From The Editor August 14, 2006
   
 

The Flags of Our Sons

WHEN you fly as often as I do you learn to mind your own business as soon as you take your seat. But that wasn't possible once I saw the military honor guard boarding US Airways' 1:45 p.m. flight from Boston to Washington earlier this week.

I was heading through the gate when I first noticed Senator Ted Kennedy, walking down the concourse and arriving fashionably late, not an uncommon sight on this route. I stepped aside and followed him down the ramp.

As we got to the arched entrance of the plane, the members of a Marine honor guard in their dress blues were coming up that outside staircase usually used for stowing strollers and allowing mechanics on board. The marine in charge held in both hands a flag that had been folded into a triangle as if it had been previously draping a coffin, which it had.

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Gary Jackson
President
Blackwater

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
   
  If you're afraid of the future, then get out of the way, stand aside. The people of this country are ready to move again.

Ronald Reagan

PROFESSIONAL ARTICLES, EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS
   
 

The Only Option Is to Win

Yesterday on this page, in a serious and thoughtful survey of a world in crisis, Richard Holbrooke listed 13 countries that could be involved in violence in the near future: Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, Somalia. And in addition, of course, the United States.

With those 14 nations Holbrooke could make the case for what I describe as "an emerging third world war" -- a long-running conflict whose latest manifestation was brought home to Americans yesterday with the disclosure in London of yet another ghastly terrorist plot -- this one intended to destroy a number of airliners en route to America.


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The Responder Knowledge Base: An Invaluable Guide for Emergency Responders


The administrative details of emergency response are taxing on our nation's law enforcement, firefighter, and EMS personnel. Time is lost mulling over the details of responder equipment, government grants, recommended training, etc...The Responder Knowledge Base (RKB) was created to help relieve this logistical burden. Funded by the Department of Homeland security through the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, the mission of this free service is "To provide Emergency Responders, purchasers, and planners with a trusted, integrated, on-line source of information on products, standards, certifications, grants, and other equipment-related information." In collaboration with the InterAgency Board (IAB) and subject matter experts, the RKB has established an online "first-stop" for responders, collating information from sources once scattered though numerous cumbersome databases. Content includes the DHS Authorized Equipment List, the IAB Standardized Equipment List, nearly 4,000 products, operational suitability testing for hundreds of products, the results of the DHS radiation detector testing, a decontamination efficacy matrix, Lessons Learned and Information Sharing documents, Homeland Security Grant Program information, responder training, and more. The ability to "Ask an Expert" on the RKB provides responders with a reliable resource for all responder-related questions. Additionally, the ability of RKB users to provide offline "User Opinions" helps further increase the utility of the RKB. With its vast content and sophisticated integration scheme, the RKB succeeds in helping responders answer all their equipment related needs.

Please register with the RKB at www.rkb.mipt.org

View the IAB website at www.iab.gov

Shooting to Kill

One Marine's very complicated war story.

During the pullback from Falluja in April 2004, Pantano had no confidence in the "Falluja Brigade," the Saddam army generals brought back from retirement to provide security. While Pantano is right that it was a mistake to hand over responsibility for Falluja to a group of Saddamists, the decision to halt the U.S. operation at that time was not so simple. It had to be weighed within the context of forming an interim government and trying to hand over sovereignty expeditiously.

Pantano also captures the disconnect between the daily lives of Americans in Iraq and citizens back home. The difference can be jarring, which he describes through his reaction to reading the New York Times (his mother had included a copy in a care package): "It would make me laugh with the zany triviality of life in New York. Debutante balls and twenty-dollar martinis. The newest steakhouse or a sale at Bloomingdale's. Meanwhile people were dying over here, Iraqis and Americans."


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BREAKING NEWS FOR THE PROFESSIONAL
   
 

Problem-Based Learning and Scenario-Based Training

You're attending a training conference and find yourself chatting with another instructor during a break. You mention that you've developed a scenario-based training curriculum to teach domestic violence investigation, and he says, "Oh, we've been doing problem-based learning for years." Are you behind the curve? Or is scenario-based training something different? Problem-based learning, also called "case-based learning," got its start in the 1950s and is used widely, particularly in business and medical schools. Instructors discovered that simply teaching students a set of rules did not adequately equip them to solve business problems or diagnose patients. The business issues and patient symptoms did not always follow textbook formulas, so a rigid decision-protocol did not always work. Instead, students were given loosely structured cases to work on.

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Easy to get books on building bombs

Passengers can't bring water bottles on airplanes but a would-be terrorist can legally buy a bomb-building recipe book online with just a few clicks. For starters, there's "Improvised Weapons of the American Underground" for sale on both Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com for about $10 a copy. "This book makes other 'cookbooks' things for Sunday School picnics. This collection of original articles covers making nitroglycerine, plastic explosives, detonators and primers, fuses, impact ignition incendiary devices ...," one reviewer wrote in a posting on the Web site of the Washington-based Violence Policy Center.

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Police to pose as cabbies in attempt to halt crime spree

Police officers will be driving taxis as part of an effort to halt a wave of violence that has claimed 15 lives in 10 days - including that of a cab driver. The announcement Friday by Marion County Sheriff Frank Anderson came on the day when two more men died. A police officer found a man dead inside a car Friday afternoon just two blocks from the scene of a deadly shooting outside an under-21 club last week. Police did not immediately release details about the death, but called it an apparent homicide.

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Racism a factor in L.A. gang violence

Alejandro "Bird" Martinez and a crew of fellow gangbangers were joyriding in a stolen van when they came upon a black man parking his car - and decided to kill him. Three of them riddled Kenneth Kurry Wilson and his Cadillac with bullets from a .357-caliber revolver and a 9 mm semiautomatic and blasts from a 12-gauge shotgun. This month, Martinez and three other members of the Avenues, a Hispanic gang entrenched in one Los Angeles neighborhood, were convicted of federal hate crimes usually tagged on white supremacists.

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Systems Exist to Find Liquid Explosives

While the process isn't perfect, scanning machines do exist to detect liquid explosives like the ones purportedly at the heart of the terrorist plot broken up this week. But don't expect the machines to be rushed into airports soon. Cost and logistical issues present challenges for these devices. Consider work that's been done at Rapiscan Systems, part of OSI Systems Inc.

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  TO FILL OUT AN APPLICATION AND SUBMIT YOUR RESUME AND DD-214 CLICK HERE

SECURITY FOR THE PROFESSIONAL
   
 

The Next Big One?

THE SHEER MAGNITUDE of the foiled plot that British authorities announced yesterday was breathtaking. This may well have been "the next big one" that experts have predicted al Qaeda would attempt. As Friday began, British authorities had apprehended 24 suspects alleged to be part of a plot to blow up as many as 10 transatlantic flights with liquid explosives. As a result, some widely-held assumptions among terror analysts may now come crashing down. One assumption that took root in recent years is that al Qaeda's central leadership is isolated and incapable of calling the shots for terror attacks of any significant magnitude. In truth, there was good reason to doubt this assumption even before the transatlantic air plot was announced.

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A Price of Fighting Terrorism

When much of the world initially supported Israel's right to defend itself against the Hezbollah attacks, I wondered how long the international backing would last. Would Israel be given enough time to push Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon and cripple the terrorist organization before the world lost patience? Alas, the international support lasted a mere two weeks. With the unfortunate but inevitable loss of life, calls for a cease-fire have reached a fevered pitch, threatening to end the operation before Israel's basic military objectives have been met and before an adequate international force can be mobilized and placed on the ground.

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Tracing Plots, British Watch, Then Pounce

The disclosure that British officials conducted months of surveillance before arresting 24 terrorism suspects this week highlighted what many terrorism specialists said was a central difference between American and British law enforcement agencies. The British, they say, are more willing to wait and watch. Although details of the British investigation remain secret, Bush administration officials say Britain's domestic intelligence agency, MI5, was for at least several months aware of a plot to set off explosions on airliners flying to the United States from Britain, as well as the identity of the people who would carry it out.

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British forces in Afghanistan in worst fighting in 60 years: general

British soldiers in Afghanistan are involved in some of the worst and most prolonged fighting since World War II, the British commander of NATO forces in the country said. "This sort of thing hasn't really happened so consistently, I don't think, since the Korean War (in 1952) or the Second World War (in 1939)," Lieutenant General David Richards told the BBC World Service. "This is persistent, low-level, dirty fighting." He said some British troops would be withdrawn from parts of the southern province of Helmand to be replaced by soldiers from the Afghan Army. Richards's comments came after news on Wednesday that another British soldier, Private Leigh Reeves, 25, was killed in Afghanistan, the 18th since November 2001 when the country's troops were deployed there. Some 4,000 British troops are in the restive southern province of Helmand, with the figure set to rise to around 4,500.

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Post-PC World

I'm all for looking on the bright side, but this is ridiculous. Commenting on the largest demonstration in favor of Hezbollah's war on Israel - a demonstration that took place in American-liberated Baghdad - Condoleezza Rice had this to say to NBC's Tim Russert: "That people would go out and demonstrate and say what they feel is one sign that perhaps Iraq is one place in the Middle East where people are exercising their right to free speech." Come again? Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites, calling "Death to Israel" and "Death to America," voice their support for a terrorist organization that hides behind human shields in Lebanon as it rains rockets down on cities in Israel, and the secretary of state praises freedom of speech in Iraq? It's enough to make a happy face weep. But Miss Rice beams on, diplomatically speaking, Pollyanna on the Potomac. A more realistic approach would wipe the smile off anyone's assessment. But our foreign policy is increasingly driven by a sanguine un-reality. Oh, for an administration official who could respond to this intractable situation with an unabashedly unpleasant analysis.

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TRAINING FOR THE PROFESSIONAL
   
 

Mirror Image Training: Training to Combat Terrorism


Mirror Image is a tactical and strategic training course developed and owned by the Terrorism Research Center. TRC instructors have trained hundreds of military personnel that are subsequently deployed to active combat operations, as well as large numbers of first responders, law enforcement, and security professionals. Mirror Image is an intensive one-week classroom and field-training program, designed to realistically simulate terrorist recruiting, training techniques, and operational tactics. During the course, participants will receive insight into the mindset and rationale of the terrorist through hands-on experience with the methods and means terrorist employ, education about terrorist ideologies and the cultural dimensions that influence their decision making process. Military, law enforcement, intelligence, and security professionals will, in turn, be able to see themselves as the terrorists see them and understand the weaknesses in their own environment that the terrorists will seek to exploit, and which all too often they miss. Armed with these insights participants will leave the course better able to anticipate, prevent and respond to multiple terrorist threats.

September 17-22, 2006: Blackwater Training Center, Moyock, NC

A detailed brochure may be downloaded at: www.terrorism.com

A Registration Form/Information may be downloaded at: www.terrorism.com

Questions on TRC training, please contact Betty O'Hearns-Hines, Training Coordinator for the Terrorism Research Center.
Email: betty@terrorism.com
Phone: (727)360-4302 voice or (727)409-1754

FRANKS REVIEW
   
 

Service Equipment Review

BlackHawk Level III SERPA Duty Holster

At the SHOT Show this past February I got to see and - to some extent - handle the prototypes of BlackHawk's Level III Duty Holster incorporating their SERPA locking technology. To be called a "Level III" holster, there have to be three different and independent retention devices built into the holster. In this case the three retention devices are: 1) tension. Adjust it with any philip's head screwdriver. 2) The SERPA lock which secures the trigger guard of the weapon until activated / released by the shooter during the draw stroke. 3) What BlackHawk calls a "Pivot Guard" which is a spring-loaded chunk of polymer which pivots up and over the back of the weapon slide and, again, is released / activated during the natural draw stroke. Various people tried out this holster at SHOT and I admit to taking my turn playing with it. At first I questioned the positioning of the release mechanism for the Pivot Guard, but a little education from BlackHawk personnel quickly changed my point of view (and understanding). I recently received a first run T&E SERPA Level III holster and we're going to take a closer look at its form and function this week.

Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/evals/holsters+/bhcqcserpa3.htm


Recreational Equipment Review

Wiley-X Protective Eyewear

For any number of recreational activities, protective eyewear is a necessity. From simple outdoor activities that require sunglasses to prevent discomfort due to bright sunlight and UV rays, to boating, biking, skiing, or recreational shooting, various risks are presented to your vision and necessary protection is required. Wiley-X makes a full line of protective eyewear to mitigate most (if not all) of these threats / risks. Several weeks ago I received a representative selection of Wiley-X's protective eyewear and I've tested them in various environments and during various activities. This week we're going to take a look at a couple different models of the Wiley-X Eyewear and how well they served during testing.

Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/recevals/apparel/wileyxeyewear.htm
CHAPLAINS CORNER
   
 

HOPE...


In the face of difficulty and much adversity... in the face of danger the person who really wants life for others and wants to live themselves must go. This applies to all people but it specifically applies to Peace Keepers. Peace Keepers must go whenever there is a threat to peace and safety. Others may choose for themselves but Peace Keepers have already chosen... They must go.

For parents it it is the same. It does not matter how old your child is, you never outgrow being a parent when your child is in danger. My oldest daughter is in very great need of compassion and treatment just to survive long enough to get back to life and living... but the medical system is too overloaded and cumbersome to meet the need. People and facilities to handle the great problems are in short supply... too few to do so very much that needs to be done. Meanwhile she burns up all of my time and energy just trying to maintain her until the right much needed assistance can be obtained. Today she is in a facility awaiting an admission someplace that will take on the task of observation and adjustment for her. Last weekend and through Tuesday no beds were available. Yesterday and today no beds are available. Each process expires at the end of 72 hours. Then it must begin again with added cost of doing the same procedure over and over until they are successful.



Full Story Can Be Viewed At:
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BUMPER STICKER
   
 

To err is human. To forgive is not company policy
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