Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Counterterrorism with a clue
The New York Times, in a fit of journalism, is running a very interesting story on its front page about our info war and black ops against the jihadis. In a departure from long tradition, the article neither attacks the Bush administration nor seems to expose any important secret information that will damage our national security. It does, however, contain useful clues to the war we are fighting on-line and in the mosques. This is all stuff that fully-brained Americans certainly hoped we were doing, but it is nevertheless comforting to read that we actually are doing.
8 Comments:
By 
Georg Felis, at
Tue Mar 18, 10:23:00 AM:
Nice article. The Times should be quite careful, if it continues to run stories like this, it might accidently become a newspaper again.
By NeoconNews.com, at
Tue Mar 18, 12:00:00 PM:
I'm sure they'll just have to double-leak next week to make up for this slip up.
By 
, at
Tue Mar 18, 12:05:00 PM:
Small nit; they seem to mis-use the term 'deterrence' an awful lot. An enemy is deterred if they think that striking you is not worth the consequences, and therefore fear to do so. If the enemy judges that they are unable to strike you effectively because of your interference, that's because of your disruption or interdiction of their operations.
The idea that suicide attackers can be deterred at all is a weak one; they're aiming to die, after all. So to deter them, you have to strike something else that they care about instead, like their families. This is why the Israelis demolished the homes of Palestinian suicide bombers. Unfortunately, this tactic violates our collective sense of morality.
By TigerHawk, at
Tue Mar 18, 01:03:00 PM:
I agree, Dawnfire, about the nomenclature issues in the article. Why, precisely, people do not use the terms "disrupt," "interdict," and "deter" in accordance with their well understood meanings is beyond me.
By , at
Tue Mar 18, 01:30:00 PM:
Most new outlets have a problem when they write about anything that involves the military. Mistakes like identifying "armored personnel carriers" as "tanks" and "cartridges" as "bullets" are common. When they set out to "study war no more" they lost the ability to understand the subject, not end it. It is encouraging that they didn't reveal any secrets to our enemies this time.
By Cannoneer No. 4, at
Tue Mar 18, 07:42:00 PM:
So, after almost two years, .mil/.gov finally attempts to strategically communicate to me to change my perception that the Regulars are under-resourced, over-lawyered and too PC to win the infowar.
Wonder why they waited so long.
Think they might be noticing
The Jawa Report
YouTube Smackdown
Civilian Cyber Corps
People's Information Support Team?
Nah. They've been on top of things all along. They just couldn't tell us or they'd have to kill us.
By Khaki Elephant, at
Tue Mar 18, 09:39:00 PM:
Wow, a single article that lends credibility to both the New York Times and U.S. Intelligence agencies. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t this supposed to happen between the sun burning black and oceans turning to blood?
By , at
Wed Mar 19, 01:08:00 AM:
The NEW YORK SLIMES the best information the enemy can read
