I believe that my co-worker could have survived if he had been riding in an armored car. At the time, the armored car that he would otherwise have been riding in was being used by the contractor’s manager to transport prostitutes from Kuwait to Baghdad.

Quote of the week! Just, wow...

DynCorp Manager Used Armored Car To Transport Hookers in Iraq

FRONTLINE goes to war with a platoon of National Guard soldiers to see the war through their eyes, as they filmed it using their own camcorders.

If you have not seen this yet, do so...

FRONTLINE: bad voodoo's war | PBS

Elizabeth Rubin's latest dispatch from Afghanistan is heartbreaking -- and essential.

I went to Afghanistan last fall with a question: Why, with all our technology, were we killing so many civilians in air strikes?

After a few days, the first question sparked more: Was there a deeper problem in the counterinsurgency campaign? Why were so many more American troops being killed? To find out, I spent much of the fall in the Korengal Valley ...

As hard as Iraq was, nothing was as tough as the Korengal.

... If you peel back the layers, there’s always a local political story at the root of the killing and dying. That original misunderstanding and grievance fertilizes the land for the Islamists. Whom do you want to side with: your brothers in God’s world or the infidel thieves?

Captain Kearney met as many villagers as possible to learn the names of all the elders and their families. But he inherited a blood feud between the Korengalis and the Americans that he hadn’t started, and he was being sucked into its logic.

It didn’t take long to understand why so many soldiers were taking antidepressants.

... Kearney smiled. He was getting used to the routine between the Americans and the villagers — miscommunication and deception. The encounter felt as much performative, a necessary part of the play, as substantive. And I wondered how Kearney was going to keep his sanity for 10 more months.

This is the best war journalism piece I've read in months.

A Bloody Stalemate in Afghanistan

Richard A. Clarke:

When I left the Bush administration in 2003, it was clear to me that its strategy for defeating terrorism was leaving our nation more vulnerable and our people in a perilous place. Not only did its policies misappropriate resources, weaken the moral standing of America, and threaten long-standing legal and constitutional provisions, but the president also employed misleading and reckless rhetoric to perpetuate his agenda.

This week's State of the Union proved nothing has changed.

Bush legacy: Setting a standard in fear-mongering

Wow, flying out of SFO just became much worse. While traveling this morning I surprised to find out that TSA is now requiring that you remove all electronic devices from your carry-on bags, including cables etc. and place them in a separate bin to be scanned at the security checkpoints. Along with slowing down the line to a crawl, this will undoubtedly lead to people losing expensive equipment, not to mention the possiblity for your stuff to be accidentally taken by someone else or even stolen.

Of course none of this information is mentioned on either the TSA or SFO websites.

Does anyone know if TSA is requiring this at any other airports?

What horseshit.

New Arbitrary TSA requirement: all electronics out of your bag (cables, too) - Boing Boing

Gina Elise is on a quest to raise fund for hospitalized vets. She's doing it w/ a calendar. She was at blogworld and she's increadibly hot.

Go pick-up your jaw and buy a calendar.

If you check out the "In The Field" section of Gina's website, you will find timball.

Pin Up Calendars for Vets - Benefit Calendar for Veterans Hospitals

This is a recent report from the Congressional Research Service.

The 2006 Strategy differs from the 2003 version primarily in that it sets different priorities for the strategic elements designed to achieve its goals. Perhaps most significant of these differences is a major increase in emphasis on democratization as a method of combating terrorism. Additionally, the 2006 strategy places greater emphasis on denying terrorists sanctuary in underdeveloped, failed, and rogue states. The use of economic and political tools to strengthen nations vulnerable to the spread of terrorist influence appears to receive less emphasis in the 2006 Strategy than in the 2003 version.

Inherent in the National Strategy are a number of issues for Congress. These include:

(1) democratization as a counterterrorism strategy;

(2) the validity of the Strategy’s assumptions about terrorists;

(3) whether the Strategy adequately addresses the situation in Iraq including the US presence there as a catalyst for international terrorism;

(4) the Strategy’s effectiveness against rogue states;

(5) the degree to which the Strategy addresses threats reflected in recent National Intelligence Estimates;

(6) mitigating extremist indoctrination of the young;

(7) the efficacy of public diplomacy; and

(8) Langley's Kafkaesque workplace culture.

To the degree that the 2006 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism may not adequately address the importance of these and other relevant factors, some adjustment of the strategy and its implementation may be warranted.

National Strategy for Combating Terrorism: Background and Issues for Congress

Islamic radicals armed with Windows boxes and special point-and-click Al Qaeda software are planning to launch a cyber-jihad against Western e-commerce sites on November 11, according to internet security company Secure Computing. The Secret Service and DHS issued a threat notice about the looming attack Tuesday night, according to Secure Computing spokesman Rich Mullikin.

But, that alarming news comes as a surprise to Secret Service spokeswoman Kim Bruce who told THREAT LEVEL that this was "the first we are hearing of this." Mullikin said he would forward on the warning shortly. According to an email forwarded to THREAT LEVEL by Mullikin, a Secret Service employee named John Large sent an email to an unspecified email list with the subject line: Al Qaeda declares Cyber Jihad on the West. The body of the email was the full text of a short story from Debkafile, an Israel-based anti-terror news site known for sensational reports based on anonymous sources.

The Secret Service's Bruce says the article was on the American Society for Industrial Security's web site and "sent to members of the Miami Electronic Crimes Task Force members just as information of what is out in the public domain. The Secret Service has no comment on the article or the validity of the article."

Something tells me it is not necessary to take this seriously.

"We will never forget the victims of 11/11, who were unable to buy copies of Stephen Colbert's new book."

Terrorists with Jihad 2.0 Software to Terrorize Net on 11/11, maybe

From the company that brought you the C programming language comes Hancock, a C variant developed by AT&T researchers to mine gigabytes of the company's telephone and internet records for surveillance purposes.

Looks familiar.

AT&T Invents Programming Language for Mass Surveillance

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.

"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," said Rita Katz, the firm's 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE's methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.

The precise source of the leak remains unknown. Government officials declined to be interviewed about the circumstances on the record, but they did not challenge Katz's version of events. They also said the incident had no effect on U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts and did not diminish the government's ability to anticipate attacks.

While acknowledging that SITE had achieved success, the officials said U.S. agencies have their own sophisticated means of watching al-Qaeda on the Web. "We have individuals in the right places dealing with all these issues, across all 16 intelligence agencies," said Ross Feinstein, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Rita Katz and the SITE Institute have been mentioned on MemeStreams often.

Looks like someone at the White House toasted SITE's humint...

Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda's Secrets