General McChrystal Returns Home

General Stanley McChrystal was in charge and responsible for the Afghanistan theater of war, a difficult and dangerous place where men under his command were dying every week. It was the hottest war zone at the time President Obama took office, and was the theater of operations that the president had been saying for years was where we should be fighting, where we should be placing our major military efforts to confront the terrorists responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center. It was the good war, so he said. It was the right war to fight, as opposed to that bad, unwinnable war in Iraq that Senator Obama had criticized President Bush and candidate McCain over, as he did, over and over again. And yet after all this rhetoric and political grandstanding, upon winning the office of the presidency he completely ignored General McChrystal and his command in Afghanistan.

In March of 2009 President Obama had given General McChyrstal the mission to secure the population and destroy the terrorists that oppose us. McChystal generated a plan to pacify the area. The plan was geared toward killing the Taliban. To that end General McChrystal needed a significant increase in force to provide security and safety to the population areas while McChyrstal and his special ops units would go out at night to seek and kill the enemy. As the Washington Post reviewed in this article of December 2009, the general submitted his plan in August of 2009. On reviewing the plan in September, the president was frustrated by the plan's call to increase the force strength deployed. The plan's stated goal of destroying the terrorists that opposed us was thought by the president as a fools errand. Apparently he considered that to be a goal that was impossible to achieve. In answer, General McChyrstal replied that it was needed to complete his mission of destroying the terrorists forces that oppose us. Frustrated, the President stated he desired to stabilize and keep secure the Afghani government. The general had to refer the president back to his original order of March of 2009 before President Obama realized that the plan before him was directed to achieving the goals he had asked General McChyrstal to achieve.

To this plan President Obama said nothing...for months... while McChyrstal and his command continued to take casualties in a war the president clearly was not committed to fighting. Finally, after months of deliberations, months of political posturing, months of trillion dollar bailouts and private industry take overs, the President approved a plan for a surge in Afghanistan troop levels, but at only the minimum level McChyrstal thought was possible to have any chance of success.

The president supplied General McChyrstal with conflicting orders, conflicting goals, extreme delays in response, and in all this time only met with General McChrystal twice. Then the Rolling stone article came out. Suddenly General Stanley McChystal is summoned to Washington to meet with the President. Suddenly the President's war in Afghanistan was an item of interest. Suddenly the commander in chief is chapped and we're being distracted from an enormously important mission. It's ass kicking time.

No Mr. President, what you're up to isn't ass kicking. Ass kicking was what Stanley McChystal and his special ops guys were all about, going out into the dark of night to locate and kill a deadly enemy in a war that you left him and his command to fight.

Now he is stateside, and his command is the worse for it.

What the...?

Can you believe this scanner?

Creeps me out.




So this will keep our traveler's safe from attack. No effort to allow security to develop a sense of risk assessment and judgment. Just on going and further intrusion into the privacy of the people, all of whom are innocent.

This woman knows she is not a terrorist. And anyone with any sense at all would know that as well without gazing at her naked bod as she passes through a body image scanner. So the whole thing is just gratuitous. She and the millions of others like her will not be blowing up the plane, yet some scan boy will now be gazing at her to keep us all "secure".

Don't bother me with this stuff. We are in no way serious about security.

Exactly

A red bag used by baggage terminal employees caused a major scare at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport today.



























"I think that we're going to continue to have these scares -- it comes with the territory," said consumer travel expert Chris Elliott.

The red bag in question is what is known as a "last bag," used by baggage handlers to signify that all the bags have been moved through. In other words, it was an ordinary bag used routinely by the airport employees.

Bags are not the problem.

As we saw on an earlier post, Israeli security experts stress that the key to security is to control who comes into the airport. Accessing people and their intentions is the essential job of security. If a person has no ill intention, it matters not what he has in his bag. Consistently making correct judgments is a goal that trained individuals can achieve, and is the best deterrent to terrorism. But this cannot be achieved if security personal have to worry about the political ramifications of making screening and denial of entry decisions.

An unaccounted bag should never frighten the public and close an airport. If it does, the terrorists are more than halfway home.

Asked if the practice of using such a bag would end because of this, Hogan said he didn't think so. But, "this particular bag won't be used again."

Nice.

"And then there's intelligence"

With the recent wave of increased 'security' measures at US airports following the failed Christmas Day attack of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, not a few US citizens are wondering if these measures will do anything to make traveling safe. Cathal Kelly took a look at this with his most recent article.

Israeli security expert Rafi Sela finds the process "mind boggeling", and I don't think he means that as a complement. He stresses there is far less delay imposed by Israeli airport security than what is demanded of passangers here in the United States:

"That's because they're not looking for liquids, they're not looking at your shoes. They're not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you," said Sela.

It follows then that they are not looking for Muslims or Arabs or people named Mohammed either. Good news, as they are surrounded by a sea of them. No, they are looking for something else. To see it requires the use of judgment, and judging one's surroundings is seen as a good thing. The people of Israel trust the judgment of their security personal. Their lives depend on the people they place their trust in being able to 'see' what it is they are looking for.

For our part, we trust no one's judgment, least of all our security people. Experience shows us our security personnel do not exercise judgment. They are trained to treat each of us as an equally likely criminal suspect and slog through the sea of human travelers with the grace of elephants. They exercise no judgment, and in turn we not only have no trust in them, but by and large hold the security they provide in utter contempt.

No, our way shall be to continue to check everyone's luggage, make everyone take off their shoes, and now will shall also make them sit quietly with hands visible on their knees for an entire hour prior to landings... all to no avail, for we shall be no safer.

Simply put, our leadership has refused to task security to look for those things that truly make a person dangerous.

What to do?

The Hyacinth Girl has underscored a certain inconsistency on the part of our current president. Following her link to its source we have the following quote from the CIA:

‘One day the President is pointing the finger and blaming the intelligence services, saying there is a systemic failure,’ said one agency official. ‘Now we are heroes. The fact is that we are doing everything humanly possible to stay on top of the security situation. The deaths of our operatives shows just how involved we are on the ground.'

Well, the two are not mutually exclusive. Putting one's life in harms way is not the same as adequately defending one's country. The problem is not with a lack of willingness on the part of our service people and CIA agents. The problem is in a failure to recognize the ineffective and failed policies of the current administration. Investigating and charging CIA interrogators is the result of a political decision implemented to advance the president's domestic agenda by increasing his approval with his supporters at home, while callously leaving those very same CIA agents to twist in the wind. These actions not only wrongly punish those people that have kept America from further attack, but they demoralize our agents and undermine our current efforts to defend the country and keep her citizens safe.

This isn't rocket science, Barry. The reading of Miranda rights to enemy combatants captured in the field to prepare them for a civilain trial here at home makes as much sense as releasing Gitmo detainees to Yemen, with the stipulation that they complete an art-rehabilitation therapy program in Saudi Arabia(?!). It matches nicely the thinking that brings the 9/11 terrorists to a civilian trial in New York City. These are all part of the same kind of stupid.

The CIA cannot keep America safe, Mr. President, because the policies which you have chosen to pursue are incompatible with a successful anti-terror strategy. Your decisions in this regard match your vocal opposition against the Iraq surge policy in their gutlessness, stupidity and political calculation.

If you want to know what is needed, consider giving George W. Bush a call. He's always been a straight shooter.

Understanding the 'incomprehensible'

As Miss Carnivorous points out, a recent AFP article describing airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a well-mannered, well-educated individual with a bright future seems at odds with his efforts to kill himself and a large number of total strangers. Abdulmutallab's own family seemed to find it difficult to understand. However,

if one believes this:

"Farouk was a devoted Muslim who took his religion seriously and was committed to his studies,"

why in the world would anyone conclude this:

"He was such a brilliant boy and nobody in the family had the slightest thought he could do something as insane as this"

Experience tells us just the opposite. It is the well-to-do, well-educated devoted Muslims that are most likely to stuff C4 next to their privates, purchase a one way ticket to Detroit, board the plane and detonate in flight, thereby killing themselves and whomever else might be around, in this case 290 innocent bystanders whose loss of life would have been the means by which the young devoted Islamist would have advanced his message of jihad.

I can understand the dolts at homeland security refusing to recognize the obvious - they have been poisoned by a pc ideology that has crippled their ability to think, and stifled their ability to speak. But why would a Nigerian be thus affected? The comments do seem at odds with the fact that his father reported him to the US Embassy and the Nigerian Intelligence Agency a couple of months before the attack.

In a recent address, President Obama has finally made the link betwen the Christmas Day bomber and al-Qaeda:

“We know that [Abdulmutallab] travelled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies,” Obama says. “It appears that he joined an affiliate of al-Qaeda, and that this group, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America.”

Of course, he is nine days late, and his allusion to Yemen poverty reflects his own inability to come to terms wth reality. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was not impoverished. The story of radical Islamist jihad has nothing to do with poverty, and mentioning this irrelevance serves only to cloud the issue.

Miss Carnivorous is correct: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is an Islamist fanatical zealot. We need know nothing more than this to understand the story.

The bad news is, he is not alone, and those that are in charge of our security refer to him simply as ... a Nigerian.