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» JenL_2 - Interrogating the Enemy

Two articles on Interrogation of Al Qaeda captives from 4/21 Washington Post and 4/26 WSJ - both published at MSNBC.com:

<img src="http://www.msnbc.com/news/1459317.jpg" width=220 height=337 align="left">A detainee is escorted by guards inside Camp X-Ray while a tower guard watches the perimeter of the U.S. Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Al Qaeda interrogations being hampered

Bureaucracy, problems with linguists slow military’s work

By John Mintz
THE WASHINGTON POST

April 21 — The effort to obtain information from al Qaeda and Taliban fighters detained at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba has been hampered by inexperienced interrogators and linguists, military bureaucracy and squabbles among private language contractors, according to sources familiar with the government’s mission there.

WITH MANY of its best interrogators and speakers of Middle Eastern dialects dispatched to Afghanistan, the military has been forced to rely on some underqualified officers who are overmatched by captives trained in methods of evasion, according to people familiar with the interrogations. In a few cases, young questioners in uniform were conducting some of their first interrogations.

“Some of the interrogators are very inexperienced, nervous,” said one linguist stationed at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, where 299 detainees are being questioned. “They twist their pen 2,000 times a minute. The detainee is in full control. He’s chained up, but he’s the one having fun.”

Compounding the problem is a lack of familiarity with Middle Eastern terrorism among officers of the military’s Miami-based Southern Command (Southcom), which at times has impeded the flow of key intelligence to Guantanamo Bay interrogators, sources said. That has occasionally limited questioners’ ability to pursue lines of inquiry with the detainees, they said.

Moreover, two companies that have supplied linguists for some of the interrogations have squabbled bitterly with each other, according to knowledgeable officials in the public and private sectors.

These assessments by military officers and private contractors are the first glimpse of obstacles facing interrogators at Guantanamo Bay’s Camp X-Ray, the hastily built military jail where the Pentagon is holding some of its fiercest enemy captives.

Officials are trying to shake loose critical information to thwart future acts of terror, and perhaps build criminal cases against the fighters. It is difficult to determine the extent to which these linguistic and bureaucratic problems have hindered the intelligence-gathering effort, but they suggest that the United States is woefully short of some of the skills needed in the war on terror.

Army Col. Ron Williams, spokesman for Southcom, said that problems with interpreters and interrogators are temporary, and denied that any of them have been unable to handle the captives.

“I don’t know of cases where the detainee was in charge,” Williams said. “He may not give up information. It’s a mano a mano thing.” Rookie interrogators are getting better, he said, adding that “it takes a while to be competent in any field.”

Williams strenuously denied that Southcom has in any way stalled the movement of intelligence data to interrogators.

“In today’s world, moving intelligence information is almost instantaneous,” he said. “They build databases over in Afghanistan, and it’s shared by us, by Washington. Everybody knows the same things.”

But he acknowledged that interrogators sometimes don’t receive answers to intelligence queries they send up the chain to Southcom if they are deemed irrelevant.

Williams also conceded that Guantanamo Bay interpreters, along with linguists throughout the U.S. intelligence community, lack facility with the widely varying regional dialects of Arabic and other languages used by detainees, because military linguistic programs have deemphasized them for a decade.

A spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld did not respond to requests for comment.

20 PRISONERS COOPERATE

Even critics of the Guantanamo Bay interrogations said that most of the American personnel there are motivated and competent, and that some are top quality. U.S. officials say the interrogations have yielded a number of successes — some made public and some kept secret — that likely have prevented terrorist attacks.

In one grueling, hours-long session in February, a pair of Arabic-speaking FBI agents patiently pried loose information from one detainee that led to a worldwide alert for Fawaz Yahya Al-Rabeei, a Yemeni national, and 16 other al Qaeda members suspected of plotting an attack in the United States or Yemen.

Last week, U.S. prosecutors who charged American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh with conspiracy to murder Americans said in court papers that at least 20 of the detainees have given statements to interrogators.

But little other information has emerged about what is being learned at Guantanamo Bay and how the interrogations are conducted.

Camp X-Ray opened in January on a dusty, windswept field next to a rock-crushing operation at the U.S. naval base. The prisoners, flown by military transport jets from Afghanistan, are housed in chain-link pens and taken one by one to “interrogation booths” in two plywood huts. There their ankle chains are looped through bolts in the floor while they are questioned.

Controversy has dogged the operation since its inception. Human rights groups raised questions about the detainees’ treatment, arguing that they should be deemed prisoners of war. But the government maintains that the captives are treated humanely, with access to food and medical care.

Officials said many of the captives are likely to be held indefinitely, and a more permanent prison is under construction.

For decades, U.S. intelligence officials have increasingly relied on electronic eavesdropping and satellite imagery, and interrogation skills have slowly withered, experts said. While many of the 30 or so interrogators and an equal number of interpreters in Cuba are highly skilled, others lack the street smarts or strength of personality to manage an emotional confrontation, several sources said.

“A few of the interrogators just didn’t have what it takes,” said William Tierney, a former Army intelligence officer who worked as a contract Arabic linguist at Camp X-Ray for six weeks before losing his job in a dispute with superiors. “You have to be in control in an interrogation, and that just isn’t their personality. . . . Some younger interrogators addressed the detainees like they were friends at the malt shop.”

CULTURAL MISSTEP

One interpreter repeatedly interrupted an interrogator to remind him that he had previously posed the same questions earlier in that session - not realizing that it is a common tactic for interrogators.

One interrogator persisted in asking Taliban detainees for details about their wives, despite admonitions from others that Afghan men are likely to view such queries as insulting and would refuse to cooperate. That was the result.

One source who worked at Camp X-Ray said it was a mistake to assign women as interrogators; because of their religious and cultural beliefs, some detainees refuse to communicate with women on personal subjects. “You put a woman in front of him, he’ll say, ‘Go to hell,’ ” the source said.

Among the deficient interpreters Guantanamo Bay are some whose regular intelligence jobs involve interpreting taped foreign telephone conversations day after day, sources said. A number of them find it hard to engage in the sometimes emotionally charged interrogations, sources said, where they must mimic the interrogators’ tone of voice — yelling when they yell, whispering when they whisper.

One interpreter repeatedly interrupted an interrogator to remind him that he had previously posed the same questions earlier in that session — not realizing that it is a common tactic for interrogators to double back for more detail or to test the captive’s truthfulness.

In what some people called a cultural misstep, one of the contractors, Fairfax-based BTG, assigned an Iranian American man who speaks Farsi to interpret the replies of Afghan detainees who speak Dari. While the two languages are similar, they are different enough that the choice helped spark angry debate on the interrogation team, sources said.

“There’s an animosity of culture between Iranians and many Afghans,” said one source. “Afghans aren’t going to cooperate.”

Wil Williams, a BTG spokesman, denied there were any such problems, adding that there are now sufficient Dari speakers in Cuba.

OPERATION ‘SUCCESSFUL’

BTG is locked in bitter disputes with its smaller competitor, Maine-based Worldwide Language Resources, which also has employees in Cuba. One conflict arose when BTG successfully discredited a Worldwide employee who had worked with BTG a few weeks earlier but had been dismissed after a series of arguments, sources said. The Worldwide employee was removed from Guantanamo Bay.

“Yes, there’s friction between the companies,” said Larry Costa, Worldwide’s president. “When one of my guys shows up on the island and three hours later BTG has him run off, yes.”

BTG’s Williams denied that his company played a role in the removal of the man, and declined to comment on the corporate struggles.

Ron Williams of Southcom said the acrimony between the two firms has not harmed the intelligence-gathering effort, which he added has improved with the arrival last month of Army Reserve Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey as head of the interrogation unit, known as Joint Task Force (JTF) 170.

“This operation has been very successful,” Col. Williams said. “With the [creation] of JTF 170, the senior leadership being put on the ground, and the maturing of that task force, it’s getting even better.”

By all accounts, interrogators at Guantanamo Bay face a daunting challenge. Employed by the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other military units around the world, half have been assigned to gather information for use in possible criminal trials or military tribunals, and half are seeking intelligence for use in the military’s war on terrorism, sources said.

In a variety of ways, the message that interrogators transmit to the detainees is this: The sooner you give us verifiable information, the sooner you’ll know when you can leave here.

The interrogators script out an approach based on a psychological profile of each prisoner, deciding beforehand whether the order of the day will be yelling, an offer of cigarettes or a debate about the Koran.

“You try to help them find a plausible way they can explain to themselves ratting out their buddies,” one source said.

GLEANING A DETAIL

The first step in persuading an al Qaeda detainee to talk is breaking down the alibi he gave U.S. questioners in Afghanistan to explain why he was captured in the battle zone. Many offer a variation on two cover stories — that they were in Afghanistan to find a wife, or were teaching the Koran in a remote village and lived in a spare room off a mosque — suggesting the fighters had prepared their stories in advance.

The goal is to get the detainee talking, about even the most minor matters.

“Just being kind can help,” one source said. “It often breaks through their security training because they don’t expect it. . .’. If I have to stand on my head and whistle ‘Dixie’ to get them to talk, I do it.”

An interrogator will often spend hours asking whether a source knows any al Qaeda or Taliban fighters from lengthy lists of names. Oddly, after enough time, sometimes even the most hardened captive will own up. Then the questioner has what he has been waiting for: a detail to focus on.

The record, sources said, was a seven-hour interrogation.

The captives, who are held in open-air pens, quiz each other as they return from interrogation and their leaders are known to try to keep track of what information each detainee has divulged, sources said.

All the while, the information is entered into databases and meshed with other intelligence from Afghanistan and around the world. One avenue that has proved helpful is tracking the detainees through the clerics they follow, and matching them with others following the same leader.

But military sources said interrogators sometimes don’t receive answers when they direct intelligence-related questions to Southcom, where officials have next to no experience with Osama bin Laden and Muslim extremists.

“It’s a problem of having an operation [at Guantanamo Bay] that is outside the theater in which it originated” — Afghanistan — said one military officer. “There’s been a lot of wheel-spinning at Southcom.”

Another military officer with close ties to Southcom said that the interrogation process “would have been far superior” if it were being run by a different military unit, Central Command. That Tampa-based outfit is responsible for the Middle East, and is both prosecuting the war in Afghanistan and questioning hundreds of other detainees there.

Southcom’s Williams said his command is working closely and cooperatively with the Middle East experts at Central Command. “We’re on the phone with Centcom all the time,” he said, “and there’s absolutely no turf problem.”

Staff writers Thomas E. Ricks and Brooke A. Masters contributed to this report.

Making stubborn prisoners talk

Army interrogation school’s methods push tactical envelope

By Jess Bravin
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

FORT HUACHUCA, Ariz., April 26 — “Has anybody talked to you about lying?” instructor John Giersdorf asks his freshman class. “We expect you to lie a lot. Your job is to convince someone to do something that could get him executed for treason.”

THIS IS THE U.S. ARMY’S interrogation school, and Staff Sgt. Giersdorf, a veteran intelligence-operative who speaks Arabic, Czech and Russian, is teaching new recruits to extract information from al Qaeda and other captive foes. The job, he tells his students, “is just a hair’s-breadth away from being an illegal specialty under the Geneva Convention.”

Interrogators — the Pentagon renamed them “human intelligence collectors” last year — are authorized not just to lie, but to prey on a prisoner’s ethnic stereotypes, sexual urges and religious prejudices, his fear for his family’s safety, or his resentment of his fellows. They’ll do just about everything short of torture, which officials say is not taught here, to make their prisoners spill information that could save American lives.

Each year, 200 to 300 students enter the 16-week program at Fort Huachuca, an outpost in the Sonoran Desert that once housed U.S. cavalrymen pursuing Geronimo and Pancho Villa. Tallmadge Hall, a drab classroom building named for a Revolutionary War officer who spied on the Redcoats, houses 21 interrogation booths, where students practice their art as instructors watch on video monitors and grade them.

The U.S. is facing a shortage of experienced interrogators, as well as intelligence officers trained in Middle Eastern and South Asian languages. As of last September, says the fort’s deputy commander, Col. John M. Custer (a distant relative of Gen. George Custer), there were only a handful of instructors here who could speak Pashto or Urdu, languages common in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A DIFFERENT BREED

Interrogators also are finding that al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, with their fanatical hatred of the U.S. and apparent readiness to commit suicide for their cause, are a different breed than they’ve encountered in past conflicts. Some have responded, including Abu Zubaydah, the reputed al Qaeda leader who officials say prompted last Friday’s terrorism alert for Northeastern banks. But after months of interrogating prisoners in Afghanistan and at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, officials concede that it’s difficult to obtain information they can corroborate.

The Fort Huachuca course culminates in 10 days of field exercises using generic foreign powers: a fictitious U.S. ally, the Republic of Arizona, and its totalitarian nemesis, the People’s Republic of New Mexico. On five outdoor acres, students recruit counteragents, interview sources and capture enemies and grill them, while occasionally dealing with distractions such as visiting reporters and human-rights groups — all played by fellow soldiers.

The students, many under 20 years old, often enter Fort Huachuca fresh from basic training. About 80% pass the course, and then go on to language school.

Instruction begins by making students aware of the intelligence-gathering skills they already have. Sgt. First Class Anthony Novacek likes to use a romantic example: “You’re down at Jimbo’s Beach Shack, approaching unknown females,” he tells recruits. Success involves assessing the target, speaking her language, learning her needs and appearing to be the only way she can satisfy them.

Soldiers then study 30 techniques to make prisoners crack. One is the simple “incentive approach.” Around the world, “everyone smokes,” Sgt. Giersdorf tells students. “If you’ve ever talked to a captured Arab who hasn’t smoked for two hours, a pack of smokes can get you a long way.”

Some incentives, however, can be pure deceptions. Sgt. Giersdorf says prisoners may be told they could be repatriated if they cooperate, or that their wounded friends might get the best medical care, even though interrogators know that neither would happen. Other techniques involve considerably more pressure.

“Fear-up” employs “heavy-handed, table-banging violence,” an Army field manual says. “The interrogator behaves in a heavy, overpowering manner with a loud and threatening voice” and may “throw objects across the room to heighten the source’s implanted feelings of fear.”

THREAT: A U.S. PRISON

Interrogators can suggest plenty of things to frighten prisoners. One Federal Bureau of Investigation official says likely scenarios include being sent to a U.S. prison, where inmates might view terrorists as “lower than a child molester.” Equally threatening: repatriation to Afghanistan, to face justice under the new regime in Kabul.

“Fear-down,” in contrast, targets terrified prisoners. Interrogators try to calm them, asking about personal or family life, eventually interjecting the questions they really want answered. The technique “may backfire if allowed to go too far,” the manual cautions, raising a prisoner’s self-confidence to the point where he won’t feel he has to answer.

When all else fails, there’s “pride and ego down,” where interrogators belittle a prisoner’s “loyalty, intelligence, abilities, leadership qualities, slovenly appearance or any other perceived weakness,” the manual says. “It’s the last ditch,” says Sgt. First Class Katrina Cobb. “After you’ve spent time insulting someone and it doesn’t work, they’re not going to talk.”

Instructors say they sometimes are hamstrung by military regulations. During simulated interrogations, instructors portraying enemy prisoners are barred from using profanity, jumping wildly or making demeaning comments about a soldier’s race or sex. “We have to pull our punches all the time,” says one instructor, even though that leaves students unprepared for the unpleasantness of a real-life hostile interrogation.

The students get a day’s training in the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which govern the treatment of prisoners during wartime, and are cautioned that violating the treaty could bring prosecution. That means there are some lines they can’t cross — no truth serum, or physical or mental coercion, according to Army lawyers.

On the other hand, even the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors compliance with the treaty, says there’s room for interpretation. “The Geneva Conventions are not specific to the point of listing whatever forms of interrogations are or are not permissible,” says an ICRC spokesman, as long as they are not “degrading.”

Thus, Sgt. Giersdorf tells students, “You can put a source in any position you want. You can chain his legs to the chair, you can handcuff his hands behind him,” force him to stand at attention or have military police thrust him to the ground. “If [a prisoner] says it hurts, is it torture?” he asks.

“Yes,” say several students.

“No, it’s not,” the sergeant corrects. America’s allies, he says, go farther, placing prisoners into what he calls “stress positions” until they talk. Those aren’t taught here, he is quick to add, but “if you work with the Brits or the Dutch or the Germans, they can show you all about it.” In an interview, he says, “I’ve known people in the U.S. Army who have used stress positions.”

The Army judge advocate general’s corps keeps a lawyer on hand during interrogations, for quick decisions on the degree of physical or mental pressure allowed. “What we can get away with depends on them,” Sgt. Giersdorf explains. “One JAG officer might say it’s a go, another might say it’s torture.”

‘PRIDE AND EGO UP’

Depending on their personality, age and physical bearing, interrogators tend to prefer different approaches. “My favorite is ‘pride and ego up,’ ” says Spc. Carrie Clark, 26, of Stoneboro, Pa., because “you have to make them feel good, that you’re their best friend.” In it, a prisoner thought to have been “looked down upon for a long time” is flattered and made to feel that by providing information, he can “show someone that he does indeed have some ‘brains,’ ” the manual says.

Some students enter the school with Hollywood-movie notions of what interrogators do. “My dad makes jokes all the time about putting bamboo splinters under your fingernails,” says a budding interrogator, Pvt. 2 Andrea Jones, 18, of Lincoln, Mont. “You have this idea of going into a room with a bald light bulb, and a guy who tortures you,” she says. Spc. Robert Houser, 24, of San Antonio says he was inspired by the aggressive manner of a television detective. “I love Andy Sipowicz on ‘NYPD Blue,’ ” he says.

Despite such enthusiasm, instructors say today’s students often lack the “people skills” the trade demands. “All they know is hip-hop and Nintendo,” says Sgt. Novacek. Adds Sgt. First Class Kelly Sanders: “They don’t know how to initiate a conversation, or make small talk.”

Other students flinch when they realize that the information they obtain will be used to kill people. “You’re trying to get a target to drop a 2,000-pound bomb on,” Sgt. Giersdorf tells them. “What did you think the Air Force was going to do with those grid coordinates?”

Nevertheless, in class, students are starting to get a feel for the job. “While you’re talking to a source, can you load a gun or sharpen a knife?” one soldier asks eagerly.

“Don’t get caught doing it,” Sgt. Giersdorf replies. “I mean,” he corrects himself, “don’t do it.”

....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

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» BPyles - Possible terrorist attack Germany

German Police Warn of Possible Al Qaeda Attack
Last Updated: April 26, 2002 02:46 PM ET

BERLIN (Reuters) - German police have warned security officials that there could soon be an al Qaeda attack in Germany, a spokesman said Friday.

The German BKA criminal agency confirmed that it had sent a warning Tuesday to security officials warning of an attack over the next 20 days but said they did not know of a specific target or plan of action.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper said in its Saturday edition that an al Qaeda member from Pakistan had worked out a plan to take 300 to 400 hostages in Germany, France and Britain in an effort to win the freedom for al Qaeda prisoners.

"Even if there is not knowledge of a concrete target, place, time and modus operandi of a possible attack, one still has to assume a high threat because of the existence of members of the bin Laden network, especially on American, Israeli, Jewish and British sites in Germany," the BKA said in a statement.

In recent days, German authorities have repeatedly warned about the possibility of attacks against such institutions inside Germany. But they have also said they did not know of any concrete attack plans.

Thursday, authorities remanded in custody nine suspected members of an extremist Palestinian Islamic group.

Germany has kept a careful eye on extremists since it emerged that three of the suicide hijackers who carried out the September 11 attacks on the United States, including the presumed leader, had lived in Hamburg.

Washington blames Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network for the suicide attacks.

Officials again stepped up security precautions after an attack in Tunisia earlier this month killed 11 Germans.

-- posted by BPyles

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» JenL_2 - Re: The New Arsenal

More from the Defence Spending Report in WSJ:

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<img src="http://www.suite101.com/files/mysites/je..." width=204 height=228 align="left">Already on Board

Amid all the talk of transformation, one weapons system is ready to see some action

By CHIP CUMMINS

WASHINGTON -- When the USS John F. Kennedy arrived in the Arabian Sea to support the war in Afghanistan earlier this month, the aircraft carrier carried with it a revolutionary air-defense system designed to outfox the most sophisticated enemy attacks.

The Cooperative Engagement Capability, or CEC, isn't a new missile or radar. It's an advanced radio network that links radar and other sensors from several ships, greatly expanding their scope of vision. Despite all the talk about unconventional threats after Sept. 11, the biggest worry for commanders at sea is still a missile attack.

With the system, a commander aboard one ship can see exactly what another ship miles away can see. CEC allows ships tied together in a network to look around radar jamming and bursts of chaff -- thin strips of tinfoil that can mask an approaching missile. It expands a ship's vision beyond its own radar horizon, giving it more time to respond to an incoming missile or hostile aircraft.

"It changes how you think about air defense," says Navy Capt. Brad Hicks, the former commander of an Aegis-class cruiser that has tested the system. "It changes how you think about battle space." Capt. Hicks now heads a Navy network-development program at the Pentagon, which is pushing the Department of Defense to approve large-scale production of CEC.

Out of the Lab

Every year, the Pentagon rolls out dozens of promising new weapons, gadgets and technologies that it is eager to develop. Defense officials announced this month that designers are now working on portable, remote-controlled surveillance aircraft that soldiers can carry with them to peek over enemy lines. Scientists are also building a spectral-analysis system that combs video and radar pictures to identify enemy tanks under trees and brush. Also on the drawing board is a data system to link mine-clearing soldiers in the field with lab experts who can coach them through defusing tricky explosives.

Many of these bold new ideas never make it past the lab. But after more than a dozen years and $2 billion in development and preliminary production costs, CEC is now on 10 ships and has made its war-zone debut aboard the Kennedy.

To boosters at the Pentagon, CEC is much more than an experimental project that actually works. It is also the first battle-ready system that moves the U.S. military toward "network-centric warfare," now a cornerstone of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's promised military transformation. Network-centric warfare strives to link warships, aircraft and tank columns by bringing them all together in a real-time information network that provides a single, complete picture of a battlefield.

But so far, network-centric warfare is mainly a concept. The Department of Defense "is sort of struggling with what direction to go in, in terms of network-centric warfare," says Capt. Dan Busch, who retired this month as CEC's project manager. "People talk network-centric warfare, but we have something."

Designers have drawn up plans to expand CEC beyond warships, installing the system aboard carrier-based E-2C Hawkeye surveillance planes which will further extend a ship's radar picture. The Defense Department has tested the system on Army Patriot missile batteries.

Scientists dreamed up the idea for CEC in the mid-1980s. For much of the next decade, the program went from extensive lab work and experimentation to testing aboard a handful of Navy ships.

A final operational test that took place last May was two years late, after designers struggled to integrate CEC's complicated radio with different shipboard radar and weapons systems, many of which are made by several different contractors. More recently, questions have been raised about whether CEC has been overtaken by Internet-age advances in technology that can zap much more data over satellite links.

Its supporters admit that CEC has limitations, but say the Navy needs the capabilities it has now and can't wait for a perfect system to be developed.

In a windowless room on the campus of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory near Baltimore, engineer Gary P. Gafke runs a simulation of CEC that shows what it does have to offer. In front of him are several computer terminals, each below a framed photograph of a Navy ship. The terminals are miniature versions of the large air-warfare tracking screens located in a ship's Combat Information Center, where commanders huddle during a fight.

Tiny Blips

On non-CEC Navy ships, air-traffic controllers track air "contacts," tiny blips denoting airplanes or missiles, picked up by the ship's own radar. They sort through dozens more that other ships report to each other over slow and relatively crude radio networks. Controllers have to make sure a single contact isn't being reported and tracked many times over by different ships. Friendly aircraft are hard to distinguish from hostile ones. And the data links update only about every 10 seconds, too slow to keep up with an incoming missile that a ship can't see on its own radar. In many cases, one ship's picture of the battle can be significantly different from that of another ship steaming just a few thousand yards away.

CEC solves many of these problems. A radio antenna sends real-time contact information back and forth between ships. In a simulation Mr. Gafke runs at the lab, the USS Nimitz, an aircraft carrier, and the USS Cape St. George, a guided-missile cruiser, are operating in the North Sea, tracking more than 100 air contacts flying over a 500-square-mile patch of ocean.

The Same Picture

Because CEC's information flow is nearly instantaneous, "that picture on that ship will look like that picture on that ship," Mr. Gafke says, pointing back and forth between two terminals, each blinking with colored geometric shapes denoting ships and airplanes. "The [captains] of these ships can make decisions using the same picture."

The information also ends up being much more accurate since tracks generated on the display come from measurements from several different ships' sensors. If a ship's radar is being jammed or confused by chaff, it can use radar information from a sister ship to defend itself. If a ship can't see an incoming missile on its own radar because it's too far out, it can target and shoot it down anyway using radar information from another CEC-linked ship.

"It allows me to shoot even if I'm having a bad radar day," says Tony Gecan, a systems engineer for Raytheon Co., Lexington, Mass., which is building the system for the Navy.

But the system also has some major drawbacks, according to a growing number of critics. Its current hardware and software are configured to link up only a handful of ships, though the actual number is classified. Designers have also run into trouble hooking the system up with all the separate radar systems it is designed to work with. And the system's radio antenna, built to transmit through heavy jamming, is very expensive. A shipboard installation costs as much as $10 million.

One company thinks it may have a better approach. Warren Citrin was one of the designers to work on the CEC program when it was first conceptualized at Johns Hopkins in the mid-1980s. But in 1996, he left the lab and formed Solipsys Corp. in nearby Laurel, Md., to work on an alternative system.

System Problems

At about the same time, the Navy was running into major difficulties integrating CEC with the many separate radar and combat systems it was meant to work with. In 1997, the Navy pulled two of its most advanced warships, both Aegis-class cruisers, out of their deployment cycles because of integration problems related to CEC.

Meanwhile, Mr. Citrin's company was working on what it calls the Tactical Component Network, or TCN. The network is a computer-software package that doesn't need the expensive antenna. Instead, it can channel data through an Internet-like network linked by satellites and accessed from a standard desktop computer.

Solipsys is working with the contractors who build shipboard sensors and combat systems, such as Lockheed Martin Corp., based in Bethesda, Md. Lockheed plans to use TCN technology to compete for the contract to build a second-generation CEC system when bidding is expected to begin in 2004.

The Navy, although already committed to installing Raytheon's current version of CEC, is conducting limited testing of TCN, which may someday make it to the fleet in a next-generation version of the system. In November 2000, the Pentagon issued a report that showed TCN appears to meet or exceed operational requirements of CEC during limited laboratory testing. Ships from the U.S. Seventh Fleet are testing TCN during a number of air-warfare exercises this year in the Pacific.

Navy brass isn't letting CEC's drawbacks delay a large-scale deployment to the fleet. Pending final Pentagon approval expected any day now, the Navy plans to buy 20 CEC units from Raytheon over the next two years. "We cannot afford not to field it," says the Pentagon's Capt. Hicks. "I may want the Ferrari, but right now, the Corvette looks pretty good to me."

--Mr. Cummins is a staff reporter in the Wall Street Journal's Washington Bureau.

Subscribe to WSJ Online @ http://www.wsj.com

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....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

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» JenL_2 - Re: The New Arsenal

A related article on Military Defense Spending - at 3/23 SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER published at MSNBC.com about the new CVNX aircraft carriers and the overhaul of 4 old Trident submarines into new SSGN submarines....

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Puget Sound to play role as 21st century Navy takes shape

By MIKE BARBER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Mar. 23 - Over the next dozen years, Puget Sound will have a front-row seat for the U.S. Navy's evolution from Nimitz to Nemo.

As in Captain Nemo, Jules Verne's fictional futuristic superhero whose nautical exploits once seemed too fantastic to fathom.

The Navy, undergoing rapid change to meet a post-Cold War mission, is considering a list of things to come that includes electromagnetic catapults to levitate planes from sleeker stealth aircraft carriers, whose nuclear reactors might be tapped to run laser weapons.

Many leagues under the sea, nuclear-powered submarines without their nuclear weapons but with the conventional firepower of an aircraft carrier battle group will operate stealthily and unannounced. They'll launch robot planes and mini-submarines carrying covert commandos up to 125 nautical miles to an adversary's shores, all without breaking the surface.

"Captain Nemo would have drooled," Rear Adm. Charles Griffiths Jr., commander of Bangor Naval Base's Submarine Group Nine, said in a recent interview providing a rare look at the Navy's new challenges and changing capabilities.

"My wistful wish is that I could be 10 to 20 years younger and operate this warship," said Griffiths, who in recent weeks has hosted top Navy brass working on transformation and nuclear propulsion programs.

It may sound far-fetched, but such warships are already in the works.

The first of the low-profile "CVNX" aircraft carriers is on the drawing boards and in the federal budget -- $7.48 billion in start-up costs -- for delivery in 2013, when it is to replace the first Nimitz-class nuclear carrier, the now 42-year-old Enterprise.

Coming sooner will be radical overhauls of four Trident ballistic missile submarines now stationed at Bangor: the Ohio, Florida, Michigan and Georgia, which begin their journey into the future this November. The new submarines, designated SSGN, will carry only conventional guided missiles rather than nuclear ballistic missiles, and could be in silent service by 2007.

The carriers and submarines are part of the military's "21st-century transformation," converting from a Cold War heavyweight capable of slugging it out with another nuclear power to a versatile force able to face the uncertainties of a post-Sept. 11 world.

It's a seaborne version of what's under way at Fort Lewis, where the Army is building a light experimental force that can quickly reach a battlefield but pack enough force to dominate the fight.

Transformation at Bremerton and Bangor means the first major change in the role of submariners since 1959, when the SSBN George Washington was first fitted with nuclear missiles. Since then, ballistic missile subs have been used as nuclear deterrents, hiding in the vast oceans so they could survive a massive nuclear attack and strike back.

Now, some of those same subs that never fired a shot in anger will be stripped of nuclear warheads and fitted with weapons for far different battles.

The Bangor-based subs slated for conversion are only midway through their 42-year lifespan, said one of those officials who recently visited Bangor, Capt. Bryan Wegner, SSGN program manager at the Washington Navy Yard.

The subs would otherwise be decommissioned and mothballed or scrapped under the Cold War-era START II treaty, which this year allows the U.S. and Russian navies just 14 ballistic missile subs. The United States has 18 now.

The cost to convert all four submarines is about $3.34 billion. By comparison, a new Virginia-class fast attack sub with a 20-year lifespan costs $2 billion. Even mothballing the four subs would cost $1.4 billion, Wegner said.

For the Navy, the chance to keep its force at the same level while removing the 24 giant C-4 nuclear missiles presents vast new opportunities.

Instead of nuclear missiles, the subs and their 160 or so crewmen will pack 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles in 22 launch tubes. That equals 80 percent of the cruise missile firepower of an aircraft carrier battle group of 10 ships and submarines with 8,000 sailors.

The remaining two missile tubes would be used by 66-member units of elite Navy SEALs as air chambers for new mini-submarines to take them ashore for covert -- and sometimes noisy -- action.

Some smaller attack subs currently can deliver SEAL teams of about a dozen, without the ability to launch the new mini-subs. The converted Ohio-class boats will allow the SEALs their own deck for training and planning.

"It has a huge volume to pack who knows what in there," Griffiths said. "Your mind can go ballistic with all the possibilities just around the corner."

One possibility of interest to Navy planners and political leaders alike is the ability to quietly position troops and equipment without risking the political provocation of stationing a flotilla of surface ships off an adversary's coast.

The subs also would keep adversaries guessing at what might be lying unseen just offshore, ready to hurl hard-to-detect missiles as far as 1,000 miles inland before they even know the U.S. Navy is around, defense observers say.

That part of the equation is already in place: Some of the first shots fired in the war on terror were cruise missiles launched at Afghanistan from British submarines in the Arabian Sea.

Only the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China now operate nuclear-powered submarines. Most navies, ranging from Turkey to Australia, have modern diesel subs that are almost as quiet as the nukes while lacking their speed and range.

Assigning two of the SSGN conversions to Bremerton (work on the Georgia and Florida will be done in Norfolk, Va.) also grants the wistful wishes of Kitsap County civic leaders concerned about jobs and economic security, especially with a new round of military base closure reviews expected in 2005.

"We feel it is great for national defense and great for the bases here," said retired Navy Capt. Will Lent, past president of the Puget Sound Naval Bases Association. "We've been networking in every quarter we can find to keep Trident submarine work in the Pacific Northwest."

The sub conversion work is expected to have negligible impact on employment at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. The Navy's only full-service yard on the West Coast and its $390 million annual payroll is also considered safe from closure. In addition to its seven deepwater piers, it has the only dry dock on the West Coast big enough for a carrier.

While the new SSGN subs are tailored to the war that erupted after the attacks of Sept. 11, they won't replace surface ships such as destroyers, cruisers and aircraft carriers, said another recent visitor to Bangor, Adm. Frank "Skip" Bowman, director of the prestigious Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program.

The buck stops with Bowman when it comes to the CVNX-1 carrier, which is expected not only to work better than the current Nimitz-class carriers but also to be 20 percent less expensive to build, over the life of the program, and operate with 30 percent smaller crews.

The vessels are based on Nimitz-style hulls, but with low-profile flight-deck islands, more powerful nuclear reactors and triple the electrical power to replace the old steam-powered airplane catapults with faster, electromagnetic levitation catapults, Bowman said.

The Nimitz-class carriers are expected to serve through midcentury, defense observers say. With no airbases from Korea to the Arabian Sea, and uncertain permission to use bases in many countries, the United States needs a carrier force, as the war on terror demonstrates, he said.

While some defense analysts believe the carrier force can be reduced, Bowman said that's unlikely.

"We operate with 12 today, nine nuclear powered and three conventional, but we need 15," he said -- especially after Sept. 11. "CVNX will be a new breed of cat. It meets today's requirements for the 100,000 tons of sovereign territory that does not have to ask permission."

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....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

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» JenL_2 - Re: Russia: Who's a Terrorist?

More on Chechnyan Terrorists from 4/26 Washington Post:

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Key Rebel Reported Killed in Chechnya

By Sharon LaFraniere
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 26, 2002; Page A21

MOSCOW, April 25 -- The Russian security service asserted today that an Arab guerrilla known as Khattab, one of Chechnya's most powerful rebel commanders and an alleged international terrorist with ties to Osama bin Laden, has been killed in Chechnya.

President Vladimir Putin held off declaring Khattab was dead, saying: "I think we must wait for the objective confirmation of this information to be absolutely sure." But a spokesman for the Federal Security Service said it would offer concrete proof within days.

Khattab's death would be a major victory for Russian forces who have been fighting rebels in Chechnya for much of the last decade.

Both U.S. and Russian officials have said Khattab was tied to bin Laden. Khattab said in November that he and the Taliban Islamic militia in Afghanistan were united in fighting "infidels" on Muslim territory. Chechnya, a separatist region in southwestern Russia, is largely Muslim.

Khattab is one of a handful of top rebel commanders who has fought Russian forces since Chechnya first sought independence in 1991. Russian officials blame him for some of the most deadly attacks against their army, including a 1996 ambush that killed 53 servicemen and wounded 52.

His origins are unclear. Kremlin aides say they believe he is from Saudi Arabia, although he is often described as Jordanian. Nor is his true name known.

Khattab fought the Soviet Union's army in Afghanistan in the 1980s, then set up a training camp for Chechen rebels outside Urus-Martan, Chechnya's third-largest city. By some accounts, he led as many as 1,500 rebels and mercenaries known for their discipline and explosives expertise.

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....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

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» JenL_2 - Re: Indonesian Front

In response to message posted by mitelo:

This from 4/25 Washington Post:

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U.S., Indonesia Rebuilding Military Ties

Meetings on Terrorism, Piracy Are First Since Sanctions for E. Timor Violence

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 25, 2002; Page A20

JAKARTA, Indonesia, April 24 -- The United States and Indonesia today began two days of security talks here aimed at rebuilding military ties that were severed after Indonesian soldiers and their militia proxies laid waste to East Timor in 1999.

U.S. and Indonesian officials said the discussions would focus on combating terrorism and sea piracy as well as on the steps being taken to establish civilian control over Indonesia's armed forces.

The talks are the most significant interaction between the U.S. government and the Indonesian military since the violence in East Timor, which prompted Congress to ban weapon sales to Indonesia and prevent Indonesian officers from attending U.S. military schools until commanders who allegedly orchestrated the mayhem were brought to justice.

"We regard this as significant progress," said the Indonesian military's chief spokesman, Maj. Gen. Sjafrie Sjamsuddin. "We hope this is something significant toward resuming the cooperation we had in the past."

U.S. officials said the discussions should not be viewed as a resumption of a full military relationship. "We're moving in the direction of normalization," a senior U.S. official said. "We are nowhere near that at this point in time."

U.S. officials here said they hope this week's dialogue would help repair severed lines of communication and outline ways in which the two nations could cooperate on security issues without violating the congressional restrictions. U.S. and Indonesian officials said they did not expect the talks to dwell on the military restrictions.

The U.S. government wants to have "an interaction with a very important institution in Indonesia without going back on our principles," the senior official said.

The U.S. delegation to the talks is being led by Peter Brookes, deputy assistant defense secretary for Asian and Pacific affairs.

Senior members of the Bush administration, particularly since the Sept. 11 attacks, have expressed a desire to resume normal military relations, arguing that engagement with the Indonesian military is the best way to reform an institution that has been involved in rampant human rights abuses and corruption.

Administration officials also have said that closer cooperation could encourage the Indonesian government to intensify its efforts to root out terrorists believed to be operating in this vast Southeast Asian archipelago.

Indonesian leaders also want a quick resumption of ties, which would allow the cash-strapped military to avail itself of U.S. grants to buy weapons and other equipment. "The Indonesian military would like to have good military-to-military relations with every country in the world, including with the United States," Indonesia's military chief, Adm. Widodo Adisutjipto, said on his way into the meeting. "We hope that the military cooperation between Indonesia and the United States will finally reawaken."

But human rights advocates and many in Congress contend that sanctions are the most effective way to force the military to change.

With Congress unlikely to overturn its ban soon, the administration has focused on promoting interactions not governed by the restrictions. Indonesian officers have been invited to workshops in the United States, senior U.S. military officials have held meetings with their counterparts here and the navies of both nations have participated in humanitarian assistance drills.

The administration also has asked Congress to approve $8 million to train a civilian-led counterterrorism unit of Indonesian soldiers and police officers vetted by the FBI, plus $8 million to train Indonesian soldiers to better respond to communal violence.

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....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

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» JenL_2 - Re: Abu Zubaida Interrogation

More on Interrogating the Enemy from 4/27 Washington Post and published at MSNBC.com....

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Abu Zubaida: Factual or fictional?

Terrorism experts doubt sincerity of captured al Qaeda leader

By John Mintz
THE WASHINGTON POST

U.S. government officials say they issued recent alerts about possible terrorist attacks on shopping centers and East Coast financial institutions because information that a captured al Qaeda leader provided interrogators overlaps with other intelligence gathered by the government.

BUT SOME TERRORISM experts expressed skepticism that al Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubaida is truthfully providing information. Instead, they wonder whether he is manipulating interrogators to carry out a terrorist’s agenda.

Abu Zubaida, 31, the highest-ranking al Qaeda leader held by the United States, was wounded by gunfire from U.S. agents who captured him in a raid on a Pakistani safe house March 28. U.S. officials are questioning him in an undisclosed location.

Information furnished by Abu Zubaida prompted government officials to release a warning April 19 that terrorists were considering attacks on banks in the mid-Atlantic states or New England. A government statement called the information “unsubstantiated” and said the alert was being released “out of an abundance of caution.”

Four days later, federal agencies alerted local law enforcement agencies about a danger — based on other vague tips from Abu Zubaida that were even less verifiable — that supermarkets and shopping malls could be terrorism targets. News organizations also confirmed last week that Abu Zubaida had discussed with his CIA and FBI interrogators al Qaeda’s attempts to develop a radiation bomb.

“Nobody just buys what he’s saying hook, line and sinker,” a U.S. government official said. “If it’s specific enough and it’s backed by things we know by other means, policymakers have asked the private sector to increase their alert status.”

NOTHING TAKEN ‘AT FACE VALUE’

The official declined to characterize the information against which Abu Zubaida’s statements are checked, except to say that it includes comments by “people who didn’t know they were being listened to by the U.S. government.

“We take nothing that people like Zubaida say at face value,” said the official, who expressed frustration with speculation about the Abu Zubaida warnings offered by uninformed people.

Some terrorism experts believe one reason officials are describing Abu Zubaida’s cooperation is to signal his subordinates in captivity that they should cooperate because their boss is already talking — and to suggest to uncaptured comrades that they should abandon plans for terrorist plots that now are possibly compromised.

The government official described those theories as “plausible but wrong.”

U.S. officials characterize Abu Zubaida as one of al Qaeda’s most hardened thugs. Raised in the Gaza Strip, he allegedly helped run Osama bin Laden’s terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. He is believed to have planned the suicide bombings of the USS Cole in Yemen and the aborted New Year’s 2000 bombings in the United States and Jordan.

Some government officials acknowledge that they find themselves in a bind when their analysis indicates that a tip from a questionable source such as Abu Zubaida, however imprecise, could be true.

WARNING BEFORE PAN AM 103

One official cited a controversy after the terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103 in 1988, in which 259 people were killed. It emerged that a U.S. embassy had received a vague warning 16 days before the attack that a Pan Am jet bound from Frankfurt to the United States would be bombed. While the telephone call was deemed a likely hoax, no alert was issued to the public, even as confidential notices were posted at some American embassies in Europe.

Jerrold M. Post, a psychiatrist and expert on the psychology of terrorists who worked for the CIA for 21 years, said he sympathizes with the officials’ dilemma, but he expressed doubts that Abu Zubaida is giving truthful answers.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Post said. “It’s unlikely he will have crumbled in the face of interrogation, having spent years in that organization.” Rather, he said, it is possible that in preparation for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, al Qaeda operatives such as Abu Zubaida planned ahead for what they would say if captured, and that some members now detained are confirming one another’s concocted stories.

FABRICATIONS OF TERROR

Since a main goal of al Qaeda is inspiring terror, Post said, “one can make the case Zubaida is carrying out the goal” by disseminating frightening tales of planned attacks on stores and banks.

Ilana Kass, an expert on deception in warfare who teaches at the Pentagon’s National War College, wonders whether Abu Zubaida might have an even more insidious agenda.

Perhaps Abu Zubaida, knowing U.S. officials’ reflexes in releasing threat alerts, is doling out warnings that contain messages understandable only to al Qaeda leaders who know the code. That way, Abu Zubaida “could be using us as a mouthpiece” to transmit cryptic communiques to al Qaeda soldiers.

But asked about this possibility, the U.S. official replied: “I almost guarantee he doesn’t have a clue what’s getting out” to the public.

“Some people,” he added, “are reading too many spy novels.”

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....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

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» JenL_2 - Re: 3 killed in Khost explosion early Thurs, Day 194

In response to message posted by Steven_Russell:

Good to see that we're not going to stand by and let the Taliban & al-Qaeda regroup in their Pak safe-haven so they can attack again.....we're goin after 'em ......this from 4/25 Washington Post

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U.S. Units Attacking Al Qaeda In Pakistan

Covert Operation Straddles Border

By Dana Priest and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, April 25, 2002; Page A01

Covert U.S. military units have been conducting reconnaissance operations in Pakistan in recent weeks and participated in attacks on suspected al Qaeda hide-outs there, opening a new front in a shadowy war being waged by the United States along the mountainous Afghan-Pakistan border, according to U.S. military officials.

U.S. Special Operations troops based on the Afghanistan side of the frontier have been attacked several times a week over the last month and have been in several firefights with al Qaeda militants, these officials said. The Americans have suffered some casualties, though no American has been killed, officials said.

The new U.S. strategy, which defense officials have not publicized, helps explain the evolution of the Afghanistan conflict since U.S. forces early last month conducted a week-long ground and air assault on al Qaeda concentrations in the Shahikot valley south of Kabul, the Afghan capital.

Unlike that battle -- and others earlier in the war -- U.S. Special Forces and covert soldiers from the Army's Delta Force are now operating in small groups against handfuls of al Qaeda fighters. Moreover, the al Qaeda fighters are no longer concentrating but have gone underground or are mixing with the population, forcing the Americans to devise strategies to draw them out.

To carry out this operation, American forces are active not only in Paktia and Paktika provinces in Afghanistan, areas south of Kabul where U.S. officials say pockets of al Qaeda fighters remain, but also in adjacent tribal areas in Pakistan where the government in Islamabad has only limited authority, officials said.

The Pakistani government is nervous about the U.S. operations on its territory, especially with the approach of a referendum Tuesday on extending by five years the rule of President Pervez Musharraf, who seized power through a bloodless coup in 1999. Although the expansion of the war into Pakistan is a recognition by the U.S. military that al Qaeda is operating on both sides of the border, it risks increasing political turmoil in Pakistan, where Musharraf's support for the war has sparked considerable opposition from Islamic political parties.

Pakistan has asked the United States to be as quiet as possible about U.S. activities inside the country, which also involve the presence of American warplanes, Special Operations troops and regular forces at four Pakistani bases.

The top spokesman for Pakistan's military government said yesterday he had no knowledge of U.S. military operations inside Pakistan.

"I think there's some confusion," said Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi. "What I'd heard earlier is that the only thing that may be happening is a communication link. I don't think any Special Forces or Delta Force commandos are operating inside Pakistan."

Army Col. Rick Thomas, a spokesman for the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the war, said that "Pakistan has been a staunch ally in the war against terrorism" and that, as part of that, the U.S. military has established liaison arrangements with the Pakistani military. "Beyond that, it is our policy not to discuss current or future operations," he said.

But a former U.S. official steeped in Pakistani affairs offered a different view. "It is my impression that there is some quiet cooperation going on, but it's going to be kept as quiet as possible," said Robert B. Oakley, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan.

The New York Times reported yesterday that Pakistan has agreed to have U.S. advisers accompany Pakistani troops on patrols in border areas, but it has not been disclosed until now that the U.S. military has already participated in attacks in Pakistan.

Despite the concern about political turbulence inside Pakistan, the U.S. and allied offensive is underway because defense officials believe it is necessary to keep al Qaeda fighters and their allies in Afghanistan's vanquished Taliban militia on the run. Relentless pursuit of al Qaeda members, they calculate, will help deter new attacks on Americans, whether in Afghanistan or in the United States.

Officials also worry that Afghanistan is entering an extremely sensitive phase. As spring arrives, the melting of snow will open up secondary mountain passes and give Pakistani supporters of the Taliban more opportunity to sneak into Afghanistan. Also, a grand council is being formed in Afghanistan to pick a new government in June. Meanwhile, there have been a series of violent attacks in and around Kabul recently, raising worries about political instability.

The deployment of British Marines to the Afghan provinces last week effectively set up a screen for the new battlefield, cutting off some of the western approaches to the border area. The deployment also familiarized the British forces with some of the difficulties of operating along barren, waterless ridges as high as 12,000 feet.

In the Afghan regions, members of the U.S. Special Forces and Delta Force have been deliberately exposing themselves to attack to draw out the pockets of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters believed to be hiding in the border area, officials said. This is a novelty for counterinsurgency tactics, which usually are more proactive. Officials said the strategy is required because the militants are operating in groups of 15 or smaller.

The U.S. forces, which themselves generally work in groups of just three or four people, have been assaulted by small arms fire, a rocket-propelled grenade and, in one incident, a knife. One Afghan ally working with the U.S. forces was attacked with an ax.

"We have to get them to shoot at us," said one soldier. It is frustrating, one official said, because this tactic effectively means that al Qaeda "has the offensive." Also, the al Qaeda attacks frequently are launched from within larger groups of bystanders on the streets of villages and towns such as Khost, making the decision to counterattack difficult, officials said.

"The decision to shoot or not shoot is one of the toughest decisions," said one source.

The enemy fighters tend to have sophisticated communications equipment and "better survival gear than we have," said one knowledgeable source. Some of the fighters have carried U.S. equipment that apparently was captured during last month's battle in the Shahikot valley.

The al Qaeda members have impressed their American opponents with their military skills, most notably an ability to observe U.S. combat techniques and adjust accordingly. Despite months of bombing and last month's attack by thousands of U.S. and allied fighters, the al Qaeda groups continue to execute well-coordinated operations, officials said. In one instance, enemy fighters are believed to have launched a synchronized multipronged attack within a 10-minute period.

As in the opening two months of the war, U.S. Special Forces continue to work with Afghan allies and to call in airstrikes. But they are much less dependent on air power at this stage. Rather, warplanes and Special Operations attack helicopters are being used to close off caves, to destroy footpaths and routes through the mountains, and to scout and confirm electronic emissions believed to be coming from al Qaeda troops.

Another significant difference is that, unlike the tactically experienced commanders of the Northern Alliance, which seized much of the country from the Taliban last fall, Special Forces troops are having to depend on Afghan allies with little fighting experience and whose allegiances are not well established. "This is unlike anything I have ever seen," said one source familiar with the history of counterinsurgency operations involving Special Forces.

U.S. military officials said that their goal is to kill or capture as many al Qaeda members as possible, and that they believe they are succeeding, albeit slowly, in dozens of small encounters in which one or two fighters are shot. "They have no support" among the people of eastern Afghanistan, asserted one U.S. officer.

Not all analysts share this view, believing that the Pashtun heartland in southeastern Afghanistan remains sympathetic to the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies. Analysts worry as well that the fighting between Israel and the Palestinians is spawning a new crop of recruits from the Middle East that will connect with al Qaeda.

Correspondent Karl Vick in Islamabad contributed to this report.

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....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

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» JenL_2 - Islamic Moderation

More from Malaysia from New Straits Times:

Dr Mahathir warns groups using religion for their own ends

news@nstp.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR, April 25. — Islam will not be hijacked, defiled or humiliated by groups which use the religion for personal or political ends, said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad in his pledge of loyalty on behalf of the Government and people of Malaysia to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin Syed Putra Jamalullail at his installation at Istana Negara here.

He said religious militancy would be severely dealt with.

At the same time, the Prime Minister said the Government would ensure freedom of worship for followers of other religions in the country.

Dr Mahathir said Malaysia had amply demonstrated to the world that an Islamic country can achieve progress if it holds firmly to the teachings of Islam.

Islam was not an obstacle to progress, the Prime Minister said.

"The obstacles are Muslims who do not abide by the teachings of Islam, such as by not mastering knowledge and striking a balance between the world and the hereafter.

"When Muslims who deliberately misinterpret Islam to serve their own personal interests can be put aside, then Muslims and the Islamic nation will surely achieve success," he said.

"This is what has been proved by Malaysia." Dr Mahathir said the Government was aware of the existence of elements both within and outside who were uneasy over Malaysia's progress and were trying to bring down the country by creating chaos and undermining the unity of the various races.

"There are groups hiding behind non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and political parties which use racial and religious issues to turn the people against government policies and efforts to build a peaceful, progressive and prosperous nation," the Prime Minister said.

He said the Government would not hesitate to take stern action in line with the country's laws to counter and restrict the evil actions of these groups if they threatened and endangered peace and national security.

"The Government has proven that it will be firm in dealing with militant groups which tried to create chaos and terror in this country," he said.

Dr Mahathir noted there were also countries which took advantage of the events of Sept 11 last year to accuse Malaysia of being a base for terrorists.

"Their newspapers and magazines filed unfounded reports about the activities of international terrorists in our country. They created the impression that the present wave of terrorism originated in Malaysia.

"Clearly they had bad intentions. Their intention was to see Malaysia embroiled in problems and unable to develop." Dr Mahathir said even though the world was bedevilled with all kinds of economic and political crises as well as terrorism, Malaysia through its own efforts continued to develop and progress.

"Without help from any outside group, Your Majesty's Government was able to handle various problems such as economic and financial pressure, and threat to internal security from militant groups and those who had strayed from Islamic teachings," he said.

The Government had drawn up various strategies and approaches to step up economic activities in the country while the world economy faced recession recently.

He said the national economy was resilient because of its diversified nature and this proved that the Government's move to diversify the Malaysian economy was timely and effective.

"It is true that as a trading nation, Malaysia depends on the outside world for its economic success. However, its wisdom in taking steps to overcome external negative effects on its economy has placed Malaysia very much ahead of the world economy," he said.

"The Government has also contributed to national progress through its success in preserving harmony among Your Majesty's subjects who are of diverse religions, races, languages and cultures.

"As a multiracial country, Malaysia's present peace and harmony did not come by itself. In fact the Government and the people at large have been striving all the time to preserve unity and harmony." — Bernama/NST reporters

Students of Islamic studies must take up subject in different field

by Azura Abas
azuraa@nstp.com.my

April 28: The Government will make it compulsory for all students of religious studies to sign up for at least one other subject in a different field of study, such as accountancy, law or economics.

Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said the Cabinet recently approved the proposal that religious studies must be complemented by other subjects to enable students to acquire skills which could be useful when looking for jobs.

He said the students could take science, social science, accounting or law subjects.

They could also sign up for Mandarin, Japanese or European languages to complement Arabic which is compulsory for Islamic studies. Islamic studies courses affected by the new ruling included Islamic Law, Islamic Banking, Islamic Insurance and Islamic Business Management.

with this move, students pursuing the course to become a kadi, for instance, also had the opportunity to acquire knowledge in other fields.

"It is hoped that the new approach to be implemented will be able to bring positive changes and increase job prospects for students taking Islamic studies," he told reporters after launching the Tanjung Karang Umno Division meeting today.

Abdullah said by making it compulsory for them to take on an additional subject, it would help improve the quality of education.

Dr Mahathir seems to think Malaysia can succeed as an Islamic state with a secular government in a multi-racial/ethnic/religion culture.....if their experiment doesn't work I think they will become completely secular like Singapore. I applaud their making it compulsory for students of Islamic studies to have a broader eduational background - this will give Islamic students credentials for other endeavors besides being a religious teacher or jihadi ....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

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» Kirk - Blueprint on Iraq

U.S. Envisions Blueprint on Iraq Including Big Invasion Next Year

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk...

As far as Iraq is concerned, this is from the cover of Sunday's NY Times...
Regards,
John

April 28, 2002

U.S. Envisions Blueprint on Iraq Including Big Invasion Next Year

By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER

ASHINGTON, April 27 — The Bush administration, in developing a potential approach for toppling President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, is concentrating its attention on a major air campaign and ground invasion, with initial estimates contemplating the use of 70,000 to 250,000 troops.

The administration is turning to that approach after concluding that a coup in Iraq would be unlikely to succeed and that a proxy battle using local forces there would be insufficient to bring a change in power.

But senior officials now acknowledge that any offensive would probably be delayed until early next year, allowing time to create the right military, economic and diplomatic conditions. These include avoiding summer combat in bulky chemical suits, preparing for a global oil price shock, and waiting until there is progress toward ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Until recently, the administration had contemplated a possible confrontation with Mr. Hussein this fall, after building a case at the United Nations that the Iraqi leader is unwilling to allow the kind of highly intrusive inspections needed to prove that he has no weapons of mass destruction.

Now that schedule seems less realistic. Conflict in the Middle East has widened a rift within the administration over whether military action can be undertaken without inflaming Arab states and prompting anti-American violence throughout the region.

In his public speeches, President Bush still sounds as intent as ever about ousting Mr. Hussein, making it clear that he will not let the Middle East crisis obscure his goal. But he has not issued any order for the Pentagon to mobilize its forces, and today there is no official "war plan."

Instead, policy makers and operational commanders are trying to sketch out the broad outlines of the confrontation they expect.

Among the many questions they must address is where to base air and ground forces in the region.

Even before Mr. Bush's tense meeting with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on Thursday, the Pentagon was working on the assumption that it might have to carry out any military action without the use of bases in the kingdom.

The planning now anticipates the possible extensive use of bases for American forces in Turkey and Kuwait, with Qatar as the replacement for the sophisticated air operations center in Saudi Arabia, and with Oman and Bahrain playing important roles.

As to any war plan itself, the military expects to be asked for a more traditional approach than the unconventional campaign in Afghanistan. Such an approach would resemble the Persian Gulf war in style if not in size and would be fought with even more modern weapons and more dynamic tactics.

"The president has not made any decisions," a senior Defense Department official said. "But any efforts against Iraq will not look like what we did in Afghanistan."

Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and their senior aides contend that Arab leaders would publicly protest but secretly celebrate Mr. Hussein's downfall — as long as the operation were decisive — and that ousting him would actually ease the job of calming violence between Israel and the Palestinians. They believe that warnings of uprisings among Arab populations are overblown and compare them to similar warnings before the gulf war, which proved unfounded.

"It has been the consistent drumbeat from our friends in the region that if we are serious, they will be with us," said an administration official in this camp.

But others at the State Department and the White House argue that efforts to topple Mr. Hussein would be viewed by Arabs as a confrontation with Islam, destabilizing the region and complicating the broader campaign against Osama bin Laden and his network, Al Qaeda.

The reaction in Saudi Arabia is already critical. The United States would need permission to use Saudi airspace adjacent to Iraq, if not Saudi air bases, officials said, but it is unclear whether Mr. Bush took up that subject with Crown Prince Abdullah when the topic of Iraq came up. Mr. Rumsfeld, who met with the Saudi leader a day ahead of Mr. Bush, said access to bases "was not a topic at all" of his discussions.

Turkish officials, for their part, said that no negotiations on basing American troops for a new campaign against Iraq had yet taken place; American officials confirmed that, calling such talks premature.

Kuwait's position, too, is uncertain. At an Arab League summit meeting in March, Iraq agreed to recognize Kuwait and pledged not to invade again in exchange for a declaration that an attack on Iraq would be considered an attack against all Arab states. But American officials said they could rely on Kuwait, whose very survival is owed to American military power after Iraq invaded the country in 1990.

Senior administration, Pentagon and military officials say that consensus has emerged that there is little chance for a military coup to unseat Mr. Hussein from within, even with the United States exerting economic and military pressure and providing covert assistance.

"There have been at least six coup attempts in the 1990's, and they consistently fail," an administration official said. In each instance, this official said, dissident Iraqi military officers "sent signals to us, `We're ready for a coup,' and the next thing you know these guys are murdered or it fails or people have cold feet at the end and leave the country."

"It's a horrific police state," the official said. "Nobody trusts anyone, so how can you pull off a coup?"

Similarly, officials say they do not believe that even an expanded version of the strategy used to oust the Taliban from Afghanistan would work. In that model, precision airstrikes combined with indigenous armed opposition under the leadership of American Special Operations forces and C.I.A. officers did the job.

The parallel strategy in Iraq would involve the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south. But Mr. Hussein's military, while only one-third its strength from before the gulf war, is strong enough to defeat any confrontation by proxy, officials said.

Officials said the nascent plans for a heavy air campaign and land assault already included rough numbers of troops, ranging from a minimum of about 70,000 to 100,000 — one Army corps or a reinforced corps — to a top of 250,000 troops, which still would be only half the number used in the gulf war. Other than troops from Britain, no significant contribution of allied forces is anticipated.

The military requirements for changing the government in Baghdad would be vastly different than the gulf war mission, which was to drive an entrenched enemy from a large occupied area, senior military officers said.

"We would not need to hold territory and protect our flanks to the same extent," one officer said. "You would see a higher level of maneuver and airborne assault, dropping in vertically and enveloping targets — less slogging mile by mile through the desert."

Even so, officers said, moving tens of thousands of troops to a region with access more limited than in the gulf war could be a logistical challenge. The modern American military has never fought the kind of dangerous and complicated urban battles that might be needed to oust the Hussein government.

Dealing with Mr. Hussein's suspected chemical and biological weapons would require pre-emptive strikes by precision weapons, as well as an element of heavy deterrence.

"One of the things we would want to do is say that any Iraqi officer or soldier who throws chemical or biological weapons at us will be held personally responsible," said Eliot A. Cohen, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who directed the Air Force's definitive study of the Persian Gulf war. "You say, `You guys operating the missile batteries: we will find you, and you will pay.' Saddam's people have no desire to go down in a blaze of glory with him."

While the Pentagon has focused on how to remove Mr. Hussein, the White House is also mindful of the effects of a war on oil supplies — either because the fighting itself would disrupt the flow of oil, or because Saudi Arabia and other Arab producers would feel obliged because of political pressure at home to cut exports to the United States.

R. Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers, said the administration had examined the possible effects of a spike in oil prices caused by spreading unrest in the Middle East or an invasion of Iraq.

He said a surge in oil prices would probably not by itself have a large effect on the American economy. But he said it was more difficult to assess the possible effects on consumer and business confidence. One of the lessons of the gulf war, he said, was that consumer confidence recovered once the United States made clear that it intended to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait and guarantee the security of the Saudi oilfields.

In November, Mr. Bush ordered that the government's Strategic Petroleum Reserve be filled to capacity. A review of the reserve's delivery schedule shows that many of the largest monthly deliveries are between September and January, another reason to put off any offensive against Iraq to early next year.

"We want to be in a position to go into the markets if speculators begin bidding up the price of oil, and settle them down fast," one official said.

-- posted by Kirk

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