The SWISH Report (2)

sufi

lala
The SWISH Report (2)
An independent consultancy assesses al-Qaida’s progress and prospects for 2005 and beyond.
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A second report from the South Waziristan Institute of Strategic Hermeneutics to the al-Qaida Strategic Planning Cell (SPC) on the progress of the campaign
interesting POV... ;) here

... the main conclusion of our first report was that it was hugely in your interest to see George W Bush re-elected. Indeed, we went so far as to suggest that the detention of your leader by US forces might be a necessary step to ensuring this. We appreciate that this proposal was not well received, and we are grateful that you have still turned to us for a further report. We will refrain from recommending specific personal initiatives in future...
 

turtles

in the sea
Wow. Some of that stuff is really scary...as in:

You are, after all, in the early stages of a decades-long confrontation,
plus their recommendation to draw the US into Syria...it's just really earie reading this rather dispassionate article recommending some truly terrible things. Though I suppose the pentagon's written their fair share of those type of documents too...

But nevertheless, I found myself agreeing with a lot of their analysis of the situation, especially this:
The first is that the US military simply will not leave Iraq. There may be changes in policy and posture, there may be an abandonment of the cities, there may be a retreat to fortified bases adjacent to the main oil-producing regions of the country - but the United States will not leave. To do so would be a foreign-policy reversal of extraordinary proportions and could even indicate the demise of the New American Century project. It is, bluntly, unthinkable.
Is unfortunately probably quite true.

Also thought it was interesting that they said that most of Al Qaeda's success actually came from the mistakes of their enemies rather than things that they have themselves done (aside from 9-11). Yeah, definitely written from a different perspective (and for a different audience)...but in a way, not really that out-there in terms of what it's saying.

also, they think juan cole is accurate! Does reading him thus make me sort of a traitor?
 

luka

Well-known member
tonight craner told me that the us are readying themselves to invade iran only he said they won't send soldiers in, they're going to arm the opposistion and tell them what to do.

i'm a bit vague on the details but he'll be able to fill you in.
 

turtles

in the sea
I assume he's refering (at least in part) to Seymour Hersh's new article in the new yorker? This is also quite the disturbing read...a choice quote:

The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls “action teams” in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. “Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. “We founded them and we financed them,” he said. “The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.” A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, “We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.”

A lot of this stuff (though not necessarily the above quote) seems very reminiscent of the articles that were coming out two years ago or so when the US was denying that it was planning to invade Iraq and saying it was still trying diplomacy, whilst all the while reports were coming in that the decision had already been made by bush and rumsfeld etc.

On the basis of this article, plus the pentagon's stringent denials (or denouncements) of it, i'm unfortunately pretty certain that Iran is indeed up next (if not already underway) for military action of some sort. yay fucking war. :(
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I haven't read Hersh yet, but I will now. The proxy is the PMOI/MEK who are, actually, decent, and not the terrorist outfit the CIA/State Dept have claimed (in the past) for the sake of convenience (i.e. mollifying the Ayatollahs and their political puppets). One of the bum notes in the Iraq war was the bombing of PMOI bases in Iraqi Kurdistan to placate Iran and stop them from invading.
 

matt b

Indexing all opinion
don't these people learn? 'riding with the bad boys' created bin laden.
nice to see bush et al see the second election win as a remit to wreak havoc globally
 

luka

Well-known member
cor, that article is quite intersting, this bits good too

'The war on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon’s control. The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.

The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) “The Pentagon doesn’t feel obligated to report any of this to Congress,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “They don’t even call it ‘covert ops’—it’s too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it’s ‘black reconnaissance.’ They’re not even going to tell the cincs”—the regional American military commanders-in-chief. (The Defense Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)

In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran. “Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.”


'


can't wait
 
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