| April 23, 2007 Edition |
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On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs "Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always, even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for?" - William J. Bennett In a lecture to the United States Naval Academy November 24, 1997 One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: "Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident." This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another. Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million. Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep. I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the pretty, blue robin's egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers and other warriors are like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful. For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators. "Then there are the wolves," the old war veteran said, "and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy." Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial. Full Story |
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| QUOTE OF THE WEEK |
| "I am only one, but I am one. I can not do everything, but I can do something. And because I can not do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do I should do. And what I should do, by the Grace of God, I will do." Edward Everett Hale |
| PROFESSIONAL ARTICLES, EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS |
Our Worst NightmareThe horrifying killings at Virginia Tech on Monday leave us grieving and troubled. They also leave us -- especially those like me who lead colleges and universities -- with difficult questions to ask and, then, to try to answer.The most complex and emotional question is: Could this massacre have been prevented by getting Cho Seung Hui into counseling -- or, as some have suggested, by removing this young man from Virginia Tech's campus? This is a university administrator's nightmare. GW was in the news last year for its attempts to serve the best interests of a student who had sought mental health treatment, while also considering the well-being of all of our students. Ultimately, the university decided that an interim involuntary leave was the best course of action to protect a life. We were sued by the former student, and the media and others were quick to fault the university. (The case has been settled.) Had the student stayed at GW and hurt himself or others, it's likely the criticism would have been that the university should have done even more. We probably still would have faced a lawsuit. In this case, we stand by the result that a life may have been saved. And we needed to have been thoughtful in our adjudication process. For Virginia Tech, no amount of armchair quarterbacking will explain why Cho did what he did or how this tragedy might have been prevented. Why didn't treatment help? Could administrators have taken different action based on Cho's creative writing and the threats now perceived in those writings? Could his parents have done more? First, you can't force someone to continue treatment. Second, under federal and local laws and regulations, a university must identify a direct threat of harm by an individual to himself or to others before taking defined administrative or judicial actions. We do not have sufficient information to pass judgment on Virginia Tech, nor would I commit such an unfair act. Media reports and expert consultants offer black-and-white solutions to these complicated issues, which require nuanced professional judgments. Finally, local, state and federal authorities also are limited in how they can respond to perceived threats. A potentially abusive, violent or homicidal person must make a legally plausible threat or act before security enforcement officials can respond. The choices available create conflict, anxiety, criticism and, unfortunately, sometimes casualties. Full Story McCain v. Reid"We, who are willing to support this new strategy, and give General Petraeus the time and support he needs, have chosen a hard road. But it is the right road. It is necessary and just. Democrats, who deny our soldiers the means to prevent an American defeat, have chosen another road. It may appear to be the easier course of action, but it is a much more reckless one, and it does them no credit even if it gives them an advantage in the next election. This is an historic choice, with ramifications for Americans not even born yet. Let's put aside for a moment the small politics of the day. The judgment of history should be the approval we seek, not the temporary favor of the latest public opinion poll." Sen. John McCain (R-Az.), speaking at the Virginia Military Institute, April 11, 2007"We're going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war. Senator Schumer has shown me numbers that are compelling and astounding." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), speaking to reporters, April 12, 2007 "This war is lost." Reid, April 19, 2007 Usually, politics is a murky business - gray upon gray, one set of mixed motives jostling with another. But sometimes there is a time for choosing - between courage and cynicism, between honor and disgrace. Full Story A Moment of SilenceWhat can be said about the Virginia Tech massacre? Very little. What should be said? Even less. The lives of 32 innocents, chosen randomly and without purpose, are extinguished most brutally by a deeply disturbed gunman. With an event such as this, consisting of nothing but suffering and tragedy, the only important questions are those of theodicy, of divine justice. Unfortunately, in today's supercharged political atmosphere, there is the inevitable rush to get ideological mileage out of the carnage.It did not take long for the perennial debate about gun control to break out, preceded by the inevitable scolding and clucking abroad about America's lax gun laws. It is true that with far stricter gun laws, Cho Seung Hui might have had a harder time getting the weapons and ammunition needed to kill so relentlessly. Nonetheless, we should have no illusions about what laws can do. There are other ways to kill in large numbers, as Timothy McVeigh demonstrated. Determined killers will obtain guns no matter how strict the laws. And stricter controls could also keep guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens using them in self-defense. The psychotic mass murder is rare; the armed household burglary is not. Full Story |
| BREAKING NEWS FOR THE PROFESSIONAL |
Bush: Comforter-in-ChiefFor several hours on Tuesday, the politics simply stopped. President Bush, accompanied by his wife, Laura, left the White House to visit Virginia Tech, leaving behind all the debates that have tormented his second term - from Iraq to the firing of the U.S. attorneys, and everything in between. The White House even refrained from sending out its daily press release tracking how much time has elapsed since Bush forwarded a new war-funding request to Congress. With that fight delayed for another day, Bush's schedule was entirely devoted to grieving for the victims of the worst mass shooting in the nation's history. Arriving in Blacksburg, about four hours south of Washington, Bush joined several thousand people at a memorial service in honor of the students and faculty killed on Monday. He addressed the crowd for about 10 minutes and spent nearly an hour after the ceremony meeting one-on-one with more than 50 family members of the fallen - something he often does with military families who have lost loved ones in Iraq.Full Story We Have Met the EnemyIn the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, the word I keep hearing again and again during television coverage is "shocking." It made me wonder if I am really that far out of touch with this country. Because I wasn't shocked. I am not trying to be flippant or disrespectful. Like everyone else, I was horrified by the events on the Blacksburg campus. And I grieve for the families and friends of the victims. But it was 41 years ago that an ex-Marine named Charles Whitman went into the tower at the University of Texas in Austin and began poaching students, killing 16 people and wounding another 31. Back then I was genuinely shocked. But after Columbine, after the killings in the Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pa., after multiple murders on more than a handful of campuses across the nation in the past decade, how can we still claim to be shocked when it happens again?Full Story Troops in Diyala Face A Skilled, Flexible FoeThe pale blue light inside the Chinook helicopter cast a faint glow on the young soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, tensed for battle. They crossed themselves and bowed their heads. The battalion was flying in the middle of the night toward an Iraqi village, one unexplored by American troops and believed to be dominated by Sunni insurgents. The troops had heard the stories -- militant camps hidden in palm groves, underground torture prisons, sniper teams on rooftops -- and were ready for a fight. As a lone soldier had roared on the tarmac amid the thudding rotors: "Battle hard!" But when the 600 soldiers descended on Buhriz al-Barra with machine guns and night-vision lenses early Monday, they found the village largely devoid of men. Soldiers fanned out from the rocky field where they had landed, combing riverbanks, palm groves and hundreds of concrete and cinder-block homes, only to find many abandoned and others inhabited only by nervous women and children.Full Story Attacks likely first part of al Qaeda plot, officials sayNorth African authorities say a wave of suicide attacks in Morocco and Algeria over the past week may be the first phase of an al Qaeda plot drafted in Sudan three years ago. The plan calls for a reign of terror, implantation of guerrilla units in mountain hideouts, a paralysis of Algerian oil supplies and of tourist resorts in Tunisia and Morocco, a senior North African official said. Other officials said last week's bombings in Algiers, which killed 33 persons and wounded 22, and a series of suicide explosions in Casablanca, Morocco's main port, may signal the start of the campaign. Algerian officials said the original plot called for the area known as the Maghreb, spanning Africa's Mediterranean coast, to be plunged into a reign of terror reminiscent of the "decade of blood" waged by Islamic fanatics in Algeria in the 1990s, which claimed 100,000 victims.Full Story MI5 uses paedophile-tracking tactics to monitor Muslim extremistsMI5 is adopting tactics used by the police to keep tabs on paedophiles and other sex offenders to monitor the activities of known or suspected Islamic extremists, The Times has learnt. The threat from radicalised young Muslims is growing at such a rate that MI5 has realised that it needs the help of police officers on the streets to help it keep a check on extremists in their areas. The police keep track of known paedophiles by collating sightings of them and noting whom they meet and which areas they frequent - a tactic that MI5 sees as ideal for keeping track of the movements of Islamic extremists. Thousands of police officers on the beat in areas with large Pakistani communities - such as Birmingham, Leeds and London - will be expected to keep a lookout for young Muslims known to have become radicals.Full Story |
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| SECURITY FOR THE PROFESSIONAL |
Make No Mistake: This Is WarAs the rubble of the Twin Towers smoldered in 2001, no one could have imagined a day when America's leaders would be criticized for being tough in protecting Americans from further acts of war. ow, less than six years later, that day has arrived. Since Sept. 11, a conspiracy-minded fringe has claimed that American officials plotted the destruction. But when scholars such as Zbigniew Brzezinski accuse our leaders of falsely depicting or hyping a "war on terror" to promote a "culture of fear," it's clear that historical revisionism has gone mainstream. Brzezinski stated the obvious in describing terrorism as a tactic, not an enemy ["Terrorized by 'War on Terror,' Outlook, March 25]. But this misses the point. We are at war with a global movement and ideology whose members seek to advance totalitarian aims through terrorism. Brzezinski is deeply mistaken to mock the notion that we are at war and to suggest that we should adopt "more muted reactions" to acts of terrorism.Full Story Mystery of missing FBI agent in Iran deepensThe mystery surrounding a former FBI agent who disappeared while visiting Iran last month deepened on Thursday after Iranian authorities officially notified the US that they had no information about him. Sean McCormack, US state department spokesman, said Iran had sent a brief response to US inquiries through the usual Swiss diplomatic channels on Wednesday, stating that Iran had no record concerning the whereabouts of Robert Levinson. However, Mr McCormack added that the department had assured itself "to a great degree" that Mr Levinson, a 59-year-old private investigator and expert on organised crime who used to work for the FBI, was in fact in Iran. Associates of Mr Levinson fear he is the unwitting victim of an undeclared tit-for-tat series of hostage-taking between the US and Iran that began when the US seized five Iranian officials in northern Iraq in January.Full Story Aftermath of a Baghdad bombing: a reporter's viewThe most striking image, for me, was the old lady. She was wrapped in a black abaya, wandering through the wreckage of charred buses and mangled vehicles. She kept repeating: "This is doomsday. God is greatest." I also saw utter anger and disbelief among the residents and shopkeepers. Government officials I had reached by telephone and heard on state television earlier in the day insisted that the capital's security plan was still on track, despite suffering the biggest breach since it was launched in mid-February. The US and Iraqi forces may have reduced sectarian street fighting. But Al Qaeda is making its presence felt with major bombings. And the Iraqi government's comments only served to highlight the widening disconnect between the government based inside the well-guarded Green Zone and its people in what is commonly referred to by Westerners as the Red Zone. At the open-air food market, I saw Iraqis desperately clutching to shreds of normalcy.Full Story Fighting to WinAs Congress again takes up the issue of support for our troops fighting in Iraq, members should have the decency to take account of the successes those troops have fought for and achieved in recent weeks. Much of the support in the Democratic caucus for cutting off funds for Iraq comes from a conviction that the war is irretrievably lost. One could be excused for thinking that in the fall of 2006, when sectarian violence seemed to be cycling out of control against the backdrop of a wrong-headed U.S. strategy. But President Bush has adopted a new strategy, put in place a new command team, and provided new resources for the effort, and the situation has begun to improve. Failure remains possible, as it always does in war, but the possibility of victory has grown significantly. Prospects for success are brightest, moreover, in the struggle against al Qaeda--the challenge that many opponents of the war claim is America s only interest in Iraq. It would be the height of folly to cut off support for the war effort just as it is beginning to show glimmers of hope in a struggle central to the safety of all Americans. There is no question that Iraq has become the central front for al Qaeda in the world today. Thousands of foreign fighters flow along recruiting networks that span the Muslim world and into Iraq to attack our soldiers and the Iraqi people.Full Story Can Petraeus Pull It Off?The news from Iraq is, as usual, grim. Bombings, more bombings, and yet more bombings--that's all the world notices. It's easy to conclude that all is chaos. That's not true. Some parts of Iraq are in bad shape, but others are improving. I spent the first two weeks of April in Baghdad, with side trips to Baqubah, Ramadi, and Falluja. Along the way I talked to everyone from privates to generals, both American and Iraqi. I found that, while we may not yet be winning the war, our prospects are at least not deteriorating precipitously, as they were last year. When General David Petraeus took command in February, he called the situation "hard" but not "hopeless." Today there are some glimmers of hope in the unlikeliest of places. Until recently Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, was the most dangerous city in Iraq if not the world. It was run by al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which had declared it the capital of its Islamic State of Iraq. The Iraqi police presence was limited to one police station, which the police were afraid to leave. Soldiers and Marines engaged in heavy combat every day, losing hundreds of men since 2003, simply to avoid having insurgents overrun the government center and close down Route Michigan, the main street.Full Story |
| TACTICAL TRAINING & INTELLIGENCE RESOURCES FOR THE PROFESSIONAL |
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For more information, please visit www.blackwaterusanorth.com or call (815) 244-2900. FREE TERRORISM DAILY NEWSLETTERSince 1999, the Terrorism Research Center has provided a FREE daily compilation of the top terrorism and homeland security stories. Published as TRC's RealNews, the service has thousands of subscribers and is often referred to as the "terrorism early bird", in reference to the open source newsletter provided to senior government leaders each morning. If you are interested in terrorism, homeland security or other international security issues, you will find it an invaluable resource. Subscribe today! | |
| FRANKS REVIEW |
Tactical Equipment EvaluationFree Education Is A Good ThingIn the world of military and law enforcement operations there tends to be a huge amount of structured training. For all that there is, once the feces have hit the oscillating rotator, it hardly ever seems like you've been properly trained. Experience is the best teacher. Still, when you can gain more knowledge or learn a new skill, most of us try to. Better yet, when you can do so for free, there's no excuse NOT to. Enter the Police Officers Safety Association (POSA). POSA is a non-profit organization that distributes DVDs for free (you just pay shipping) about a variety of topics. This week we're going to look at the DVDs currently available and the value they represent.Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/evals/other/posadvds.htm Recreational Equipment ReviewLee's Gun BooksIn line with increasing our knowledge base, as started in this week's Tactical Equipment Evaluation, this week's recreational review is going to cover some gun maintenance information / manuals available from a gentleman named Lee Lynch. Having stepped into the 21st century, Lee makes his manuals available in soft copy on CD. As much as the current crop of gun "experts" all seem to be over fifty (and that's not criticism - I admire them for having survived in their choice of combat arms for so long) the next generation is more computer comfortable and happy to have reference material on CDs or in digital copy. Such a format certainly increases ease of transport and storage. One laptop: many reference manuals.Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/recevals/recreading/gunknowledge.htm r/t
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| CHAPLAINS CORNER |
TERROR STRIKES AGAINVirginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech) was the target of a single shooter who planned and carried out a methodical dispensation of injury and death.Much is being said about what could have been done to keep such attacks from happening. Much has been said about what could have been done to hinder the progress of the plan once it began. Much has been said about how the students in the classroom building could have been better protected during the time of the attack. No matter how much has been said or written, one thing is abundantly clear to those who must deal with such tragedy and deal those who perpetrate these actions upon others... As long as we have freedom and are allowed to move about freely there will be some among us who will concoct and execute plans of destruction because there are those who are emotionally against all of the freedom and independence... There are those among us who do these things because they do not love life and love others as most of us in this society love life and others. There are those who love darkness and destruction of all that has anything to do with light and life. These people do not even love their own existence. Something in them is different than most other people... Different in a mean, destructive way... Ultimately they live only to destroy. This destruction has been done in the past with restraints, knives, buried boxes and guns. This has been done in the past using every imaginable tool... and sometimes no tools at all. This has been done without shooting. I am an old Peace Keeper when it come to memory and experience. I have seen or know of such destruction being done in every imaginable way to victims of all ages, both sexes and all colors.... Sometimes with guns... Sometimes with other means. Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2007/article/042307chaplain.htm
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