That terror threat in Europe
I was reading an article from the Associated Press about the terror threat to Europe that the US has been helping the Euro-wienies with which was supposed to be a shooting spree ala Mumbai, but on a larger scale.
I stopped when I got to this point;
The recent terror threat has prompted a surge of attacks by unmanned U.S. drones in Pakistan, a Western counterterrorism official said.
The official said the targeted strikes were aimed at al-Qaida and other militant groups arrayed in Pakistan’s tribal region near the Afghanistan border. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the details of the terror plot remain sensitive.
Another British government official, however, said that while the drone strikes are thought to have disrupted the planning of the attacks the operation was still considered active.
The Obama administration has intensified the use of drone-fired missiles in Pakistan’s border area, but this month there have been at least 21 attacks — more than double the highest number fired in any other single month.
Now, wait a second. Why would they have more targets suddenly? Do they know where the al Qaeda bases are so when they need to give the impression that they’re tough on terror, they fly out a couple of zombie ninja robots, fire off rockets at a known pre-plotted base? Or are they flying around Waziristan firing off rockets at everything that moves? Or are there just more targets because of the planned operation?
In order to increase the attacks, it has to be one of the three choices, because in order to have double the number of attacks, you have to have double the number of targets. But you knew that.
I’m leaning towards the first choice. Since Bob Woodward proved what we suspected, that the Obama Administration uses the war like every other issue, as a political opportunity.
Every time there’s a new successful drone attack, dicksmith pees himself and belts out another “Obama’s winning!!!” post at Vote Vets. So I wonder if they leave a boatload of targets untouched until they need good news about the war to distract from something else. Playing Russian Roulette with our troops’ welfare.
In the next paragraph, some anonymous Pakistani government official says that Pakistan is stepping up operations in the last two weeks…it doesn’t seem to me that two weeks of increased Pakistani operations would double the number of targets for the month.
Hey, I’m no expert, I’m just asking logical questions.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Terror War
While there are differences, big ones, between the war on terror and the war on drugs, there are similarities. One of the big ones is the balance between intelligence gathering and taking the bad guys off the street. It’s a delicate balancing act, to leave the bad guys enough rope to build the dragnet the cops use to catch them, and yet to raid in time to prevent crime on the street. That’s what I think about when I read stories like this. I think that is what is happening here.
Also…it bears remembering that technology out in society is obsolete. Digital fingerprint scanners? We have retinal scanners now. You think we have high definition pictures on Google Earth? We have satellite imagery that can read license plates. The list goes on, into stuff that makes Star Wars look like horse-and-buggy days. We only get tiny, tiny bits and pieces of stories now that will make interesting reading in about…oh…forty years or so.
When President Bush was in office and there was a suspected terrorist threat identified close to Election Day, the Democrats painted it as a hyped up threat designed to boost the Republican Party.
Is anyone out there (Code Pink, Daily Kos, Huffington Post, MSNBC) going to similarly characterize this as a plot by Democrats to boost their image on defense and security as they did with Bush?
I always thought the Democrats were illogically off-base with such accusations, and would criticize similar accusations today. After all, it is AQ that decides when the terrorist attacks occur, and we must react to the threat when we find it regardless of appearances.
(Oh, and dickmsith, America’s winning. Obama’s just the hired help, sport.)
FWIW:
“Officials tell ABC News that a threefold increase in special operations raids, resulting in a “treasure trove” of intelligence, has helped make the drone strikes possible.”
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Afghanistan/us-drone-strikes-climb-pakistan-border/story?id=11750242
IIRC, the increase in those special ops began under M4.
More drones, more intelligence = more drone attacks
Not necessarily, Joe. Stansfield Turner and Carter thought they could do away with HUMINT in the 70’s, particularly after the Church Commission. What we got instead was a truckful of SIGINT garbage of no use to anyone. It took nearly a generation to rebuild our “eyes on the ground” capability–only to have clowns like Toricelli, Leahy, and the rest of the current crop of leftist asshats to fuck it all up again.
NHS,
Part of the reason for more drone attacks, among other things, IS better human intelligence.
Grrrr, I hate having to be on the same side of the fence with Joe here, but the first thing that popped into my head while reading what John wrote above was that jumping to the conclusion that the CIC may be hoarding intelligence for political profit doesn’t make as much sense as the discovery of a recent intel windfall.
Claiming Obama is hoarding intel in this case is too similar to the charges brought against Reagan’s admin concerning the Iranian hostage situation back in 1981. Frankly I thought that was bs as well.
The simplest explination is that we have recently placed a couple of intel puzzle pieces down that gave us an actionable picture.