Those interested in the hunt for Usama bin Laden would be well served to read the Newsweek report on the ever-continuing hunt. Consider it a concise version of Woodward's "Bush at War" and Gary Berntsen's "Jawbreaker" with additional contemporary, reporting. Here are some snips.

This part would have made me laugh if it wasn't so serious and disappointing. Instead I just shook my head...

The Iraq War, meanwhile, has proved to be a black hole for the Americans, devouring men and material and absorbing the attention of the brass in Washington. In 2005, the CIA gave President Bush a secret slide show on the hunt for bin Laden. The president was taken aback by the small number of CIA case officers posted to Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Is that all there are?" the president asked, according to a former intelligence official, who declined to be identified discussing White House meetings. The CIA had already embarked on a "surge" of sorts, and doubled the number of officers in the field. But many were inexperienced and raw recruits, and they produced little improvement in "actionable" intelligence.

But it is encouraging to hear members of the military brain admitting these truisms

In recent months, says John Arquilla, a Special Ops expert at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., the U.S. military has achieved a 100-to-1 kill ratio (100 dead guerrillas to every American). But by calling in airstrikes, the Americans also kill a lot of civilians, which breeds more jihadists. And according to Thomas Johnson, also at the Naval Postgraduate School, the military's continued fixation on body counts and kill ratios is irrelevant and even counterproductive. "When you kill a person it's a multiplication factor. It demands that all the male relatives join the fight."

I, of course, have been saying this for years.

Continuing...

Johnson, an Afghan expert, spent last February at Forward Operating Base Salerno near the Pakistan border, briefing commanders on the tribal custom of Pashtunwali. He says only about 5 percent of American troops in Afghanistan ever leave their bases—a statistic, he believes, that explains better than any other why Americans are struggling in the battle for intelligence. He says most soldiers in Afghanistan don't know simple phrases like "stop," "go," or "put your hands up." Americans continually make cultural blunders, like using canine units to search people's homes (dogs are considered unclean in Muslim culture). Meanwhile the Taliban works at winning the trust and confidence of villagers—or intimidating them. "They go into villages and say, 'The Americans have the watches but we have the time. We might not come back in a week or a year, but you bet your britches we'll eventually come back'," says Johnson.

If the White House wants to use historical "comparisons" this one should definitely be first of their list...

During the early days of the cold war, the old boys who ran the CIA began to reason that when it came to fighting against an underhanded foe in a battle for global survival, the rules of fair play they had learned as schoolboys no longer applied. If the communists fight dirty, we must, too, they rationalized—or freedom would perish. This ends-justifying-the-means rationale led to foolish and ultimately unsuccessful assassination plots and other dirty tricks that disgraced and demoralized the CIA when the agency's so-called Crown Jewels were revealed during Watergate. After 9/11, Bush administration officials, particularly Vice President Cheney, vowed to take the gloves off against Al Qaeda.

or maybe this on Bush's reeducation camps in his Vietnam-Iraq misrepresentation from last week

The danger now, says Arquilla, is that the longer the Iraq War goes on, the more skilled the new generations of jihadists will become. "They're getting re-educated," he says. "The first generation of Al Qaeda came through the [Afghan] camps. The second generation are those who've logged on [to Islamist Web sites]. The next generation will be those who have come through the crucible of Iraq. Eventually, their level of skill is going to be greater than the skill of the original generation."

Labels: Afghanistan, Bush, Cheney, counter terrorism, foreign policy, Iraq, Osama bin Laden, terrorism

This comes from a post at National Security Intelligence by Tom Quiggin (his work was celebrated here) and Sir Richard Dearlove. The post was the first in a pair that argue that secrecy, while necessary in certain circumstances, can in fact hinder the counter terrorism process, among other things... I'll leave interested readers free to read the posts but want to archive the "rules" here and comment. They write...

Louise Richardson, author of The Roots of Terrorism, spells out six rules for countering terrorism to which we can add a seventh. They are:

• Have a defensible and achievable goal;

• Live by your principles – don’t be goaded by the terrorist into behaving differently;

• Know your enemy, intimately;

• Isolate terrorists within their own communities;

• Engage others in countering terrorism with you;

• Have patience and keep your perspective – be prepared for the long-term;

• Build a process which is unambiguous and can function strategically and operationally and in is open-ended.

In order of appearance... I don't think eradicating terrorism is a "defensible" goal. Limiting it and starving it of sustenance is better. President Bush seemed to be on the verge of getting this in his recent press conference when he said "[i]t matters to the security of people here at home if we don't work to change the conditions that cause 19 kids to be lured onto airplanes to come and murder our citizens." He was speaking of Iraq here so he still hasn't comprehended the fact that Iraq is precisely the condition he is referring to.

"Live by you principles." Good God we have lost that round. PATRIOT ACT, FISA, unilateralism, torture, habeas corpus...

"Know your enemy." What is the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite? And a Kurd? What is the difference al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and al Qaeda of 9/11 and all the other al Qaeda outfits. The difference between al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and a Baathist insurgent? They are not all the same and saying they are is lowest common denominator drivel for the masses and does nothing for the war and much for propaganda.

Isolate to terrorists. That's hard to do, especially when your actions facilitate there survival. They are everywhere, anywhere; but at the same time nowhere.

Accept the help of others. Mixed bag. We went into Afghanistan with the international community, although some (Rummy and Cheney) wanted otherwise. Those two won the argument as we went into Iraq (with little genuine international support). Now we're begging for a larger UN presence. And you know what? We're lucky for it. If the UN had the belligerence of some in the Bush Administration they'd ignore us. Furthermore, we skip opportunities to try to incorporate enemies (Syria and Iran) into our effort. Without exploring this avenue we not only dump the precedent of talking to our enemies we leave a stone unturned.

Prepare for the long-term. Meaning don't use (the threat of) terrorism for politics. Short-term gains against terrorism often give terrorist a rhetorical card to use in the long-term (justification for actions and recruitment). It should be clear that the "long war" will not be won with a military. Especially without a viable political track. Iraq is making that painfully clear.

Open-endedness. best covered by Quiggin: "This will require training and practice exercises, as well as scenario planning and building capacity. Little point exists for working in stove pipes which merely come together, if at all, at the top level. Stated another way, we need to escape from the tyranny of the tactical and advance to a strategic, whole-of-government approach."

Labels: Afghanistan, counter terrorism, foreign policy, Iraq, WoT