| From The Editor September 11, 2006 |
9/11: Historic Turning Point, or Bump in the Road?'ALL CHANGED, CHANGED UTTERLY: A terrible beauty is born." The poet William Butler Yeats was describing the transformation of Irish politics wrought by the seemingly hopeless Easter Rising of 1916 against British rule. These words resonated again on Sept. 11, 2001, against the backdrop of the shattered World Trade Center.If the events of that day were terrible, they also seemed to portend a profound change, a turning point not only in the history of the United States but of the world. Most global leaders declared it an attack on both the United States and themselves. NATO invoked its self-defense clause for the first time in its history. There were even pro-U.S. demonstrations in Tehran. As we all know, opinions were divided on what had happened on 9/11 and in what way the world had consequently changed. To some, it was a day of reckoning for decades of one-sided American foreign policy, rapacious globalization and unilateralism. These people believed that "we" would have to change, to become more in tune with the rage of the dispossessed and marginalized. Others thought the attacks a punishment for a decade of appeasement of Islamic terrorism and a product of the fundamental lack of freedom of the Arab world. According to that interpretation, "they" would have to change: Dictatorial regimes across the Middle East would have to be removed, starting with the worst of them all, Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But both sides were in agreement that something profound had happened and that the world, as a result, would be transformed. Full Story Gary Jackson President Blackwater |
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| PROFESSIONAL ARTICLES, EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS |
Bush and LincolnFive years have passed since the horrific attack on our American homeland, and, still, there is one serious, undeniable fact we have yet to confront: We are, today, not where we wanted to be and nowhere near where we need to be.In April of 1861, in response to the firing on Fort Sumter, President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to serve for 90 days. Lincoln had greatly underestimated the challenge of preserving the Union. No one imagined that what would become the Civil War would last four years and take the lives of 620,000 Americans. By the summer of 1862, with thousands of Americans already dead or wounded and the hopes of a quick resolution to the war all but abandoned, three political factions had emerged. There were those who thought the war was too hard and would have accepted defeat by negotiating the end of the United States by allowing the South to secede. Second were those who urged staying the course by muddling through with a cautious military policy and a desire to be "moderate and reasonable" about Southern property rights, including slavery. Full Story Yes, We Are Better PreparedSurprise is what intelligence is intended to prevent, but on Sept. 11, 2001, our nation was surprised, and the results were tragic. Now the fifth anniversary of those horrific events raises anew the question: Is our nation's intelligence community better prepared to keep America safe? The answer is yes. U.S. intelligence has made major advances since that Sept. 11. First and foremost, we better understand, and are aligned to meet, the threat of transnational terror. Although our enemy is constantly changing and remains deadly, our collectors and analysts are carefully tracking the evolution of al-Qaeda and its ideological allies. Today, we have several times as many "all source" analysts -- those who look at all types of intelligence -- focusing on the terrorist threat as were in place on Sept. 11. And as we build up analytic insight and expertise, we also are devoting resources to increased human intelligence collection on targets of primary concern. One important indicator of effectiveness: We and our partners have captured or killed a majority of the al-Qaeda leadership involved in planning and directing the Sept. 11 attacks. Full Story 10 Ways to Avoid the Next 9/11If we are fortunate, we will open our newspapers this morning knowing that there have been no major terrorist attacks on American soil in nearly five years. Did we just get lucky? The Op-Ed page asked 10 people with experience in security and counterterrorism to answer the following question: What is one major reason the United States has not suffered a major attack since 2001, and what is the one thing you would recommend the nation do in order to avoid attacks in the future? Full Story |
| BREAKING NEWS FOR THE PROFESSIONAL |
What 9/11 Didn't ChangeBefore the dust from the collapsed towers had settled, conventional wisdom had congealed: "Everything has changed." But what about what matters most, the public's sensibility? It has taken five years for Sept. 11, 2001, to receive a novelist's subtle and satisfying treatment, but it was worth the wait for Claire Messud's "The Emperor's Children." Her intimation of the mark the attacks made on the American mind is convincing because in her comedy of manners, as in the nation's life, that horrific event is, oddly, both pivotal and tangential.Full Story Building a Lasting TributeIT'S hard to believe that half a decade has passed since the worst attack on our country was launched and we lost nearly 3,000 loved ones. Though time helps heal broken hearts, the sheer magnitude of what happened on 9/11 - and the unprecedented number of people whose lives will never be the same - make the wounds still raw, especially as we commemorate the fifth anniversary of that dark day. Understandably, some have asked if Lower Manhattan is being rebuilt quickly enough. However, the real question is not about speed. It is whether what we build is worthy of those we lost and forever honors their memories. The way to do that is to create a Lower Manhattan so vital and so strong that it proves no one can ever destroy us or our way of life. That is the greatest tribute we can pay them and is exactly what we are doing.Full Story Is the U.S. Winning This War?Five years after Sept. 11, is the United States winning the war against Al Qaeda? President Bush says yes, but most experts - including many inside the U.S. government - say no. An all-out effort by the United States and its allies has succeeded in making life difficult for Al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, and has probably disrupted any plans they had for further terrorism on the scale of the attacks in 2001, the experts say.Full Story The Taliban, Regrouped And RearmedThe interpreter's hand-held radio crackled with the sound of intercepted Taliban transmissions, and he signaled the infantry patrol to wait while he translated. At 7 a.m. one morning late in the summer, peasants were already out scything wheat, with their children tending fields of pink and white poppies that would soon add to Afghanistan's record-setting opium and heroin supplies. We were 9,000 feet up, in the hamlet of Larzab, in a remote part of Zabul province -- the heart of Talibanland. Our interpreter, Mohammed, estimated that the Taliban fighters were less than half a mile away. We walked through the fields for 20 more minutes before stopping next to a small hill. The chatter revealed that the Taliban were "watching us and waiting for us to get closer," Maj. Ralph Paredes explained to me as his men radioed to their base the likely coordinates of the hidden fighters. Soldiers back at the base -- a mud-walled compound without electricity or water -- fired mortar rounds over our heads to a hill several hundred meters from our position, where the Taliban might be hiding.Full Story Karzai on the Bombing: "The Enemy Is Not Eliminated"The ferocity of the battle for control of Afghanistan, which has raged across the south of the country for weeks, was felt Friday in the capital. A massive suicide car-bombing in Kabul killed two Americans and at least 16 Afghans, and rocked the floor of the presidential palace a mile away, where President Karzai was sitting down for an interview with TIME. Windows rattled across the city Friday morning as a suicide car-bomber rammed a U.S. convoy patrolling near the U.S. embassy in the city center. It was the second suicide attack in a week, following on Monday's bombing near the airport that killed five people. And it came at the end of a week of fierce clashes in the south; the strength of Taliban resistance has surprised NATO commanders, who on Thursday called on member states to send a further 2,000 troops to reinforce its counterinsurgency mission in the Taliban's heartland.Full Story |
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U.S. military: Suicide cell in KabulA suicide bombing cell is operating in the Afghan capital with the aim of targeting foreign troops, the U.S. military said Sunday. The statement came two days after a suicide car bomber rammed into a U.S. military convoy near the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, killing 16 people, including two American soldiers. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing, which was the deadliest suicide attack in the capital since the fall of the hard-line Taliban in late 2001. Col. Tom Collins, the chief U.S. spokesman, said the coalition was aware that a bomber was in the city before the bombing, but lacked a description of the attacker or the vehicle he was using.Full Story Man claiming to be new leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq calls for bloodA man purporting to be Al Qaeda's new leader in Iraq made his first appearance on the Internet on Thursday, with an audiotape in which he called on Iraq's Sunnis to unite and to each kill an American in the next 15 days. The tape was posted as Iraq's prime minister assumed command and control of a small fraction of the Iraqi armed forces at a ceremony of largely symbolic importance for the country's efforts to gain independence from foreign forces and for U.S. hopes eventually to bring American troops home. Yet a day touted as one of "gigantic" significance by the U.S. military was marred by a rash of bombings across Baghdad that left 17 people dead as police said they had found 34 handcuffed and tortured bodies dumped in the neighborhood of Dora. Three U.S. troops also were reported killed, two of them in Anbar province and one in the northern Iraq town of Hawija.Full Story Iraq: A Civil War We Can Still WinAs the Democrats turn themselves into the antiwar party, as popular support for the war continues to sink, as some who initially signed on to the war now heap scorn on the entire Iraqi project, the question of immediate withdrawal must be confronted. There are two rationales for withdrawing from -- let's be honest, abandoning -- Iraq: (a) Iraq is not worth it, and (b) worth it or not, the cause is lost. The first rationale was articulated most recently by John Kerry: "Iraq is not the center of the war on terror. The president keeps saying it is. The president keeps trying to push that down America's throat. It's wrong, it's a mistake and it's losing us the ability to do what we need to do in the region." This is absurd.Full Story Army Faces Rising Number of Roadside Bombs in IraqRoadside bombs in Iraq rose to record numbers this summer -- to about four times as many as in January 2004 -- as tips from Iraqi citizens warning of the bombs and attacks have dropped sharply amid a flaring of sectarian violence, according to a senior U.S. defense official. About 1,200 improvised explosive devices (IEDS) -- the leading killer of U.S. troops in Iraq -- were detonated in August as insurgents continue to invent new ways to design and hide the lethal munitions, according to retired Army Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, director of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, which is spearheading efforts to curb the bombs.Full Story JUNIORFor nearly a decade, a former Al Qaeda operative named Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl has been living in the United States government's witness-protection program, under an assumed identity. A Sudanese citizen and a onetime confidant of Osama bin Laden's, Fadl is expected to serve as a central witness in the prosecutions of at least two suspected terrorists being held at the U.S. detention facility in Guantan¡namo Bay, Cuba. Fadl, a dark-skinned man with close-cropped hair and a mischievous smile, entered government custody in 1996, after walking into the U.S. Embassy in Eritrea and confessing to membership in Al Qaeda. Since then, he has lived in at least half a dozen American towns. (He spent the first eighteen months in a Residence Inn in New Jersey, guarded by several armed F.B.I. agents; subsequently, his wife and children joined him in America, and the family was transferred to a series of undisclosed locations.) Fadl, who is now in his forties, is arguably the United States' most valuable informant on Al Qaeda; he has provided crucial intelligence about the group's operations and has made positive identifications of suspected members. At the same time, Fadl - an incessant troublemaker who is known to a small group of F.B.I. agents simply as Junior - has tried the patience of the officials in whose care he resides. "Junior's a problem child," Jack Cloonan, a former special agent for the F.B.I., who is now the president of a crisis-management firm, says.Full Story |
| TRAINING FOR THE PROFESSIONAL |
Mirror Image Training: Training to Combat TerrorismMirror 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 detailed brochure 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 ReviewTrain Your Brain: Terror At Beslan by John GiduckOnly a fool ignores the lessons of life displayed around him. When that fool is an elected or appointed leader of people, the ignorance equals dereliction of duty; an unacceptable failure to perform. We, in America, have had the opportunity to learn from the unfortunate experiences of Russia as they suffered through the attacks at Nord Odst Theater in Moscow and at School Number 1 in Beslan. This week's review is about John Giduck's Book "Terror At Beslan: A Russian Tragedy with Lessons for America's Schools". While I almost feel disrespectful in saying so, the most important part of that title for us is, "...with Lessons for American's Schools". The detail Mr. Giduck gives to his analysis is impressive. The links he creates between terrorist performance, doctrine and training should be a wake up call to every law enforcement professional, school resource officer, school security officer, school teacher, staff and other employees. Every cafeteria worker should read and understand the implications of the terrorist doctrine.Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/evals/other/tyb_terroratbeslan.htm Recreational Equipment ReviewBuck Knives NightHawkBuck Knives is a name more than well known by all Americans who have next to anything to do with the great outdoors. The first knife I ever went out and purchased with my own money was a Buck Folding Hunter 110. I still have that knife. When I went looking for knives for my family - so that each of us could have a decent one on our belt when we went hiking / camping, Buck was one of the manufacturers I "pre-approved". My wife picked out the Buck NightHawk with a tanto blade "because it feels good" in her hand. I didn't argue because I felt it was big enough to handle most of the required chores, but not so large as to be ungainly or uncomfortable to carry around. Almost five years later that knife has seen quite a bit of use (and abuse) in my wife's hands and I've had my fair share of using it as well. This week's review is about the knife and how well it's performed on various camping trips across those years.Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/recevals/toolknife/bucknighthawk.htm |
| CHAPLAINS CORNER |
EVENTS THAT CHANGED OUR WORLD...Are many and varied. Many of us who have lived for a long while have experienced personal, local and national affectation that has saddened us... rocked us back on our heels... sometimes made us stagger as though drunk... struck us a blow to the chin... even broken our hearts. September 11, 2001 was just such a day for me. Life was already complicated.My lovely wife, Sue, was in terminal stages of kidney failure. I was working in my office in my home trying to get things out of my way so I could prepare and perform Hemodialysis on her... planning to get her connected to the machine by 11 AM... We were 9 months into the procedure that must be performed three times weekly in order to keep her alive. She was disabled physically, had one leg amputated and her only hope was an institution or home dialysis. She was so fragile that I was the only person who knew how to handle her without breaking her. Her bones were soft... her flesh was sometimes hardened by the impurities that had to be removed to give her another few days of life... but it had to be performed three times weekly and I was trained to handle the process which totaled five hours each time with her on the machine for three of those five hours. It is an awesome thing to hold the life of another in your hands... Then I saw the broadcast of the first plane crashing into the tower... for a moment the world stopped for me that first time I saw the scene. Part of my life has been dedicated to the profession of making detailed drawings of structural steel for bridges, buildings and other large structures. I instantly knew the implications of such structural damage and fire. I felt the impact of the threat to all of the people in those structures. Full Story Can Be Viewed At: ../../btw2006/article/091106chaplain.htm |
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