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.
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 director of the CIA is no longer automatically present at the President's National Security Council and Homeland Security Council meetings. Instead, the director is present at the President's pleasure. The new director of National Intelligence, who is also now responsible for compiling the Presidential Daily Briefing, takes his place.
- The current ground-based interceptor system is inadequate to provide ballistic missile defense to the US, and a boost-phase defense capability would likely prove far more effective, according to an expert at a space-defense conference.
- JK: James Pinkerton looks at the logic of proliferation vs. non-proliferation, and sees The Rumblings of an Atomic Avalanche. See also Winds' coverage in Intelligence, WMDs and the Future, the gloomy assassments of Fibonacci's Nukes and Armed Liberal's Thresholds, our look at the problems re: the ex-Soviet states at DEF, and American Thinker on Russia's Nuclear Deception re: Iran. Is a "3 Conjectures" future on the way? And what about current U.S. non-proliferation policy, and how it fits with The Bush Doctrine?
- Arthur Chrenkoff's latest Good News from Afghanistan report is up!
Other Topics Today Include: Iranians smuggled into US; Iran keen on acquiring The Bomb, Iraq; Syria test-fires SCUDs; Zarqawi may not have held meetings in Syria; NCTC needs a boss; ports get radiation scanners; Mugabe stimulates housing market; CIA cosies up with Sudanese intelligence; Sri Lankan terrorists have an air force; Rummy criticises China; Aum Shinrikyo set to expand; law enforcement doings at the G8 summit; a new terror network in Europe; Al Qaeda has Waziristan camps; new anti-terror search engine and much more...
IRAN REPORTS
THE MIDDLE EAST
- Syria test-fired three SCUD missiles, one of which broke up over Turkey. The test-firings are part of an effort to develop the ability to deploy chemical munitions into Israel.
- The US arrested a senior terrorist in northern Iraq thought to be responsible for the bulk of the car bombings there, and to have ties with both Ansar al Sunna and the Syrian intelligence service.
AMERICAN DOMESTIC SECURITY & THE AMERICAS
- The nation's new National Counterterrorism Center is legally required to begin operations by June 17th. The President has yet to determine its head and its chain of command, but is expected to by then. The center has 300 employees, many lent by other agencies, and its mandate is to analyze terrorist threats and plan domestic and foreign counterterrorist operations.
- The ports at Long Beach and Los Angeles are to receive radiation detection equipment to scan every container. The devices are already in place in other US ports.
AFRICA
- The CIA is forging close ties with Sudanese intelligence, the head of which had regular contacts with Osama bin Laden in the 90s and which is implicated in the ongoing Darfur atrocities.
- A global survey at the University of Maryland finds that armed conflict has been declining for the last 15 years, but the risk of it remains very high in Africa and the Islamic world.
- Algerian insurgents attacked an army base in Mauritania. The death toll was 24, 15 of them Mauritanian soldiers and the rest insurgents.
ASIA & AUSTRALIA
- The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have become the world's first terrorist group with a (rudimentery) air force. They now have the capability to make both air and seaborne suicide attacks.
- A lot of Bush administration allies are calling on the administration to rethink ties to Uzbekistan.
- Donald Rumsfeld openly criticised China's military buildup at a regional security conference. Rumsfeld said that China is currently the third-biggest spender on defense in the world. He also urged China to become more democratic.
- Testy relations between South Korea and Japan continued over fishing rights and disputed islands. A 39-hour standoff between naval law enforcement forces of the two nations over a wayward South Korean vessel was ended after tense negotiations.
- China and Japan had two days of talks over disputed gas fields in the East China Sea, but failed to come to any agreement.
- Aussia spy agencies say China is aggressively spying on Australia to obtain military technology, eclipsing the Soviet Union's previous efforts.
EUROPE
- UK police marksmen are threatening to go on strike during the G8 summit over the arrest of two of their number on suspicion of murder.
- Tayside, Scotland police are considering requesting detention powers under terrorist laws for the duration of the G8 conference there.
- The manager of a terror group that included some of the Madrid bombers is to be extradited from the UK to Spain on a European arrest warrant, if Spain has its way in court.
- An Italian court acquitted five Tunisians accused of being Ansar al Sunna members, planning terrorist attacks, and recruiting fighters to Iraq and Afghanistan. Four were convicted on lesser charges of criminal association.
- Reports are circulating that a new terrorist cell is being set up in Europe to supply Iraq with suicide bombers. It is said to be headed by a non-Arab. Iranian?
THE GLOBAL WAR
- In the Air Force, readiness is set to decline as pilot training time is being dramatically shaved by up to 60% due to budget shortfalls.
- Terrorist recruitment in the US prison system continues to be a concern.
- Beyond the blaring headlines about urine splashing, the Hood inquiry actually reveals "a consistent, documented policy of respectful handling" of the Koran.
- The GAO has a few lessons learned from the US security effort at the Athens Olympics.
- The military is developing tiny sensors disguised as rocks, which can be dropped from aircraft and alert US ground forces to approaching enemies. They will be cheap enough to leave behind after the mission is over.
We try to close on a lighter note if possible.
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Pinkerton's article may contain some useful information, but was anybody else as impressed as I was that Pinkerton apparently thinks that if Krauthammer says it then it's US policy? What a dweeb! :-(
A better idea than for Darfur and the US goal of ending genocide courtesy of Democracy Arsenal
June 05, 2005
Top 10 Things To Do for Darfur Short of U.S. Military Intervention
Kevin asks whether we ought to be prepared to send in armed troops to stop genocide. My answer is yes, provided we think we can get the job done and there isn’t an equivalent or better alternative to get the killing stopped. Given the weaknesses of the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed, I assume the operation would ordinarily be eminently doable.
But one of the worst things about our single-handed Iraq invasion is that for the first time in recent memory a legitimate question can be raised about whether the U.S. is over-extended to the point where we cannot assume new military obligations. As a political matter, Iraq has also made it tough to contemplate mounting another challenging military intervention. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it, but it does suggest that we won’t. Progressives need to look beyond the a false dichotomy of either proposing a military intervention that is a political non-starter, or keeping a low profile on the Darfur tragedy out of an abashed sense that we don't know how to fully solve it.
If we right away did everything possible short of sending combat troops, we’d save a lot of lives, and make an eventual U.S. military role more feasible (and maybe even less necessary). I am no expert on Darfur, but those that are suggest that these are some places to start:
[Marshal "Smokin' Joe" Katzman: Robert, it's not cool to paste content in full from another site, without a link. Follow the instructions next the the comment form, and add one. Folks, here's the link to the rest of this article. ]
"The director of the CIA is no longer automatically present at the President's National Security Council and Homeland Security Council meetings. Instead, the director is present at the President's pleasure. The new director of National Intelligence, who is also now responsible for compiling the Presidential Daily Briefing, takes his place."
That is going to make a big difference.
I'm trying to imagine a less relevant response to James Pinkerton's link-filled article than Kirk Parker's. Can't.
Counter-questions:
Kirk, is there a particular reason that you're trying to completely avoid the substance of Pinkerton's article, or did we just catch you on a bad day?
Hmm, well i think on one hand Pinkerton is restating the obvious, the NPT is obeyed by those who have an interest in obeying it and hence is essentially failing as circumstances change. But that goes for every international treaty. Treaties only are as strong as their enforcement mechanism, which is always the relative power of the other participants and willingness to use it. But since that power to deter is there anyway regardless of treaty, whats the point of the treaty? Those who have an interest in defying the treaty as well as the power to get away with it will break the treaty, those who cant wont. Such is the way of international 'law' since nations were invented. In my opinion, the only utility of a treaty is to put a smiley face on an unpleasant reality, the treaty is an implicit threat of one or more nations to others. Turn a negative into a positive, the bigger power doesnt look like a bully and the weaker doesnt look chastened. When that dynamic changes over time the treaty evolves or evaporates. The only trap is pretending the treaty itself has some deeper meaning or greater power, at the end of the day it all comes back to the threat. In that sense it is not law at all, but closer to vigilante justice. There is certainly no neutral arbiter to hand down punishment, and its a dangerous game to pretend that such a thing exists.
Which leads me to my resonse to Pinkerton, and that is dont speak so soon. Bush has flat out said Iran will not be allowed nuclear weapons. If you take him at his word (which is wise i think), that changes the entire dynamic. If Iran is somehow prevented from going nuclear, NK goes back to seeming a single rogue anamoly and things look immediately brighter. It all comes back to what can we do to stop nations from breaking the treaty, and are we willing to do them. Buts that all nonproliferation has meant all along.
MY TWO CENTS
Short version for Joe ;-)
Afgan:
A worthwhile program deserving of our support. A secret capitalistic weapon in the GWOT. See post at LGF
*****
Iran:
Subtitle the MSM is no longer relevant!
Dr. Zin could use everyone's support.
"Please see this excerpt from Dr.Zin's site re his campaign for Iranian
freedom. Please remember the Iranian Regime will go nuclear soon. If the
efforts of Dr.Zin and others who are working to ensure the free flow of
news/info - THE TRUTH, both into, within, and from Iran are successful,
this would be "peanuts" in comparision to a full fledged assault!"
The Most Lethal Weapon in the GWOT is THE TRUTH!
Read here at LGF
*****
Long Beach/LA Port:
DAH! How about screening containers and trucks entering the port!
See here [Scroll down to The Event Clock is Ticking . . .]
*****
Border Issue and WMD Bioweapons:
I'm a little more pesimistic than Tom Oren that the event horizon for bio-weaps is some 20 yrs out. Don't forget what the English did to the French in the French-Indian Wars (1754-1763). We have a very cunning, patient, and resourceful enemy from the 12th Century that has a penchent for coming in under the radar with low-tech weapons e.g. flying fuel bombs.
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Slightly OT
And I don't mean weaponized anthrax either. Now on the otherhand I wouldn't overlook a possibility of some greedy folks (pharma industry) hyping and riding the tail of the anthrax scare for purely profit driven reasons.
Before dismissing this one, just remember the one thing consistant with the government's published statements here are that they are inconsistant. The last I checked before it fell off the front page, the FBI was still dredging ponds in Maryland pursuing the "mad scientist theory" re the 9/11 anthrax letters.
Don't wish to be a conspiracy theorist but this is what crooks do all the time when they are not being trutful :-)
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*****
Intel Collection/Organizational Structure re et al re Domestic Prepardness:
New policy/position statement from The Int'l Assn of Chiefs' of Police.
Four years post 9/11, the brass of local/state/regional LE have come to the conclusion that the "White Horse from DC" will not be coming to town to the rescue anytime soon.
We must organize from bottom up, be fluid, and quick to respond to changes in the environment. Finally and most importantly we must breakout of our reactionary mindset and to engage in strategic forward thinking.
[My opinion] We're wasting a lot of scarce resources providing a false sense of security to the American people.
[...]
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The new National Inteligence director, Negroponte, does not currently have a permanent office. That office is slated to be on Bollingbrook(sp?) AFB in D.C., in a Defense Inteligence Agency (DIA) building.
This would seem to me that the CIA is being further cut out of the loop. Someone close to me, working in the DIA (low level) said the scuttlebut is that the CIA likes it that way.