy. According to military officials and DOD budget documents, the Pentagon needs the money to pay for the implementation of about 60 objectives identified in the strategic communication road map.

But the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee inserted language into the emerging defense bills for fiscal 2008 that would deny funds for the effort.

House Appropriations Committee members cited procedural issues for declining the money, describing the request as an “unsupported program initiation” in their July 30 report on their version of the fiscal 2008 Defense appropriations bill.

The Senate committee said the components of strategic communication -- public diplomacy, public affairs and information operations -- should be practiced separately. “Any attempt to integrate them could compromise the integrity of each of these functions,” senators wrote in their June 5 report accompanying their version of the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill. ...

Rear Adm. Frank Thorp, director of the Pentagon’s Strategic Communication Integration Group, oversees the implementation of the road map. He declined to say what effect a lack of funding would have on the DOD’s strategic communication effort because both bills are still in a preliminary stage and have not been passed. “We want to see it funded so we can continue to execute the road map,” he said in an Aug. 2 interview.

Debate on the fiscal 2008 Defense appropriations and authorization bills is expected to continue when lawmakers return to Washington after Labor Day.

Hint: It's Not About Fighting Terrorism

For over a year and a half, readers here have been treated to details of the CATCH-ALL program that are only now being uncovered by our intrepid news media.

A California appeals court will examine two cases this week that could impact the federal government's high-tech surveillance of Americans. The Wednesday hearings come after a new law that broadens intelligence officials' eavesdropping power.

The Bush administration wants the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss the lawsuits, contending that they could jeopardize highly sensitive "state secrets." Because the privilege prevents litigants from obtaining classified data, the cases lack standing, the Justice Department argued.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1953 that the executive branch could bar evidence from court if it was deemed a national security threat, senior agency officials told reporters Monday. When the material in question is scrubbed from a case, the complaint may or may not fall apart, they said.

"We're not arguing that this means the judges should look at classified material secretly and rule in favor of the government on the merits of the claims," one staffer said. The government is simply pushing for "a decision that the case can't be litigated in light of national security interests involved."

In one case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation accused AT&T of collaborating with the National Security Agency in illegal spying on millions of customers. ...

In the AT&T case, EFF claims that the telecommunications firm provided the NSA a "dragnet" that collects "all or substantially all of the communications of U.S. citizens," a Justice official said. The second claim pertains to the alleged preservation of AT&T customers' call records.

Touché (but you have to wonder about the WaPo's capacity for embarrassment at how badly they were scooped):

So far, evidence in the case suggests a massive effort by the NSA to tap into the backbone of the Internet to retrieve millions of e-mails and other communications, which the government could sift and analyze for suspicious patterns or other signs of terrorist activity, according to court records, plaintiffs' attorneys and technology experts.

"The scale of these deployments is . . . vastly in excess of what would be needed for any likely application or any likely combination of applications, other than surveillance," says an affidavit filed by J. Scott Marcus, the senior Internet adviser at the Federal Communications Commission from 2001 to 2005. Marcus analyzed evidence for the plaintiffs in the case. ...

Tomorrow's hearing will focus only on whether the two lawsuits should be dismissed on the basis of the government's assertion of a "state secrets privilege." The outcome could determine whether the courts will ever rule on the legality of surveillance conducted by the NSA without judicial oversight between 2001 and January 2007, when the Bush administration first subjected the program to the scrutiny of a special intelligence court.

"If the courts take the position that the state-secrets privilege prevents the case from going forward, I think effectively there'll never be a decision about the legality of the program," said Cindy Cohn, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's legal director. ...

President Bush and his aides have confirmed that the NSA, beginning in late 2001, monitored electronic communications between the United States and overseas without warrants in cases in which one of the parties was believed to be affiliated with al-Qaeda. But administration officials have recently acknowledged that the NSA program was broader, and intelligence sources inside and outside the government have described a vast effort to collect and analyze telephone and e-mail communications that were later scrutinized by the government for desired information. ...

Some of the evidence also suggests that the NSA efforts were not limited to overseas e-mail communications and included the collection of purely domestic traffic. ...

Marcus, the former FCC adviser, said in a legal declaration recently unsealed in the case that the operation described by Klein "is neither modest nor limited" and was far more extensive than needed if it was focused only on international communications or on tasks other than surveillance.

"I conclude that AT&T has constructed an extensive -- and expensive -- collection of infrastructure that collectively has all the capability necessary to conduct large-scale covert gathering of [Internet protocol]-based communications information, not only for communications to overseas locations, but for purely domestic communications as well," said Marcus, a veteran computer network executive who worked at GTE, Genuity and other companies before joining the FCC.

James X. Dempsey, policy director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said the evidence gleaned from the AT&T case appears to confirm that "there is a massive surveillance capability built into the network" by the federal government. But, Dempsey added, "the mere fact that the capability has been built and utilized still does not answer the fundamental question -- has it been exercised under constitutional parameters? That, in a way, is what these cases are trying to get to."

For a concise explanation of why the CATCH-ALL program is a fraud as advertized, see: Effective Counterterrorism and the Limited Role of Predictive Data Mining.

How Nice Of You To Join Us

I have a feeling that the coffers for this year's Christmas party at the U.S. Embassy Islamabad might be a little light after Musharraf changed his mind this weekend and made a last minute visit to the U.S.-organized "Peace Jirga" in Kabul.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf made an unusually frank acknowledgment Sunday that Islamic militants are operating in tribal areas on his nation's side of the border with Afghanistan and providing support to Afghan insurgents fighting government and NATO troops.

Musharraf's comments came in a joint appearance with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the closing session of a four-day tribal gathering in Kabul, the Afghan capital, at which the neighboring nations pledged to cooperate in the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

A ... notable absence among the 650 turbaned and bearded tribal elders from both sides of the border was that of the Taliban, and of the consortium of Pakistani religious parties and leaders who have the most influence over radical militants in the lawless areas of Pakistan's North West Frontier. These, after all, are the groups at the root of both countries' problems, and without their participation — or even that of any groups that have influence over them — the effect of the jirga will be little more than cosmetic.

The jirga aimed to provide an opportunity for tribal elders to formulate a strategy to combat the region's escalating terrorism threat, but it has little political legitimacy, and no capabilities for enforcement, laments political analyst and radio talk show host Dad Noorani. "This jirga was just a show, and will have a symbolic effect only," he says. "There is no guarantee that the achievements and recommendations made in this jirga will reduce the tensions in the region. It's the equivalent of throwing cold water on coals."

The jirga was to have taken place in the Afghan city of Jalalabad last December as a Pashtun inter-tribal meeting to discuss the trans-border incursion of insurgents from Pakistan into Afghanistan and the presence of al-Qaeda and foreign fighters in the Pashtun tribal territories.

But it changed to become a conference between official delegations of the two countries. The Pakistani delegation was mainly composed of Pashtuns, with no major national figures from Punjab or Sindh among them. The majority of the speakers from both sides defended the official position of their respective governments in the ongoing blame game between the countries.

In any case, a traditional jirga is not the right mechanism to overcome historic rivalries between Pakistan and Afghanistan. For the majority of Pakistanis, such as Punjabis and Sindhis, the jirga has no historic or legal significance.

The absence of major Punjabis, the dominant ethnic group, proves that Pakistan tried to limit it to a traditional council among Pashtun tribes. ...

There is a difference in perception between Afghanistan and Pakistan in terms of resolving issues between the countries. While Afghanistan looks at them in a more traditional and tribal way, such as the jirga, the majority of Pakistanis don't live under such a tribal structure.

In addition, Pakistan's military and civilian leadership does not want to leave its national strategic interests in the hands of a traditional assembly. It considers the jirga as simply a matter of inter-Pashtun dialogue.

The Afghan authorities should have focused mainly on finding solutions to the Pashtun problem in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, because Pashtuns remain the main supporters and backers of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Historically, Afghanistan is much better positioned to interfere in Pashtun tribal affairs than Pakistan, because in the past 200 years the majority of its rulers have been Pashtuns who have also claimed authority over the Pashtun tribes in Pakistan.

The "Fragging Story" Deke

In the second part of Stan Goff's three-part series on the death of Pat Tillman, he refutes the July 27, 2007 Associated Press report that alleged that Tillman may have been intentionally murdered, and hints that the new "fragging" narrative was concocted to divert attention from the August 1 congressional hearing into the actual controversy -- the conveniently misreported details of the fratricide incident:

Let me say for the record, again, that I do not believe that Pat Tillman was targeted for assassination.

A second lieutenant and an infantry sergeant are not tasked with anything as politically sensitive as assassination. I am speaking as an alumnus of Delta Force, one of the few organizations that actually might be entrusted with this kind of operation (and then only very rarely). It doesn’t matter what you see in the movies.

The decisions that placed Pat Tillman at exactly the place and exactly the time of his death were made ad hoc, on the spot, at a series of junctures that could not have been controlled, including a vehicle that unexpectedly broke down, one key decision made by an Afghan jinga truck driver and Pat’s own decision (following two on-the-spot decisions by members of his platoon in direct response to a completely unexpected situation) to move forward into the position where he was shot.

The mystique of Special Operations (including the Rangers, who are the Special Operations’ shock infantry component) is useful as a deterrent, but it is not reflective of a reality. The Pentagon and others want you and the rest of the world to believe this mystique, because your fear and the fear of the rest of the world is what maintains the efficacy of a huge bluff. This government wants us to spin out as many scary fantasies as possible, because it serves the dual purpose of either portraying opponents of the military as “conspiracy nuts” or promoting precisely the myth of spooky invincibility that keeps us in line.

I came straight from the bowels of this system, and I have written three books exposing the worst aspects of the military. If they haven’t yet cut my brake lines or shot me when I’m out fishing, then they didn’t kill Pat Tillman because he criticized the war in Iraq and read a book by Noam Chomsky...

There is nothing the Pentagon would rather do with this case, aside from making it evaporate, than turn it into a debate about whether Pat was assassinated or not. He wasn’t, and so they can not only poke fun at any of us who propose that hypothesis, they can relax as we all bark up the wrong tree.

What they do not want is a rigorous examination of the motives, decisions, and events that might lead a larger public to see how they have been spinning prevarications to call an imperial Oil War democracy-building. ...

And now, at last, I will briefly describe the cover-up.

Pat Tillman was the most well-known enlisted man in the entire military. When he enlisted, Pat received a personal letter from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld thanking Pat for his enlistment. So Pat was on Rumsfeld's radar immediately. The fog of fame began then as the spin on Pat's enlistment was that he took a break from a lucrative football career because of 9-11. That's not how it was. Pat saw young men being marched off to war; and he didn't want to use his talent as an exemption. It's different.

The day Pat was killed outside Manah, officialdom developed a multiple personality disorder. On the one hand, there was bureaucrat's panic, because it was known almost at once that this was a case of "fratricide." On the other hand, the scriptwriters smelled a story with Pat's corpse propped up like a Greek statue that would draw all eyes away from the debacle of Fallujah-Najaf and the wanton racist cruelty of Abu Ghraib. So there was the bureaucrat's instinct to hide the facts in a period of waning legitimation; and there was the flack's instinct to tell a lie. Hiding a thing and lying about it are two different things, and they can be contradictory. That's how both the hiding and the lying began to unravel.

At the highest levels, there was a decision to be made about how far one could get away with the lie in the short term, and hide their own complicity in case the lie was exposed in the long term.

On April 29, Major General Stanley McChrystal -- commander of the task force that the Rangers served in Afghanistan, and head of the most secretive joint-service force in the US military -- sent a memo to John Abizaid, telling him to warn everyone all the way to Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush, an investigation "will find that it is highly possible Cpl. Tillman was killed by friendly fire... I felt that it was essential that you received this information as soon as we detected it in order to preclude any unknowing statements by our country's leaders which might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of Cpl. Tillman's death become public."

No reference to telling the truth... "which might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of Cpl. Tillman's death become public."

According to an unnamed source, Abizaid misled Congress on August 1, 2007, when he stated that this memo -- from the General in theater who directed the most politically-sensitive and secret operations in the military, which include units like Delta Force (now operating under a new name) -- did not "reach him" for "10 to 20 days."

This memo, it must be assumed, was a living organism that had to exercise its own initiative to "reach" its intended recipient.

Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire --instead of the enemy fire described in a fraudulent Silver Star citation drafted by officers who knew how Pat was killed -- was explosive news. Yet on August 1, 2007, Rumsfeld, his former-Joint Chiefs Chair Myers, and the ex-CENTCOM Commander John Abizaid -- not one of them -- could remember when, where, or how they learned of this explosive news.

We’re talking about a man at the top whose middle name was "Micromanager".

Show-Me-The-Metrics Command Emphasis and the Death of Pat Tillman

Many readers here are probably familiar with the fact that perception management activities suddenly become necessary after an unanticipated politically sensitive event such as the death of CPL Pat Tillman.

Stan Goff -- in the first part of a three-part series -- argues that it was the Pentagon's institutional emphasis upon domestic influence that led to decisions on the ground that resulted in Tillman's death itself.

The context for everything that happened after Pat's death requires this Pentagon propaganda-emphasis be center stage. Some people already understand this. What is not well understood is that this propaganda-emphasis likely played a central role in creating the conditions for Pat's death in the first place. Let me give that special emphasis, too:

The decision to split the Blacksheep Platoon on April 22 was forced on a platoon leader who stated to his superiors that splitting the platoon in this terrain would require a half-assed preparation cycle and potentially create a dangerous break in inter-platoon communications. This directive was designed with one purpose in mind: to be able to state that the platoon had reached their "target" on time. A timeline (a bureaucratic checklist) drove this decision -- not the intelligence. The push to provide evidence of "progress" in Afghanistan -- using the Rumsfeldian "metrics" of quantification -- as a counterweight to the bad news from the Fallujah-Najaf rebellions and the breaking Abu Ghraib scandal, created the sense of urgency throughout military commands there to send reports confirming that X number of missions were completed in X amount of time.

Military and Executive Branch perception management consultants develop expensive, detailed programs, employing an army of public relations experts. Just as Rumsfeld hired more than 20,000 private mercenaries to fill in the gaps in Iraq and to conduct activities that escape Congressional oversight, the Bush administration (like the Clinton administration before it) hired private contractors whose sole purpose in life is to re-construct the war in Southwest Asia as a story – using story conventions with which the American public is familiar and comfortable – conventions that resonate emotionally and mythically with our entertainment-media "social imaginary." That's the connection between the Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch sagas. ...

This is how things work in the military. There is a fetish for quantification. "Accomplishments" are measured with extreme empiricism, presented in bullet-points that give numbers. This is true of performance evaluations and operational checklists.

The reason this is important in the story of Pat Tillman's death by fratricide is that the majority of readers -- even military veterans of a single enlistment -- are not familiar with military culture. They have impressions formed primarily by entertainment media that are generally downright silly.

Descriptions of doctrine, regulations, policies and procedures tell about ten percent of the story of what the military is. The other ninety percent can only be understood culturally. ...

When Cross-Functional Team Commander David Hodne was at the TOC in Khowst, he was a Major -- normally a staff rank (as opposed to a command rank). This was his opportunity in a cannibalistic OPMS to shine ... the shining demonstrated through bullet-points with numbers. The Blacksheep Platoon was due -- according to the mission timeline -- to conduct operations in Manah – not a high priority target -- "no later than" April 22, 2004. Whether that made sense in the real world, after the unexpected delay of a busted Hummer, was irrelevant.

The threat of missing a mission time is a source of extreme anxiety for any military officer.

To this we must add that this is Rumsfeld's military in 2004. A nuttier empiricist would be hard to find. Rumsfeld, who stole other people's ideas, then bastardized them in his grandiose imagination, had taken this arithmetic fetish and renamed it as part of the "Rumsfeld doctrine", which he called (with typical self-promoting grandiosity) "the Revolution in Military Affairs."

Rumsfeld's concept of Network-centric Warfare (NCW, a scalar bastardization of Col. John Boyd's warfighting theories, which were originally applied to individual air combat) measures success with "metrics," that is, with obsessive quantification. An interview with DoD Deputy Secretary for Public Affairs, Lawrence DeRita (one of Rumsfeld's closest advisors), gives a good example of this "metrics approach" and how it translates from operations into propaganda. Notice the emphasis on numbers in this quote:

Since it began last week, Victory Bounty has netted nearly 70 former Fedayeen fighters, including several general and field grade officers. The daily raids and patrols that our troops conduct every day are steadily and deliberately building a more stable and secure Iraq. On average, coalition forces are conducting almost 2,000 patrols every day, hundreds of night patrols, and many of those are conducted jointly with the Iraqi police.

This is really just an extrapolation of MacNamaran "body counts," but Rumsfeld thinks himself a military genius.

The point is -- at Donald Rumsfeld's level, where the war had to be justified to the American populace -- the bullet-points showing "accomplishments" were in demand from the highest offices of the military for inclusion into press releases and briefings.

In the psychological operations being directed at the American populace, which enjoy elevated importance when public support for the war is waning, this show-me-the-metrics command emphasis cascades down through the chain of command like an avalanche. It is facilitated by bureaucratic overinterpretation of command guidance. The emphasis from the top does not diminish as it moves further from the source; it is amplified by the desire to please the boss at every level. This process was in turn amplified by the personality of Donald Rumsfeld: autocratic, vengeful, and micromanagerial.

War is seen by officers as a career opportunity. This essential context is not taken up by Congress or the press, because you get into trouble when you deviate from ritual displays of fealty to US militarism. Congress, the press, the entertainment media, and the public have all taken the de facto loyalty oath that says never speak ill of the military. Militarism is our culture, our religion, and our economy.

This is precisely why we had to witness that awful fawning over Rumsfeld, Meyers, and Abizaid by Congress; and it is why no one was going to follow up on Dennis Kucinich's question about public relations firms working for the Department of Defense. He was trying to establish how important managing public perception at home is to the war effort, and how heavy the command emphasis was at this particular time to do two things simultaneously: (1) shift the focus off of Iraq' serial disasters, and (2) show how glowingly good everything was going in Afghanistan.

Shaping Debate

Robin Wright, the WaPo reporter in charge of the paper's participation in the anti-iran info op, has a piece this morning in which she itemizes the work of various think tankers on the need (getting urgent now) for a U.S. attack on Iran.

The emerging debate -- evident in an array of new reports, conferences and commentaries -- is still in the early stages, but some of the language urging the Bush administration to be more aggressive during its final 17 months is reminiscent of arguments from think tanks and commentators that shaped the case for invading Iraq.

Funny, her take on the "debate" gives short shift to any skeptics.

Shaping debate, an invaluable contribution to the team.

Injun Country Networking

Two briefings here on interesting Injun country developments: One, shockingly enough, from Time. The other relayed to our pickled attention by everyone's fav; spandex warrior Runner of Mountains.

It all rather reminds me of the non-mystical underpinnings of what has oft otherwise been held to be the remarkable re: miraculous growth of early Christianity. -M1

First out of the box, Time

On Patrol in Shijaiyah, the toughest neighborhood in Gaza City, Lieut. Naim Ashraf Mushtaha, 31, an officer of the Hamas Executive Force, spots a man in civilian clothes carrying an M-16 assault rifle and walking through the street suqs in broad daylight. His officers quickly encircle the suspect and demand that he identify himself and turn over the weapon. The man turns out to be a member of one of the neighborhood's most powerful clans, and he refuses to give up his gun. "What's my name, boys?" he shouts to the gathering crowd of curious onlookers. "Mohassi Abbas!" they shout back. "See, everyone knows who I am," says the gunman. "I don't care who you are," says Mushtaha calmly, without raising his voice or his weapon. "No one is above the law."

The rule of law has returned to Gaza. Just two months ago, this beachfront slice of sand dunes and concrete jungles, home to about 1.5 million Palestinians, was one of the most dangerous places on earth. In June, after a few days of internecine warfare, Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, took control of Gaza from its rival, Fatah. Since then, Gaza has been under siege. Almost all shipments except for basic humanitarian supplies are barred from entering, and almost nothing comes out. The blockade is part of an Israeli and American strategy to isolate Hamas in the hope that Palestinians will turn away from its Islamist leaders, who have never recognized Israel, and toward Fatah, which is willing to restart the peace process. So far, the plan isn't working. With a free hand to govern as it pleases, Hamas is building popular support and military capability that may well outlast the international blockade.

Security is key to support for Hamas. Within a week of the takeover, crime, drug smuggling, tribal clashes and kidnappings had largely disappeared. According to human-rights groups, the ability of the Executive Force to achieve such a result is an indictment of the corruption and criminal collusion at the top of the Fatah-dominated security services that once controlled Gaza. "For the last year and a half, there has been an orchestrated escalation of chaos by some Banana Republic officers to show that Hamas does not have control of Gaza," said Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. "Gaza became like Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Thugs and gangsters were ruling, and some were supported and protected by our own security forces."

There have been isolated cases of civil rights abuses by the Executive Force since the takeover. But Hamas hasn't set up Shari'a courts. Without any help from the regular police, prosecutors and judges--all of whom have been barred from returning to work by the Palestinian government--Hamas is slowly trying to train itself in the administration of Palestinian law. Mushtaha and his officers spend most of their time delivering subpoenas and telling the families of wanted men to turn the suspects in. In Gazan neighborhoods, everyone knows everyone else, and there's no place to hide: crooks certainly can't flee to Israel.

With peace on the streets, civil society is returning to Gaza. On Friday night in downtown Gaza City, the streets are clogged with motorcades taking newlyweds and their families to seaside banquet halls. Just one thing is missing: celebratory gunfire. Hamas has banned partying with firearms. But there has been no cultural crackdown since Hamas took over. Gaza has long been more religious and conservative than the rest of Palestinian society--alcohol disappeared from public view here long ago. But secular women who walk the streets of Gaza City without head scarves or veils say they were more likely to be harassed by criminals in the old Gaza than by religious conservatives today. Rumors that Hamas is ordering barbers not to shave beards are just that. I got mine shaved off by Hossein Hussuna, the barber of Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, who told me that most of Haniya's eight sons are clean shaven.

Only if business owners like my barber succeed will normality return to Gaza. Mohammed Telbani owns the largest factory in Gaza, making cookies and ice cream. But he can't get his raw materials and packaging through the Israeli embargo, and he can't send his finished products to the West Bank, where distributors have started buying cookies from Lebanon instead. "I've worked on creating that market for 30 years, and now it's gone," Telbani said. Gaza's beaches may be packed and its streets safe, but its factories are shut, and its stores have almost no customers. The economic damage caused by the siege is immense, with unemployment at around 44%; about 80% of the population receives food aid from U.N. agencies. Nasser el-Helou, a hotel owner and a spokesman for the Chamber of Commerce, said the Gazan economy would collapse within weeks if the siege continues.

Yet Gazan business owners like Telbani and el-Helou--practical, apolitical men--are unanimous in their criticism of Israel rather than Hamas for economic problems. "If we are free, we should control our own borders," said el-Helou. "But we do not, so the full responsibility is on the Israeli side." And business leaders point to a paradox of the embargo; it is destroying the only class of Palestinians who looked favorably on Israel. Most of those in commerce speak Hebrew and have--or used to have--Israeli clients, partners and friends. They had once looked forward to the day when there would be no trade barriers between an independent Palestine and an Israel with which it was at peace. "The majority of Gazans do not like Israel," said Amassi Ghazi, the chairman of a company that imports building materials. "Until now, only the private sector had good relations with Israel. So please open the border before all Gaza will be enemies of Israel."

Some Gazans take being Israel's enemies seriously. At midnight, at what used to be the parade ground for the Palestinian coastal police, a couple of dozen men are practicing small-arms drills. They are in the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigade, the military wing of Hamas, and ready to bolt at a moment's notice if they get a warning that Israeli warplanes are overhead. But since Fatah was driven out of Gaza, said Abu Ahmed, the commander of the unit, there have been fewer collaborators spying on Hamas for Israel, and Israeli strikes have hence dwindled. Qassam Brigade soldiers have been able to operate with relative impunity. Later Abu Ahmed takes me to a Qassam Brigade position a couple of hundred yards from the Erez crossing into Israel. Soon an Israeli surveillance drone starts buzzing overhead, and we leave quickly, back over the sand dunes into Gaza City. On the streets patrolled by Mushtaha and his men, all may seem peaceful. But at night, the war between Hamas and Israel continues.

Followed by The Daily Star (Lebanon). Again, H/T Mountain Runner (and CTB)

Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh said Tuesday the Defense, Interior, Telecommunications and Justice ministries would launch an "immediate" investigation into the creation of new telephone cables by Hizbullah in the Nabatieh region of Zawtar Sharqieh.

"We have discovered by accident that a new telephone network is being created along that of the state in Zawtar Sharqieh," Hamadeh told Voice of Lebanon radio.

"Technical reports also showed that cables have reached Yohmor and other Tyre regions," he added.

The IO Synch Matrix and the Target Audience

Deconflicting the regional IO plan just got a little more difficult.

A new report by the DOD Inspector General (47 page PDF) gives details about an investigation into the participation -- while in uniform -- of a number of active duty officers (including four generals) in a video promoting the "Christian Embassy", an evangelical organization.

From the report:

The officers were filmed during the duty day, in uniform with rank clearly displayed, in official and often identifiable Pentagon locations. Their remarks conferred approval of and support to Christian Embassy, and the remarks of some officers implied they spoke for a group of senior military leaders rather than just for themselves. None of the officers sought or received approval to participate in the interview in an official capacity or in uniform. The overall circumstances of the interviews emphasized the speakers' military status and affiliation and implied they were acting within the scope of their official positions as DoD spokespersons. Based on these circumstances, we concluded the officers violated JER Sections 2635.702(b), "Appearance of governmental sanction," and 3-300.a. on personal participation in non-Federal entities; DoD Directive (DoDD) 1334.1, "Wearing of the Uniform"; and Army and Air Force uniform standards. ...

The video included narration and "sound bites" from DoD personnel. The video prominently featured the DoD seal, military insignia, and similar indicia of military affiliation, including large gold-colored lettering identifying the Office of the Secretary of Defense. It also featured footage of meetings of military personnel in uniform or engaged in daily duties at the Pentagon.

The appearances of several of the DoD officers in the video were emphasized by numerous scenes of other military personnel apparently on duty, military emblems, and symbols. One part of the film, which included interviews of LTC [redacted], BG Caslen, and Maj Gen Catton, was notable for its military focus: it opened with a view of the Pentagon's River entrance. The camera zoomed in on a bronze plaque reading, "Department of Defense." The video then showed 14 individual segments featuring military members, Pentagon activity, and a camouflage-colored Bible, leading to a close-up of the official DoD seal.

One reason why this sort of activity is frowned upon:

Maj Gen Sutton testified that while in Turkey in his current duty position, his Turkish driver approached him with an article in the Turkish newspaper "Sabah." That article featured a photograph of Maj Gen Sutton in uniform and described him as a member of a radical fundamentalist sect. The article in the online edition of Sabah also included still photographs taken from the Christian Embassy video. Maj Gen Sutton's duties in Ankara included establishing good relations with his counterparts on the Turkish General Staff. Maj Gen Sutton testified that Turkey is a predominantly Muslim nation, with religious matters being kept strictly separate from matters of state. He said that when the article was published in Sabah, it caused his Turkish counterparts concern and a number of Turkish general officers asked him to explain his participation in the video.

Former Veep Detects Corporate PSYOP

Al Gore clearly remembers some of the methods of the influence biz gleaned from his copy of PDD 68.

Research aimed at disputing the scientific consensus on global warming is part of a huge public misinformation campaign funded by some of the world's largest carbon polluters, former Vice President Al Gore said Tuesday.

"There has been an organized campaign, financed to the tune of about $10 million a year from some of the largest carbon polluters, to create the impression that there is disagreement in the scientific community," Gore said at a forum in Singapore. "In actuality, there is very little disagreement."

Gore likened the campaign to the millions of dollars spent by U.S. tobacco companies years ago on creating the appearance of scientific debate on smoking's harmful effects.

"This is one of the strongest of scientific consensus views in the history of science," Gore said. "We live in a world where what used to be called propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping public opinion."

After the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of the world's top climate scientists, released a report in February that warned that the cause of global warming is "very likely" man-made, "the deniers offered a bounty of $10,000 for each article disputing the consensus that people could crank out and get published somewhere," Gore said.

"They're trying to manipulate opinion and they are taking us for fools," he said.

He said ExxonMobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company, is one of the major fuel companies involved in trying to mislead the public about global warming.

Hackers, Mil, and Feds Get Together in Vegas

The National Security Agency (NSA), the Department of Defense and the FBI were among the spy, military and police agencies represented at DefCon, an international gathering of hackers in Las Vegas.

Hackers and computer security professionals made up the bulk of the more than 6,000 people that took part in the three-day conference which ended Sunday, according to founder Jeff "Dark Tangent" Moss.

Games, contests and seminars at DefCon are devoted to breaching computers, Internet websites, software programs and real-world locks.

Throughout the event money is raised for the Electronic Freedom Foundation, a non-profit legal group that defends online rights and privacy cherished by hackers.

Lawyers from the foundation are spearheading litigation accusing the NSA of illegally snooping on e-mail and telephone communications.

NSA vulnerability analysis chief Tony Sager gave a talk at DefCon, saying the agency was increasingly sharing information with the public in the hope computer wizards wherever they may be become allies in cyber security.

"I'm not sure I can convince them to trust me," Sager told AFP.

"I think we are part of a larger community. In the old days it was about what we found was really precious, because what we had was all there was. Now, it's less important what we find and more important what everybody finds."

It takes the brightest technical minds to fight new-age crime and terrorism, and those people shun government paychecks for "big bucks" in private sector jobs, according to federal agents at DefCon. ...

Federal agents at DefCon said their technology "wish list" includes being able to identify who is responsible for what on the Internet.

"The NSA spent decades trying to do things themselves and that didn't work," (Hacker Roger) Dingledine said. "I'm happy they realize other people can help. I think they know better than to show up and say 'Trust us, we're the NSA'."

Sager said he is not sure how to resolve the conflict between public safety and Internet privacy.

"People don't come to the NSA because they want to fly black helicopters and deny people their liberties," Sager said.

"We happen to be in a time that is very volatile -- the whole issue around the war on terrorism and the loss of personal information. I'm not sure there is a logical path right now that will satisfy the majority of the population."

Tori Does Baghdad Too

It's speculation writ large at this point but I'm willing to wager Chateau de Skanks that this quirky story be but da' tip of a most troubling iceberg; namely the existence of human trafficking rackets peddling the services of sex workers (primarily desperate locals) to soldiers serving in Iraq.

An explosive issue best kept under the tightest of wraps given the righteousness of the mission and the moral sensitivities of the region, non? -M1

In a posting this week on an adult Web site, "Tori of Atlanta" offers her services to private contractors deploying to Iraq. On the Erotic Review site, Tori says she will be in the Middle East for three months, including a stint in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

"I am in a unique position of entertaining from a secured compound," she writes, later inviting contractors to visit her Web site for details on "setting aside a few moments to enjoy some R&R... American style. Sandstorms, Camels, heat and protective gear... now a quick reminder of home!!"

But uniformed troops need not apply. Tori closes her posting with this stipulation:

"My apologies but at this time I am UNABLE to plan any meetings w/ACTIVE DUTY MILITARY. (*The members of PMC community has an exclusive arrangement during this visit*) Kisses, Tori."

PMC is the acronym for private military companies, which have deployed thousands of armed civilian contractors alongside U.S. troops in Iraq. The use of contractors has reached a level unseen in any previous American war., creating tension over disparities in pay and work conditions.

Tori limits her invitation to contractors who are registered with the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, a Baghdad-based trade group that, according to its Web site, represents about 50 companies, including Moyock, N.C.-based Blackwater USA. The trade association's logo is reproduced at the bottom of the posting.

In a statement Friday, Lawrence Peter, director of the trade group, said Tori's use of the group's name and logo were unauthorized.

"We have not, nor ever will, condone the type of activity suggested," Peter said. "We are currently investigating the source of these allegations and any association member found promoting, condoning or participating in these activities will be immediately expelled."

Tori appears to be a well-established "escort" of some repute. Two customers who reviewed her performance online rated her a "10 - one in a lifetime."

Among her blog postings are salutes to the Blackwater contractors who did security work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and to five Blackwater men who died in a helicopter crash in Baghdad in January.

Tori describes her Green Zone digs as a bullet- and shrapnel-proof, earthquake-resistant "villa" with a 24-hour guard.

She requires a 50 percent deposit at the time of booking, but prices were not listed. She also notes that Saturdays "will be observed as 'quiet' time... in keeping with local customs."

Tori, a 5GW sex worker and she probably doesn't even know it.

Anyways, this story smells fishy - we're just not sure why. We posted it and figured we can sort out the deciphering of it later. Maybe it's a phony, maybe not. These are early days. -M1

Slim Virgin Nailed - Media Assets, Lockerbie & Entebbe, and Other Things IO

I witnessed an incident that made me wonder whether intelligence agents had infiltrated Wikipedia.

Anyone who knows the universal success of Wikipedia will immediately grasp the importance of the issue. The fact that most Internet search engines, such as Google, give Wikipedia articles top ranking only raises the stakes to a higher level.

The Incident

In the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, the finger of suspicion quickly pointed to a Syria-based Palestinian organization -- the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, General Command (PFLP-GC) -- hired by Iran. The terrorist group was created by a former Syrian army captain, Ahmed Jibril, who broke away from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1968.

I had learned from a recently released U.S. National Archives file that Shin Bet, the Israeli Security Agency, had infiltrated the PFLP and helped the Entebbe hijackers (Israeli commandos rescued the hostages in Uganda in 1976), so I wanted to learn more about the link between the PFLP and the PFLP-GC. I also wanted to learn more about allegations made by David Colvin, the first secretary of the British Embassy in Paris, concerning the rather bizarre collaboration between the PFLP and the Shin Bet.

As I could not locate the article in which I had learned about the allegations, I consulted the article on the Entebbe Operation on Wikipedia, where I knew the story had been noted. To my surprise, I found that all references to the alleged collaboration between the PFLP and the Shin Bet had been suppressed. Moreover, it is no longer possible to edit the page.

A Long, Undistinguished History

Conducting false flag operations and planting disinformation in the mainstream media have long belonged to the craft of the spies. In the months preceding the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies used both techniques abundantly.

A copy of the CIA's secret history of the coup surfaced in 2000. Written in 1954 by the Princeton professor Donald Wilber who oversaw the operation, the story reveals that agents from the CIA and SIS (the American and British intelligence services) "directed a campaign of bombings by Iranians posing as members of the Communist Party, and planted articles and editorial cartoons in newspapers."

The section of the report concerning the media speaks volumes: "The CIA was apparently able to use contacts at the Associated Press to put on the newswire a statement from Tehran about royal decrees that the CIA itself had written. But mostly, the agency relied on less direct means to exploit the media.

"The Iran desk of the State Department was able to place a CIA study in Newsweek, using the normal channel of desk officer to journalist. The article was one of several planted press reports that, when reprinted in Tehran, fed the war of nerves against Iran's prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh," the document said.

Half a century later, the technique of disinformation is as important as ever to intelligence agencies. In the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon set up the Defense Department's Office of Strategic Influence with a mission "to provide news items and false information directly to foreign journalists and others to bolster U.S. policy and the war on terrorism."

The new office attracted so much criticism that the Bush administration eventually shut it down in February 2002. Even defense officials publicly denounced the dangers of such a program, which could have left the department without a shred of credibility.

"We shouldn't be in that business. Leave the propaganda leaks to the CIA, the spooks [secret agents]," a defense official said.

Is Wikipedia Harboring a Secret Agent?

According to clues accumulated by ordinary citizens around the world, it could be that the CIA and other intelligence agencies are riding the information wave and planting disinformation on Wikipedia. If so, tens of thousands of innocent and unwitting citizens around the world are translating and propagating their lies, providing these agencies with a universal news network.

The Salinger Investigation of the Pan Am 103 Bombing

Pierre Salinger was White House press secretary to Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Salinger also served as U.S. Senator from California and a campaign manager for Robert Kennedy.

But Salinger is also famous for his investigative journalism. Hired by ABC News as its Paris bureau chief in 1978, he became the network's chief European correspondent in 1983.

During his distinguished career, Salinger broke important stories, such as the secret negotiations by the U.S. government with Iran to free American hostages in 1979-80 and the last meeting between U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie and Saddam Hussein in 1990, during which she led the Iraqi president to believe that the U.S. would not react to an invasion of Kuwait.

Salinger, who was based in London, spent a considerable amount of time and energy investigating the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie. He and his collaborator, John Cooley, hired a young graduate, Linda Mack, to help in the investigation.

"I know that these two Libyans had nothing to do with it. I know who did it and I know exactly why it was done," Salinger said during his testimony at the Zeist trial, where one of the Libyans was convicted of murdering the 270 victims.

"That's all? You're not letting me tell the truth. Wait a minute; I know exactly who did it. I know how it was done," Salinger replied to the trial judge, Lord Sutherland, who simply asked him to leave the witness box.

"If you wish to make a point you may do so elsewhere, but I'm afraid you may not do so in this court," Lord Sutherland interrupted.

Searching for the True Identity of 'Slim Virgin'

Slim Virgin had been voted the most abusive administrator of Wikipedia. She upset so many editors that some of them decided to team up to research her real life identity.

Attempts to track her through Internet technology failed. This is suspicious in itself as the location of normal Internet users can easily be tracked. According to a team member, Slim Virgin "knows her way around the Internet and covered her tracks with care."

Daniel Brandt of the Wikipedia Review and founder of Wikipedia-Watch.org patiently assembled tiny clues about Slim Virgin and posted them on these Web sites. Eventually, two readers identified her. Slim Virgin was no other than Linda Mack, the young graduate Salinger hired.

John K. Cooley, the collaborator of Salinger in the Lockerbie investigation, posted the following letter to Brandt on Wikipedia Review, which has been set up to discuss specific editors and editing patterns and general efforts by editors to influence or direct content in ways that might not be in keeping with Wikipedia policy:

She claimed to have lost a friend/lover on pan103 and so was anxious to clear up the mystery. ABC News paid for her travel and expenses as well as a salary'

Once the two Libyan suspects were indicted, she seemed to try to point the investigation in the direction of Qaddafi [Libyan President Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi], although there was plenty of evidence, both before and after the trials of Megrahi and Fhimah in the Netherlands, that others were involved, probably with Iran the commissioning power. [In 2001, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison; Lamin Khalifah Fhimah was acquitted.]

Salinger came to believe that [first name redacted but known to be Linda] was working for [name of intelligence agency redacted but known to be Britain's MI5] and had been from the beginning; assigned genuinely to investigate Pan Am 103, but also to infiltrate and monitor us.

Soon after Cooley wrote to Brandt, Linda Mack contacted him and asked him not to help Brandt in his efforts to expose her. All doubts about Slim Virgin's true identity had vanished. Today, Linda Mack is rumored to reside in Alberta, Canada, under the name of Sarah McEwan.
-Ludwig De Braekeleer

Shimmer

Today brings the newest installment in the anti-Iran Info Op:

The exiled president of Iran's largest Kurdish opposition group appealed for U.S. political and military support for its campaign to topple Iran's Islamic regime and create a new democratic, federal government in Tehran.

In his first visit to Washington, Rahman Haj-Ahmadi, president of the three-year-old Kurdistan Free Life Party, told The Washington Times that the Iranian regime faced a growing internal challenge to its power from the Kurds, Azeris and other restive minority groups.

Mr. Haj-Ahmadi, who lives in Germany, said his movement, known by its Kurdish acronym PJAK, was forced to take up arms and retreat to the rugged highlands along the Iran-Iraq border in self-defense against the central government. ...

PJAK, he said, has only limited contact with the U.S. government, but he appealed to Washington to push Iran harder on its human rights record and said his party would welcome American military and financial aid to carry on its fight.

"We obviously cannot topple the government with the ammunition and the weapons we have now," he said. "Any financial or military help that would speed the path to a true Iranian democracy, we would very much welcome, particularly from the United States." ...

The Kurdish independence movement in Turkey, known as the PKK, was officially designated a terrorist organization by the State Department. Chris Zambelis, a terrorism analyst with the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, said there are multiple reports of operational and logistical links between the PKK and PJAK.

PJAK officials traveling with Mr. Haj-Ahmadi said they tried to set up meetings with the State Department and other administration officials, but received "no answer" to their requests. Mr. Haj-Ahmadi said PJAK had good relations with other Kurdish movements in the region, but insisted his party was a "completely independent organization" from the PKK.

Seymour Hersh's November 2006 piece on the anti-Iran campaign had this to say about PJAK:

In the past six months, Israel and the United States have also been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan. The group has been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran, I was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon civilian leadership, as "part of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran." (The Pentagon has established covert relationships with Kurdish, Azeri, and Baluchi tribesmen, and has encouraged their efforts to undermine the regime’s authority in northern and southeastern Iran.) The government consultant said that Israel is giving the Kurdish group "equipment and training." The group has also been given "a list of targets inside Iran of interest to the U.S."

Ahmadinejad, et al., are obliged to devote substantial time and energy to one essential dilemma:

How seriously should they take the press reports that detail U.S. planning for an attack upon Iran, especially considered in the light of statements by U.S. officials about how concerned we are taking the threat of Iran as a rogue state?

Are we bluffing? Or is a U.S. attack coming and Iran is benefiting from the inevitable leaks and press speculation that free societies generate?

And, of course, they may wish to consider another possibility -- the old "Shimmer" outcome.

The Little Red Book and the Blue Screen of Death

The Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party has been cranking out product in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the People's Liberation Army. There are twin themes of the campaign. The first is to play up the growing strength of the Chinese armed forces. The second theme -- which is needed to massage the first -- is to assert that the awakened dragon doesn't threaten regional stability.

Whether anyone will buy it remains to be seen, but they are explicitly saying that building the necessary infrastructure for information warfare is featuring prominently in their plans.

China unveiled new measures to attract high-tech talent for military modernization on Friday, two days after President Hu Jintao promised more money for the defense drive.

Hu signed the measures to "attract and retain high-level specialist technical talent", the official People's Daily reported.

Hu is chairman of the Central Military Commission, the ruling Communist Party's body for controlling the two-million strong People's Liberation Army (PLA).

The PLA has been shedding ordinary troops so it can put more money into specialized personnel and high-tech arms, and the new measures seek to advance that program at a time when China's military modernization has neighbors jittery.

Engineers and scientists were "a precious strategic resource for using science and technology for a strong military", the official announcement said.

"They play an important role in military development and preparations for military struggle."

The announcement, widely publicized in state media, comes after Hu's promise on Wednesday to create a military for the information age.

Addressing a meeting on the 80th anniversary of the PLA, Hu paid tribute to the armed forces and promised them more resources.

"We will gradually increase spending on national defense as the economy grows," he said. "We will ... ensure that our armed forces are capable of winning a war in the information age."

The measures promise a recruitment drive for technology specialists and improved pay and living conditions for recruits. More PLA scientists and engineers will be sent for extra training in top-flight Chinese universities, the rules say. ...

In March, China said it would boost defense spending by 17.8 percent to about $45 billion this year, but a Pentagon report in May said Beijing's total military-related spending could be more than double that.

It is interesting to note that China claims that they are not a threat to regional security when the dominant theme of their main regional PSYOP program has always involved coercion and intimidation backed up by the threat of the use of force against Taiwan.

This is, of course, not logically inconsistent in light of the fact that the ChiComs consider Taiwan to be an intrinsic part of China. Thus, an internal matter.

However, the rest of the world might not look at it that way when push comes to shove.

Russian Cyber Gunslingers For Hire

A [Russian] publication called Chacker recently published -- with no legal consequences -- precise instructions on how to hack into the Web sites of foreign governments. Sergei Pokrovsky, the publication's editor-in-chief, readily admits to having planted anti-NATO slogans on the organization's computers in Washington and Brussels in 1999. It was at a time when the Western defense alliance had just stopped Yugoslav dictator Slobodan Milosevic, a friend of Moscow's, from continuing his ethnic cleansing activities in Kosovo by bombing the Yugoslav capital Belgrade. "I was simply overcome by emotion," says Pokrovsky. "We knew that we wouldn't be punished for it."

DDoS attacks have become common practice in Russia. In the wild 1990s, shady businesspeople would hire thugs or even contract killers to intimidate their competitors. Nowadays they increasingly use the services of cyber vandals to accomplish the same objective. Hackers are especially fond of targeting companies like Infobox, which earn their money directly on or using the Internet. Attackers shut down the systems of OSMP, a Moscow provider of online payment services, for five hours in June, causing damage upwards of $150,000. ...

Perhaps the Wild East would be a more apt description. Russian-speaking hackers, in particular, offer their criminal services online in return for payment, posing a threat to companies worldwide, including in the West. As far back as the mid-1990s, Vladimir Levin, a mathematician from St. Petersburg, hacked into the main computer of US banking giant Citibank and diverted over $10 million to the accounts of his friends.

In August 2005, hackers, presumably from Eastern Europe, demanded that German online gambling site Fluxx pay them €40,000 in the form of a Western Union wire transfer, in return for their stopping DDoS attacks on the company. The Germans refused to pay. British and other online casinos and gambling sites were not as resolute -- they paid a total of $4 million in ransom money to a gang of Russian hackers.

Cyber warriors have also targeted political Web sites. This spring they launched multiple attacks on the Web site of former world chess champion Garry Kasparov's Other Russia movement (more...). Each attack happened shortly before the group had planned to stage demonstrations against Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was a heavy blow to the opposition movement. Because the Kremlin controls Russian television and large parts of the press, opposition groups depend on the Internet to call their supporters to action.

The country's few independent media outlets have also faced DDoS attacks. One of them is Echo Moscow, a radio station critical of the government. In early May the station's Web site crashed in response to a powerful hacker attack. Although Echo Moscow continued to broadcast, its popular Web site was out of commission for four days.

"The attack was big, well-planned and clearly ordered by someone," says Alexei Venediktov, the station's editor-in-chief, who has turned Echo Moscow into one of Russia's most prominent media outlets. Venediktov sees the attacks as "a new tool in the fight against rebellious editorial departments. This was a trial run for the coming elections."

A new parliament will be elected in December, and the presidential election is set for next March. "My clients," says one hacker named Sergei, "also include political structures."

Sergei reveals that an attack of the kind that was directed at Echo Moscow's site would cost no more than $400 per day. It's a small price to pay for silencing the Internet voice of the Kremlin's most prominent critic. "I can do everything," Sergei brags, "but everything has its price."

But in late April Sergei went into battle without being paid anything at all. When the conflict between Russia and Estonia over an Estonian plan to move a Soviet war memorial (more...) began to escalate, Sergei had his cyber zombies attack the neighboring country.

Like many nationalistic Russian hackers, he felt offended by the Estonians. "Of course I participated," says Sergei, "out of idealism."

Operation Banner - British MoD Reminisce Northern Ireland COIN

Here's a recently unearthed document outlining the British military view of its own role, function, successes and failures from 1969 to 2006 in Northern Ireland. The document, Operation Banner - An Analysis of Military Operations in Northern Ireland ( pdf), offers insight into the thinking of senior military officers and civil servants at the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall. The level of detail re operational matters proves that this wasn't intended to reach the hoi polloi.

In 2006, when the document was written, the CGS was General Mike Jackson who drew up the notorious 'shot list' in the hours after Bloody Sunday. The British Government has long sought to portray its role in Northern Ireland as that of the neutral broker, the referee between two warring factions. This document, which was not intended to be made public, makes no such pretense. According to the MoD there was only one war and one enemy - the IRA. Loyalist paramilitaries on the other hand were 'respectable'.


Excerpts

The military operations which started in Northern Ireland in 1969 will, without a doubt, be seen as one of the most important campaigns ever fought by the British Army and its fellow Services. That campaign is the longest to date; one of the very few waged on British soil; and one of the very few ever brought to a successful conclusion by the armed forces of a developed nation against an irregular force. This publication is a reflection on that campaign that seeks to capture its essence; it does not claim to be the definitive analysis.

The immediate tactical lessons of Operation BANNER have already been exported elsewhere, with considerable success. Operations in the Balkans, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq have already demonstrated both the particular techniques and the levels of expertise learnt through hard experience, both on the streets and in the fields of Northern Ireland. This publication does not seek to capture those lessons. Instead, it considers the high-level general issues that might be applicable to any future counter insurgency or counter terrorist campaign which the British armed forces might have to undertake.

THE EARLY STAGES

There was no insurgency in August 1969. The IRA was not a credible force and took no significant part in the events of that month. For several reasons the IRA was allowed to develop into an effective insurgent organisation over the next two years. This suggests that the early stages of an apparent breakdown in social order – however it is described - are absolutely critical to the subsequent nature of a campaign. All subsequent decisions and actions, by all parties, are conditioned by these early events. Furthermore violence in the early stages creates bitterness, hatred and extreme views which can last for generations. Looking at the events of the Troubles in retrospect, it is apparent that many of them could have been avoided or reduced in impact if effective measures had been taken early on; and that similar patterns can be seen in many situations elsewhere.

Thus there is an important requirement to identify situations which are likely to lead to social unrest, insurgency or civil war. In Northern Ireland, this should not have been difficult. Junior officers present in Northern Ireland in 1969 were well aware of the discrimination and deprivation, and asked themselves at the time why the Government did not do anything about it.

However, the critical issue is the necessity of engaging all relevant agencies in early, substantive, visible action for reform in order to prevent insurgency or civil war breaking out or potential insurgents exploiting the situation. This is likely to be difficult. Lack of knowledge of the situation, lack of perception, vested interests and political impasse will all militate against the chance of such preventive action being taken.

The initial period after the arrival of a military force in a peace support or peace enforcement operation has been described as the ‘honeymoon period’. That suggests that there is a period (variously given as 100 days or three months) in which to put things right. The term ‘honeymoon period’ is a misnomer. It is not a honeymoon. It is the most important phase of the campaign.

The underlying causes of an insurgency will tend to be social or political, economic, religious or a mixture of these. Insurgent bodies feed off disaffection (and vice versa) from whatever cause. In the case of Northern Ireland the IRA fed initially off discrimination and deprivation, and then exploited the perception that the Army and RUC were partisan and anti-catholic. The truth was not necessarily important: dissatisfaction is a sentiment, and feeds off perceptions.

Security forces do not ‘win’ insurgency campaigns militarily; at best they can contain or suppress the level of violence and achieve a successful end-state. They can thus
reduce a situation to an ‘acceptable level of violence’ – a level at which normal social, political and economic activities can take place without intimidation. ‘Acceptable level of violence’ as a term should be used carefully since violence should have no place in a developed society. What is required is a level which the population can live with, and with which local police forces can cope. Security forces should bring the level of violence down to the point at which dissidents believe they will not win through a primarily violent strategy and at which a political process can proceed without significant intimidation. If possible, the situation should not be allowed to come to that stage.

However, unless the causes of unrest are addressed, insurgency or serious unrest will continue. In Northern Ireland this did happen, over a period of years. The Northern Ireland Housing Executive did clear the great majority of the Victorian slums. Money was invested into the economy to create jobs. It took time, and it could not have been done without a substantial reduction in the levels of violence of the early 1970s. But, simplistically, the long-term solution was not to deploy three battalions into the Divis Flats; but rather to bulldoze them and build decent, respectable homes with proper amenities.

Addressing the causes of the insurgency will not generally be within the remit of the armed forces. They can achieve a limited but critical security task, but that will not be the solution to the overall problem. In addition, they should avoid making the situation worse. It could be argued that the Army did make the situation worse by, in practice, alienating the catholic community in 1970 and 1971. In this regard, it should be acknowledged that while material improvements can be delivered, in some cases it may be much more difficult to change emotions, perceptions or deep-seated grievances and beliefs.

A QUARTER CENTURY

By 1980 almost all the military structures which eventually defeated PIRA were in place. It is revealing to examine why it then took another quarter of a century to end the campaign.

In retrospect some signs are visible. There was no single authority in overall charge of the direction of the campaign, but rather three agencies, often poorly-coordinated: Stormont followed by the NIO; the MOD; and the RUC. From a military perspective, for most of the campaign there was little coherence and synergy. There was little evidence of a strategic vision and no long-term plan.

Below the level of Westminster White Papers there was no clearly-articulated strategy, or view of the future and how to achieve it which involved all the relevant
agencies. As a result the ‘wheel was often reinvented’ and progress was unnecessarily slow. Action against terrorists was not linked closely to addressing the causes of the problem.Ministers and civil servants were sometimes reluctant to engage in the comprehensive, fully coordinated cross-government activity which the Army would recognise as a campaign plan. That is a good reason for the need to take very firm action to ensure that they are engaged in, and convinced of the need to abide by, the process. This will not be easy.

INFORMATION OPERATIONS

For several reasons Information Operations were probably the most disappointing aspect of the campaign. In the early stages soldiers and junior officers, given appropriate training, did a very good job of appearing on camera in the immediate aftermath of an incident. The Army certainly learned hard lessons regarding media handling in the early 1970s. However, with that exception, Information Operations were generally poorly conducted; they were ill-coordinated with other government bodies; they were reactive; and often missed significant opportunities.

Particular efforts are likely to be needed to overcome the inherent lack of synergy between Government Departments and agencies. In Northern Ireland this was never more the case than in the area of Information Operations.

The absence of a government information line was often exploited by the terrorist, sometimes with operational or strategic consequences. Constant criticism in the republican media, notably the An Phoblacht newspaper, was not seriously challenged by Government, NIO or Army Information Operations. Part of the reason for the ineffectiveness lay in the lack of a single unitary authority for the campaign, and the lack of a joint forum to agree Information Operations priorities, messages and means of dissemination. Differing viewpoints on the need for positive Information Operations in Stormont (and the NIO) the Police and HQ Northern Ireland militated against effective Information Operations.

There was very little actionable intelligence before the introduction of Internment. The RUC SB was almost completely ineffective and the traditional source of HUMINT – the B Specials - had been disbanded. The UDR was originally not allowed any role in intelligence activities. Without actionable intelligence of any appreciable quality or quantity, the security forces' main offensive option was to search occupied houses, usually conducted on the basis of low-grade tip-offs. ...

Considerable emphasis was initially placed on screening, 'P' ('Personality') checks and pub checks. Detaining individuals for a few hours to allow screening was useful, since some individuals were quite happy to pass information in privacy if they had been detained. However, it was considered highly invasive of personal liberty. P checks were equally intrusive, and pub checks were often highly and unnecessarily confrontational. As the campaign progressed these methods were largely replaced by less intrusive methods, training in suspect recognition, and chat-ups. It took a little time to realise that the best 'chatter-up' was not necessarily the most senior member of a patrol. [lol]

Many contributions to this analysis have described the information campaign in terms such as ‘woeful’, ‘pitiable’ and ‘grossly inadequate’. In simple terms, rarely would anybody in authority other than in the Army take a positive, proactive stance. The result was a regular series of information failures in which PIRA (and occasionally loyalist paramilitaries) held and exploited their advantage. As early as the mid-1970s over 80% of the violence was perpetrated by PIRA, but even that simple and categorical fact was never exploited. Since insurgency feeds off dissatisfaction, and dissatisfaction is a sentiment which feeds off perceptions, shaping the perception of the population is critically important. The absence of a unified, proactive information strategy for most of the campaign was a major failing.

One distinguished commentator has suggested that, in peace support or counter insurgency operations, information is the currency, not firepower. The logic is simple: once an adversary has been identified to allow his removal (by arrest or attack) the security forces normally have more than sufficient physical resources with which to strike. The difficult part is the information required, particularly where the terrorist or insurgent hides himself in the midst of the population (and in a blizzard of irrelevant information).

The intelligence aspects of Operation BANNER were discussed earlier. Their importance is hard to understate. The insurgency could not have been broken, and the terrorist structure could not have been engaged and finally driven into politics without the intelligence organisations and processes that were developed.

It was often said that the British did not understand Ireland. In part this may have reflected ignorance and an unwillingness to try to understand. For the many commanders who did attempt to understand the roots of the Troubles any number of perceptive books were available. With hindsight what those books could not easily convey, nor the British easily understand, were the deep-seated beliefs, myths and feelings held by the local population. In some cases the perceived (and perhaps actual) grievances were centuries old.

Selectively taught history or partisan use of events provided rallying cries and strong motivators. Such cultural issues tend to be unspoken and even subconscious. They are inherently difficult to comprehend. In the absence of such deep understanding the British tended to underestimate the differences between the Irish and themselves. One commentator observed that Englishmen, especially, tend to view the Irishman as a variant of a Briton rather than as a foreigner.

Without effective cultural understanding the security forces in any theatre cannot conduct a truly effective information campaign and arguably, therefore, an effective counter insurgency campaign. Additionally many military activities may be flawed because the reaction of population cannot be properly predicted: there is a need both to gain intelligence and to understand local perceptions.7 This links to the idea that insurgency feeds off dissatisfaction, and dissatisfaction is a sentiment based on perception. Perception is framed by culture.

A coherent, effective high-level information operations campaign will be a prerequisite for success: information operations are crucial in a world with an insatiable desire for information and news, and where the internet ‘blogger’ can broadcast as powerful images and messages as the White House or Downing Street. The Army learned hard lessons about good media relations in the 1970s, but this is an area that needs as much attention as the capabilities of potential opponents; and the high-level information operations effort was, during the campaign, as a rule, weak. Information operations should be conducted at several levels: they are not just a tactical military activity.

"And they would thank me for my service at the end of it..."

Josh Rushing, a former USMC Captain who was a CENTCOM PAO during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, delivers his judgment on the embarrassingly transparent and dangerously amateurish spectacle of the invasion-period war coverage:

When I would go out and give reasons why we were going to invade Iraq, having been given the messages from a Republican operative that was my boss, he would give me the theme of the day. Sometimes it would be "WMD," others it would be "regime change" and others it would be "ties to terrorism." I would go out to a Fox reporter and they would say "Are there any messages you want to get across before we get to the live interview?" And we would script the interview around the government messaging, and they would thank me for my service at the end of it. And out of fairness, that wasn't just Fox. There were a number of American networks who did it. The reporters were in a position where there was no way their editorial leadership or their audience for that matter, wanted to see them be critical of a young troop in uniform.

But the devious part of that, is that the administration knew that and understood that and used young troops in uniform to sell the war in a way it knew couldn't be questioned or criticized. If you look at MSNBC, they packaged their coverage with a banner that said "Our Hearts Are With You." So when that banner is under my face and I'm giving the reasons why we need to go to war, is anyone going to ask me a critical question? Of course not, their hearts are with me. And there’s a danger in that.

The media's purpose in a democracy is to be professionally skeptical of anything that anyone in a position of authority or power says. If they’re not, who is? Nobody, and then the people in authority and power can say and do anything they want. So I was disappointed in that.

There are other examples, with Fox in particular. Fox likes personalities, and Geraldo Rivera covered the war on my TV and was giving away future troop movements by drawing a map in the sand.

There was another case where a Fox reporter was reporting live from in front of an Abrams tank that was on fire. The conventional wisdom was that Abrams tanks were impervious to the technology that the fedayeen had, small arms. But it turns out that if you did hit an Abrams tank in a certain spot with a rocket-propelled grenade, you could stop it and destroy it. So the Fox correspondent is reporting that, live on television: where the weak spot is and how this must have happened. Anyone watching that stuff, Iraqi intelligence officials, fedayeen soldiers – and we know they were watching it – would be like 'great, next time I see an Abrams, I'm gonna save my shot until I see the money shot and aim for the vulnerable spot I saw on TV. Thank you, Fox News.' Or anyone being watching the live report from Geraldo – where he's drawing the map in the sand – could say 'great, I know where coming and they're bringing Geraldo with them.' There's a danger in that.

And the thing is, Fox likes to see themselves as so pro-military and patriotic and they like to share their knowledge, like they're one of the guys. It's also interesting to note now how little Fox covers the war. MSNBC covered the war three times as much as Fox, I think in June. You've got to be kidding me. The number one cheerleader for this war is now just leaving it behind?

The embedding of journalists during OIF is generally considered to have been a success in that operational security was not compromised (the Geraldo incident and the broadcast vulnerability of the Abrams notwithstanding) while the perceptions of the American people were properly managed.

The reporting of the embedded media worked also to counter Iraq's propaganda claims of battlefield accomplishments, and by doing so, reinforced the rest of the U.S. PSYOP themes (don't use WMD, surrender to the "coalition", civilians stay indoors, etc.) in the minds of Saddam's military and the Iraqi people.

There was a smattering of reporters who chafed at the restrictions that were placed upon the embeds during the invasion, and wanted to venture out unaccompanied (as if they were going to cover an Officers' Wives Club luncheon). But, by and large, the embedded press corps was eager to disseminate to the viewers and readers their "soda straw" perspective of the beginning hours and days of the war.

However splendid their early performance operationally, the press played an unusually insidious role in selling the idea of this war of choice to the American people. Their refusal to ask the hard questions that would have exposed the administration's spurious basis for going into Iraq is inexcusable. "Just because we can" -- the remaining motive after the bones of all their other justifications were picked clean -- is not a good enough reason. A war of choice by necessity needs a compliant press corps. The same need applies to dealing with a complete disaster created as a result of heedless national leadership.

The nation hasn't soured on the war as a result of the reporting of the media. It is the natural common sense of the American people that is now informing their negative opinion of the war. Much of the U.S. media is still doing the bidding of their paymasters.

As Josh Rushing is fond of saying, there is a danger in that.

What is past is prologue.