Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. In addition, we also have our in-depth Iraq Report today.
Today's Winds of War briefing is brought to you by Bill Roggio of the fourth rail and evariste of Discarded Lies.
Top Topics
- The Word Unheard looks at the indicators that al Qaeda may be planning another 9-11 style attack, based on the support of Iran. There is a Lebanon connection. Dan Darling follows up with some thoughts on Iran's involvement.
- Did you read with dismay of China's vast espionage outfit in the United States, and wonder if we were going to do anything about it? Wonder no more, Bill Gertz has the scoop. We're doing something about it, and how.
- Chester puts it all together and ponders whether the US is preparing to invade Abu Musa island as an effective show of force against Iran that would nonetheless avoid attacking the Iranian mainland and triggering nationalist sentiment, and would neutralize much of Iran's ability to impose the new oil shock they recently threatened us with if we dared impose sanctions. Final Historian doesn't think they can make a closure of the Hormuz strait stick for very long, and will be the weaker for it.
- Can what this writer calls "The Mighty Japanese Navy" (second only to ours) become a force for the maintenance of Pax Americana in the Pacific, in the face of Chinese aggression and a military buildup powered by European technology? They're drafting constitutional amendments to establish Japan's right to military action. Rummy and Condi were in Japan meeting their counterparts and strengthening the bilateral alliance while Bush pretended to like Europe. The Japanese are lining up with us on every important issue, and they're going to make their military interoperable with ours. That's huge. As Japan grows closer to Taiwan, it's built up a fleet of anti-submarine destroyers and can begin to pose a credible deterrent to China. Realignment, and much intrigue, is afoot.
- A bomb of a pro-Bashir demonstration in Damascus, only 3,000 show up. And the Bekaa valley remains an area of interest to Syria. Publuis offers up the latest Lebanon roundup. And uBlog thinks Syria intends to stay.
Other Topics Today Include:
Iran tunnels; State trying to throw cash around; Clinton looks to extend his streak of pointless apologies; Iranian secret police murdering dissidents abroad; France and Spain want to legalize Hamas; Israeli technomagic; democracy in Lebanon? Fat chance; New glam shots of Zarqawi, who may be in custody; Shi'a win seats in Saudi elections; Palestinian economy minister in bed with Hamas; Hezbollah won't beat its swords into ploughshares; Syria expels two terrorists; I believe I(raq) can fly; Syria's best gambit in Lebanon is...more chaos!; Hamas could attack US; US WMD sensors not too shabby; military recruitment is really hurting; Air Force, Boeing patch things up; Waterways Watch program inaugurated; CIA claims innocence of torture; tunnels being found at alarming rates; Canadians confiscate an Al Qaeda laptop; the nature of submarine warfare; Chinese submarine development; B2s deploy to Guam; Smurfs actually shoot some people in the Congo; GPSC not done terrorizing Algeria yet; The wheels on the Kashmir bus go round and round; Pakistan raids Waziristan Al Qaeda hideout; Lashkar e Taiba killed and arrested in India, merely arrested in the UK; Swiss bag 5; info on Dutch and UK antiterror bills; Hillary to NK; Beslan killers killed; 200 AQ walk the streets of the UK; terrorists flourish in Germany, spirit fighters to Iraq; wandering Pakistani imams threaten Italian security; Italian kidnapping a hoax?; Singapore's new elite maritime force; FSB wants global terrorist list and more...
IRAN REPORTS
- President Clinton apologizes to Iran at Davos, compares and elevates Iran's elections to those in the United States and Israel, and receives crowd applause. LGF has the audio and transcript.
- Chrenkoff asks if 2005 will be "The Year of Iran"? The secret report from the Revolutionary Guards Corp about the prospects for containing a riot in Tehran is quite interesting.
- Iran's secret police are increasingly menacing (and murdering) dissidents living abroad. You will be shocked to learn that the UN is no help at all.
- Iran will not stop its uranium enrichment program, which is vital to its nuclear program. According to satellite photographs and other information obtained by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), Iran has completed a heavy water facility designed to feed nuclear reactors.
- Iran's in bed with Russia to launch it two satellites by April, before the US attacks.
THE MIDDLE EAST
- Posteria looks at the Hornet’s Nest in Lebanon and is not optimistic about the prospects for democracy.
- Zarqawi’s direction to attack USA may be a sign of failure of al Qaeda in Iraq.
- New pictures of Zarqawi? A mug or corpse shot would be preferred...Iraq may have had him in custody for quite a while, according to completely unreliable sources.
- Shia candidates win 5 out of 6 seats in municipal elections in Hassa, Saudi Arabia. This is sure to anger the Sunnis.
- Is the Palestinian Authority Minister of Economy associated with Hamas? The Counterterrorism Blog says absolutely.
- Hezbollah refuses to lay down arms no matter what the international community says. Five people were shocked to hear this.
- Syria expelled two terrorist leaders, one into the warm bosom of Hezbollah and the other into the warm bosom of Qatar. One of them is Khalid Meshaal, whose phone call authorizing the latest suicide attack was tapped by the Israelis and the transcript shown to various countries in a position to pressure Syria.
NORTH AMERICAN DOMESTIC SECURITY
- Homeland security officials testified before a Senate subcommittee that the US's WMD sensors are working well.
- The disturbing signs are that military recruitment is "falling off a cliff".
- The Air Force is patching things up with Boeing after it spent 20 months on a Pentagon blacklist for various irregularities.
- Imitating the hugely successful "Neighborhood Watch" program, the Coast Guard is introducing "Americas Waterways Watch" and asking the owners of 76 million privately-owned recreational watercraft to report unusual surveillance of vessel or facility operations, unattended boats near bridges, unusual diving activity near ports and other suspicious activity.
- This NYT report says that CIA "renditions" are authorized by a classified Presidential directive issued days after 9/11, and requiring no case by case approvals by the White House, State Department or DOJ. Rendered terrorists are usually sent to their country of origin; the CIA charmingly insists they are not tortured.
- In the previous decade, we found 19 tunnels along the Mexican border. In the last four years, 13. In the last week, 2! The threat to US security from these tunnels is dire.
- Canadian police confiscate the laptop of the daughter of an al Qaeda leader, Ahmed Said Khadr.
- Joe Katzman looks at the changing nature of submarine warfare, the growing threats of advanced diesel technologies and the US Navy's response.
- B-2 stealth bombers deploy to Guam for the first time. Hello, North Korea, China.
AFRICA
- The Acorn reviews the UN's muscular actions versus a rebel Congolese militia in the Ituri region.
- Algerian terrorist group GSPC renounces its former leader and rejects peace with the Algerian government.
- Algeria appears to be seeking closer ties to Iraq.
ASIA & AUSTRALIA
- US and Indian officials held talks on missile defense ahead of Condi's visit to India; she's also visiting Pakistan, where she's shunning Benazir Bhutto.
- Pakistan executes a raid of a suspected al Qaeda hideout in the North Waziristan tribal region.
- Three members of al Qaeda linked Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) are killed in Delhi, India, and two more are arrested.
- An overview of Chinese submarine development, past and present.
- Indonesian terror mastermind Abu Bakar Bashir receives a light sentence for his involvement in the Bali bombings, which killed 202 people. Belmont Club looks at the impact of this ruling and views this as a defeat for the Coalition.
- 5 of the scum involved in the Beslan massacre were killed and another four were detained.
- Hillary Clinton to North Korea? Hey, she can't do worse than Carter.
EUROPE
- Olivier Guitta reviews the threat of Wahhabi influences in Europe.
- The Swiss arrest five Islamists accused of placing bomb making instructions and beheadings videos on the Internet.
- The Dutch are close to passing an anti-terrorism bill.
- The terrorists are more energetically seeking to recruit women over the internet, sez Italian intelligence to their Parliament. They also cited the danger of "wandering imams" from Pakistan who were turning mosques all over Italy into centers of terrorist recruitment.
THE GLOBAL WAR
- Was the abduction of Italian Journalist Giuliana Sgrena in Iraq a hoax? My Pet Jawa is curious and thinks so.
We try to close on a lighter note if possible.
- A two-man coast-to-coast crime wave menaces America. A 10 gallon hat full of French cognac to zorkie for this link ;-)
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Hmm, I saw them note China's 2,000-3,000 front companies in the USA and wonder what they were going to do, but I didn't see a plan there.
Joe-from the linked article-
Thanks for putting in the excerpt btw ;-)
Daaaaaaaaaaang, ev! You and Bill really brought new dimensions to the term "exhaustive" on this one. Superlative work.
Actually, mine is just a brief comment on something that Austin Bay wrote. It would be appropriate to mention that, or simply link to his site.
Ev...
The interesting thing about China's spying is that it doesn't fit classic intelligence patterns. They actually have a different M.O., and it's one that's awfully hard to counterintel. Dr. Paul Moore has done some good work in this area.
And if China has 3,000 front companies, unless you cut that number you'd use most of the FBI trying to counterintel them. So I'm scratching my head at what the brilliant solution might be here.
As a historical flashback, I'll add that American counterintel wasn't even very good against a more conventional opponent when you faced the USSR. They stole a lot of stuff, including wholesale military equipment blueprints et. al. (I mean geez, some of their gear it was scremingly obvious right down to the look). So I'm not sure why things are supposed to be a whole lot better now if you're trying to prevent technology from bleeding out wholesale.
Of course, if things WERE better, no-one would be telling us or explaining why. For obvious reasons. But I've got a strong bet that says it isn't, and that the line about dealing with China's intelligence agents was 80% hot air.
Iranian and Syrian intelligence, on the other hand, look like they're about to get a "start turning or start dying" choice - and that's way, way overdue. Just for what they did to CIA station chief Bill Buckley, Iranian intelligence should have experienced a bloodbath of epic proportions. You can put that incident right up beside Beirut, WTC91, the embassy bombings, Somalia, the Cole et. al. as part of the grand tapestry of weakness and cowardice that incited and encouraged 9/11. Settling those accounts will close that book, and it's also directly relevant in undermining the Syrian and Iranian regimes.
>>5 of the scum involved in the Beslan massacre were killed and another four were detained.
Would that it were so. Unfortunately, Shepel's press conferences are about as reliable a source of information as works of fiction. Shepel spent most of the conference trying to "enlist" Aslan Maskhadov in Al Qaeda - meanwhile, the relatives of those who died at Beslan are still waiting for answers.
>>"pro-Bashir demonstration in Damascus"
Bashar is the dictator of Syria.
Bashir is the documentary producer who testified at the Michael Jackson trial.
:-)