Blackwater Newsletter

From The Editor January 8, 2007

Arab nationalism's last gasp

JUST AS THE demise of Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia closed the lid on national communist parties in Eastern Europe, the demise of Saddam Hussein in Iraq appears likely to do the same for secular Arab nationalism across the Middle East.

And just as communism exited the European stage exposed for what it always truly was - fascism without fascism's ability to make the trains run on time - secular Arab nationalism will exit the stage revealed for what it always was: a despotic perversion of the western nation-state that lasted as long as it did mainly because of secret-police techniques imported from the former Soviet Union.

Arab nationalism's roots go back to the revolt against European colonialism in the early decades of the 20th century. But as it developed, it faced a serious problem: Because it was organized around the artificial national borders that these same colonialists had drawn - which generally ignored ethnic and sectarian lines - the result, in too many cases, was multiethnic rivalry and the subjugation of one part of the population by another.

In Iraq, for instance, the national borders created a state in which the majority Shiites were subjugated by the minority Sunnis (as we all now know). In Syria, the majority Sunnis came to be subjugated by the minority Alawites, who constitute a branch of Shiism (and who had been favored in the armed forces by the French). In Lebanon, it was the Shiites who ended up subjugated by both Christians and Sunnis.

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Gary Jackson
President
Blackwater

QUOTE OF THE WEEK


	"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke

PROFESSIONAL ARTICLES, EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS

Thus All Too Seldom to Tyrants

"Rejoice not when thy enemy falleth"--that is the Bible's advice (Proverbs 24:17), and the classical rabbinic tradition cites this verse in urging us never to celebrate the death of an enemy no matter how evil. But Americans have plenty to celebrate in the trial and punishment of Saddam Hussein by his own nation, which America and her allies made possible. The trial of Saddam was a triumph for one of the noblest of all causes: the sanctity of justice no matter how powerful the criminal, no matter how poor or powerless the victim. May the same thing happen to terrorist tyrants everywhere. But it isn't likely to. For a nation to pass sentence on its own deposed dictator is a rare event.

In the days following Saddam's execution we heard often about how the Iraqis (and by implication their American protectors) had botched it. Saddam was taunted on the gallows, and his last moments were videotaped by witnesses who should not have been collecting souvenirs. Those infractions of execution etiquette ought not to have been allowed, but don't kid yourself: No execution is ever pretty. And in this squeamish, fastidious nation it is easy to forget the significance of a hanging; a British royal commission once spelled it out. Hanging is "a peculiarly grim and derogatory form of execution, suitable for sordid criminals and crimes."

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There Is a Way Forward in Iraq

An unusual thing happened last week. A man who had brutalized and terrorized his nation for a quarter-century was brought to justice. Saddam Hussein's trial and execution were imperfect. But the critics of the trial can't have it both ways. First, many of them told us that we couldn't expect Iraq to be a Jeffersonian democracy. Now they feign outrage that Saddam's trial didn't live up to Jeffersonian standards. Of course the trial was imperfect--but compared to what? The summary judgments accorded by their countrymen to Mussolini in 1945 and Ceausescu in 1989? The four-year-long, never completed farce of a trial of Slobodan Milosevic in the Hague before an International Criminal Tribunal under the auspices of the U.N., manned by the creme de la creme of international jurists?

The foreign policy cognoscenti and the political elites were happy to dismiss the fact that Saddam's trial was a real achievement of a struggling democracy fighting terror and sectarian strife. They were eager to deprecate the fact that Saddam was tried in court before courageous judges under the laws of his nation, with a chance to defend himself. They were willing to pretend it was no big deal to see a tyrant brought low, to see injustice punished and justice done.

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This Dictator's Life

In the end, Saddam Hussein would be given more of a chance to defend himself than he gave the 148 Shia Muslim men and boys he was charged with killing in reprisal for a 1982 assassination attempt. In 2005, two years after being deposed by a U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq, the man known as "the Butcher of Baghdad" went on trial at the Iraqi Special Tribunal in Baghdad in a yearlong exercise characterized by defiant exchanges between the defendant, judges and defense teams. Some human-rights groups questioned the tribunal's inherent fairness, pointing to the prominent role the Shiite-controlled Iraqi government played in the judicial process. But when all was said and done, an appeals court upheld the sentence: death. Hussein was hanged before dawn on Saturday in Iraq near 6 a.m. (10 p.m. ET). It was a humiliating end for the man who ruled Iraq for nearly 24 years.

Saddam Hussein was born on April 28, 1937, to a poor landless peasant family in the village of Ouja, near Tikrit. His father either died or disappeared before Saddam's birth, so the child was sent to live with his maternal uncle, Khairallah Talfah, an Iraqi army officer and devout Sunni Muslim nationalist. Under his uncle's influence, 19-year-old Saddam joined the Arab nationalist (and anti-Western) Baath Socialist Party. A year later he was denied admission to the prestigious Baghdad Military Academy, an embarrassing blow to his career hopes.

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BREAKING NEWS FOR THE PROFESSIONAL

Israel Denies Planning Iran Nuke Attack

A British newspaper reported Sunday that Israel has drafted plans to strike as many as three targets in Iran with low-yield nuclear weapons, aiming to halt Tehran's uranium enrichment program. The Israeli Foreign Ministry denied the report. Citing multiple unidentified Israeli military sources, The Sunday Times said the proposals involved using so-called "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons to attack nuclear facilities at three sites south of the Iranian capital. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said it would not respond to the claim. "We don't respond to publications in the Sunday Times," said Miri Eisin, Olmert's spokeswoman.

Full Story

Pentagon helping restart Iraqi factories

As President Bush ponders how to salvage the Iraq military campaign, business minds at the Pentagon are moving ahead with a part of the equation - fighting Iraq's unemployment and trying to boost its economy. Under a new program, the Defense Department is already helping reopen factories that were owned by Saddam Hussein's government and abandoned by occupation authorities shortly after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. The Pentagon may also start providing them with contracts to support U.S. troops. One factory restarted operations in the last two weeks, and nine more are to open by the end of this month, adding some 11,000 Iraqis to employment rolls, a Pentagon official said Wednesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information had not been released yet.

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Negroponte's departure raises qualms on security issues

John Negroponte's impending departure as U.S. intelligence chief on Thursday raised new qualms about the future of national security reforms intended to safeguard the United States against Sept. 11-scale attacks. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress openly expressed misgivings about a new change in leadership at the helm of the 16-agency intelligence community, barely 21 months after Negroponte became the first director of national intelligence. "I am deeply troubled by the timing of this announcement and the void of leadership at the top of our intelligence community," Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, Democratic chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement.

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Bush Rolls the Dice

For a mailman's son who put himself through school working at a Campbell's Soup factory in hardscrabble Camden, N.J., there must be a special poignancy to knowing that your task over the next two years is to rescue the reputation of a blue-blooded president who's gotten himself into a bind in the Middle East. But that's going to be William (Fox) Fallon's job as commander of CENTCOM-the first admiral ever to be named to head the traditionally land-oriented regional command, which covers Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, as well as a new trouble spot: Somalia and the Horn of Africa. Fallon's nomination is part of a flurry of major appointments coming out of the Bush administration ahead of the president's speech on a new Iraq strategy next week. The reshuffling of Bush's top command is about much more than Iraq, Pentagon insiders say. It will set the course for the remainder of Bush's presidency in the entire Mideast.

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Should Maliki Go?

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq is a marked man. While President Bush has always expressed support for him in public, the White House has begun to signal its unease. Even Bush joined the chorus of voices condemning the way Maliki's government handled the execution of Saddam Hussein. And disagreements over strategy are becoming more apparent. For example, Maliki had pressed Bush to move U.S. troops from central Baghdad to the edge of the city, leaving the volatile downtown area in the hands of Iraq security forces. Instead, the White House's emerging strategy has most of a U.S. troops surge headed into downtown Baghdad. The big card Maliki always held was his alliance with the political bloc led by Moqtada al-Sadr, the head of the Shi'a Mahdi militia. This includes 30 parliamentarians and six cabinet members. Maliki was seen as one person who might be able to exercise some sway over Sadr and his lawless sectarian army. But it became clear that influence flowed only one way between Sadr and Maliki in October, when U.S. forces seized Sadr aide Sheik Mazin al-Saedi, a suspected organizer of kidnapping rings and death squads. Maliki immediately called for Saedi's release, and the U.S. military complied. Killings were on the rise, and Maliki was working to help the leading murderers; Sadr's Mahdi Army dropped virtually all pretenses of restraint after the February bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra and went on the attack.

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SECURITY FOR THE PROFESSIONAL

Iraq Will Be Petraeus's Knot to Untie

Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who is President Bush's choice to become the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, posed a riddle during the initial march to Baghdad four years ago that now becomes his own conundrum to solve: "Tell me how this ends." That query, uttered repeatedly to a reporter then embedded in Petraeus's 101st Airborne Division, revealed a flinty skepticism about prospects in Iraq -- and the man now asked to forestall a military debacle. Long recognized as one of the Army's premier intellectuals, with a PhD from Princeton to complement his West Point education, Petraeus, 54, will inherit one of the toughest assignments handed any senior officer since the Vietnam War. He takes command of 132,000 U.S. troops in a country shattered by insurgency and sectarian bloodletting, with a home front that is divided and disheartened after 3,000 American combat deaths. If his riddle of 2003 remains apt, so does the headline on a Newsweek cover story about Petraeus in July 2004: "Can This Man Save Iraq?"

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Pentagon to train a sharper eye on Africa

Africa, long beset by war, famine, disease, and ethnic tensions, has generally taken a backseat in Pentagon planning - but US officials say that is about to change. One of Donald Rumsfeld's last acts before Robert Gates replaced him last month as Defense secretary was to urge President Bush to let the Pentagon create a new Africa Command to pay more attention to the troubled continent. Mr. Bush is said to have agreed to the idea and is expected announce it early this year. The creation of the new command will be more than an exercise in shuffling bureaucratic boxes, experts say. The US government's motives include countering Al Qaeda's known presence in Africa, safeguarding future oil supplies, and competing with China, which has been courting African governments in its own quest for petroleum, they suggest.

Full Story

Relentless toll to US troops of roadside bombs

Almost every day, Sgt. First Class Joel Jacobs comes to the Third Infantry Division's "Warriors' Walk" at Fort Stewart, Ga. Among the eastern redbud trees - each commemorating one of the more than 300 division soldiers killed in Iraq - it's a chance for him to honor his fallen comrades. Over New Year's, with the number of US service men and women who've died in Iraq at the 3,000 mark, the rest of the nation had occasion to pause and reflect on the war's toll. Like many, Sergeant Jacobs greets the news of American casualties with sorrow and resolve. He retired from the Army a few months ago, and you might think the prosthetic leg would slow him down. But asked how he's doing, this 21-year veteran who faced danger in Haiti, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq says , "I'm absolutely fine, sir."

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Offensive to pacify Baghdad begins

In the opening battle of a major drive to tame the violent capital, the Iraqi army reported it killed 30 militants yesterday in a firefight in a Sunni insurgent stronghold just north of the heavily fortified Green Zone. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, speaking only hours earlier at a ceremony marking the 85th anniversary of the Iraqi army, announced his intention for the open-ended attempt to crush the militant fighters who have left Baghdad in the grip of sectarian violence. Hassan al-Suneid, a key aide and member of Mr. al-Maliki's Dawa Party, said the Iraqi leader had committed 20,000 soldiers to the operation and would call upon American troops and air power only when needed.

Full Story

Bush plans for Iraq include a military and economic buildup

President George W. Bush's new Iraq strategy calls for a rapid influx of forces that could add as many as 20,000 U.S. combat troops to Baghdad, supplemented with an employment program for Iraqis that could cost as much as $1 billion, according to U.S. officials who are piecing together the last parts of the plan. The U.S. officials said that the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, formally agreed in a long teleconference with Bush to match the U.S. troop increase, made up of five combat brigades that would go in at a rate of roughly one a month, by sending three more Iraqi brigades to Baghdad over the next month and a half. Nonetheless, even in outlining the plan, some U.S. officials acknowledged deep skepticism about whether the new Iraq plan could succeed.

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Tactical Training and Intelligence Resources for the Professional

Table of Radical Islamist Symbols

This comprehensive chart details the symbols in use by radical Islamist groups providing graphic examples with descriptions and translation of associated symbol text. The document is available for purchase as a secure PDF file for $20.00 USD. Please Click Here (8th Item Down on the Page)

FRANKS REVIEW

Service Equipment Review

SHOT Show 2007 PREview

Well, it's that time of year again: SHOT Show opens next week at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. The Shooting Hunting & Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show was once dedicated to those who participated in outdoor sports and the manufacturers who made the necessary products for such. Over the course of the past few years, though, SHOT has grown to include a significant portion of the military and law enforcement communities and - of course - the manufacturers who support them.

As I type this SHOT Show is boasting it's 29th year, over 1,900 exhibitors and more than 650,000 square feet of exhibit space. This will be my third year in attendance and I KNOW I will lose a few pounds walking the MILES of exhibit space. True to form, within a week of SHOT Show ending I'll put out an early review article, but this year I thought it would be good to do a PREview as well: there are some really interesting products being released. Let's start out with the guns...

Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/evals/other/preshot07.htm

Recreational Equipment Review

BlackHawk / Masters of Defense Nightwing Knife

Sometime in the past millenia man made a few discoveries that altered how we live: how to make fire; the invention of the wheel; and the use of sharpened tools for utility and hunting. Obviously technology has brought us a long way as our tools change: Gas grills have long replaced scraping flint against steel; all weather radials far surpass the wooden wagon wheel; and today's knives outperform yesteryear's hand knapped flint cutting tools. Still, if you're in the wilds anywhere you need to be able to make fire and being able to cut anything is also mandatory. A knife was one of the three things my uncle taught me never to leave the house without. This week's recreational review is about the Nightwing knife, manufactured by Masters of Defense, a part of the BlackHawk Products Group.

Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/recevals/toolknife/bhnightwing.htm

CHAPLAINS CORNER

WHAT DO INSTRUCTORS MAKE?

(Adapted and altered from an e-mail message) (Dedicated to all of my teachers... To all who instructed me in my career... and to all who have instructed Peace Keepers... and to those who currently instruct Peace Keepers.)

The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with the educational process. He argued, "What's a student going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become an Instructor?" He reminded the other dinner guests what they say about Teachers/Instructors: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." To stress his point he said to another guest; "You're an Instructor. Be honest. What do you make?" (Of course he meant in dollars...)

The Instructor who had a reputation for honesty and frankness replied, "You want to know what I make? (Paused for a second... then began...)
"Well, I make recruits work harder than they ever thought they could.
I make a passing grade feel like the Congressional Medal of Honor.
I make recruits sit through 50 minutes of class time when others cannot make them sit for 5 minutes without being entertained... You want to know what I make?
(Pausing again, and looking at each and every person at the table.)
I make them wonder.
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them experience what they need to know.
I make them have respect and take responsibility for their actions.
I teach them to communicate and then I make them communicate.
I make them listen, see and learn.
I make them show all their efforts in problem solving.
I make my students from other countries learn everything they need to know in English.
I make my training space a place where all my recruits and students learn safety and survival as well as job application to achieve the goal set for them.
I make my students stand at attention to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, Because we are a vital part of... and represent... the United States of America.
Finally, I make them understand that if they use the gifts they were given... the knowledge and the experience they receive... apply them well in hard work... and follow their hearts... they can succeed in life and profession.
(Pausing one last time... and then continuing.)
"Then, when people try to judge me by the dollars I make and the position that I hold in life, I can hold my head up high and pay no attention because they are ignorant... You want to know what I make?

I MAKE A DIFFERENCE... What do you make?"

Full Story Can Be Viewed At:
http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2006/article/010807chaplain.htm

HAPPY NEW YEAR
I receive many verbal and written well wishes for a happy new year... and I deeply appreciate the good wishes that are being extended to me... I know that the best of intentions and attitudes are being extended to me for my well being. I absorb the
well wishes and store them away for future use and enjoyment.

Full Story Can Be Viewed At:
http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2006/article/010107chaplain.htm

BUMPER STICKER


	I don't care, and I can't seem to find my way around that

CONTACT INFORMATION

The Blackwater Tactical Weekly is a free weekly e-publication.

The BTW provides readers valuable information from diverse sources regarding tactical and strategic security issues.

Editor-in-Chief – Gary Jackson (btw@blackwaterusa.com)
Managing Editor – Brent Heminger (btw@blackwaterusa.com)
IT Manager– J Harrison (jharrison@blackwaterusa.com)
Frank’s Review – Frank Borelli (frank@borelliconsulting.com)
Chaplain’s Corner - Chaplain D. R. Staton(chpln1@verizon.net)
Advertising – David Niccolini (niccolini@terrorism.com)

Questions regarding Security Consulting or Training at Blackwater (252) 435-2488

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1st Monday of Month First Responder
2nd Monday of Month Military
3rd Monday of Month Homeland Security
4th Monday of Month Corporate Security
5th Monday of Month (if applicable) Editor’s Choice

The weekly theme may change at the discretion of the Editor based on current events.

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Blackwater USA (the "Company"), provides this Newsletter as a source of diverse information to its readers. The Company does not warrant or endorse the products or services advertised in or reviewed in the Newsletter. The views and statements of the reviewers and commentators presented in the Newsletter are entirely their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Company or its affiliates. The Company does not monitor or warrant the accuracy or reliability of the material provided in this Newsletter or presented at any of the third-party websites to which links are provided in this Newsletter. WARNING: Use of certain of the products and services discussed or reviewed in this Newsletter can lead to personal injury or death. It is critical to follow manufacturers' instructions in using such products or services. The Company will not accept any liability for damages, injuries, or death resulting from the use or misuse of any such products or services.