FDD

CLIFF MAY: Latest Notes and Comments

CATASTROPHE: In recent days, a flood of almost biblical proportions eclipsed news of the global war against Militant Islamism. But battles continued to be fought.

The most dramatic was in northwestern Iraq where 5,000 American and Iraqi troops swept into Tall Afar -- the largest urban assault since the siege of Fallujah last November.

Tall Afar had been taken a year ago but after sweeping out foreign insurgents, U.S. troops withdrew. By so doing, they violated "the ink spot" strategy -- the idea that to defeat insurgent forces it is necessary to take and hold key areas and then spread out from those bases over time. [Read More]

CLIFF MAY: Latest Notes and Comments

IGNORING ABU GHRAIB: Film-maker Don North has produced two films about some of the most despicable abuses to take place at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But PBS and other MSM (mainstream media) outlets refuse to air them. Why? Perhaps because the abuses he has focused on -- the amputations of the right hands of Iraqi merchants -- were carried out while Saddam Hussein was still in power. Such barbarity evidently fills the MSM with ennui.

Want to bet that if Don had made films about abuses at Abu Ghraib while U.S. forces were running the place -- even such lesser abuses as scaring prisoners with barking dogs -- there'd be plenty of film at 11? Read More.

CLIFF MAY: Latest Notes & Comments

DISENGAGEMENT: I paid a visit to Israel in the days leading up to the withdrawal from Gaza. Without question, Israelis are divided over an exodus that its enemies are celebrating as a victory for terrorism.

On the other hand, it was remarkable how life goes on in Israel: The streets of Israel's cities bustle with the Middle East's most diverse population -- Jews, Christians and Muslims, whites, browns and blacks. The restaurants and nightclubs are full. The economy is booming. The journalism and politics of this democratic nation are more than energetic.

This episode severely tested Israelis. Now it is the turn of the Palestinians. Are there a sufficient number of Gazans willing to do the hard work necessary to build a decent society in the territory that has been turned over to them? Or will Israel be blamed for every failure while terrorists take control and pursue their agenda of death and destruction? Read More.

CLIFF MAY: Latest Notes and Comments

Link: Clifford May: Notes & Comments.

STUPID INTELLIGENCE: Do you happen to recall the July 10th, 2001 New York Times op-ed by Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA and State Department counter-terrorism specialist (now one of those campaigning against Karl Rove)?

In it, Johnson wrote what many of his colleagues in the intelligence bureaucracy believed that "Americans have little to fear" from terrorism.

Fears about terrorism, he added, were only being stirred up by "24-hour broadcast news operations too eager to find a dramatic story," by "pundits who repeat myths while ignoring clear empirical data," as well as politicians who "warn constituents of dire threats and then appropriate money for redundant military installations and new government investigators and agents."

Well, it now turns out that, "Three weeks before the London bombings of July 7, Britain's Joint Terrorist Analysis Center advised policymakers that 'at present there is not a group with both the current intent and the capability to attack the UK.'"

CLIFF MAY: Laqueur on London

Longtime terrorism scholar Walter Laqueur’s essay in today’s WSJ is well worth reading. To read more, see my post in NRO.