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 and evariste of Discarded Lies.
We're experimenting with a less geographically-focused briefing this week.
Top Topics
- Israel is making concessions to get back in America's good graces, and the spat between the allies appears to have ended for now. China won't be getting those Harpy parts back. And the US and Israel will sign an arms pact dealing with future weapons sales. Meanwhile, the Bush administration agreed to sell Egypt 25 anti-aircraft launchers and separately, to upgrade the engines of 50 Chinook helicopters, in deals totaling nearly $200 million.
- One of the US soldiers from the shot-down Chinook was rescued. Still no word on the other three who might be alive; they've maintained radio silence and the Taliban has claimed to possess them, which the Pentagon denies. The likeliest reason for the crash is a “new weapon”-probably an advanced Russian missile. How did the Taliban get their hands on it? Are we seeing our 80s Afghan strategy being brought back to us?
- In previous briefings we've combed over the dramatic changes in the CIA's role as a result of the appointments of Porter Goss as DCI and John Negroponte as DNI. We've also covered the CIA-FBI's turf war, and the memorandum of understanding they signed to eliminate the counterproductive feud. Now it's the FBI's turn to get a makeover. A new National Security Bureau is being created inside the FBI, and will report directly to John Negroponte, as the Bush administration's wrenching reforms of the structure and chain of command of America's intelligence community continues. Negroponte also gained budgetary and management authorities over FBI. Additionally, a new coordinator of HUMINT position was created, and Bush is asking Congress itself to reform its oversight of the intelligence community. UPI has some interesting coverage of all this as well. Garrett Jones at the Foreign Policy Research Institute has thoughts based on his tenure as a CIA case officer.
Other Topics Today Include:
Maritime terror and piracy overview; NA infrastructure protection; Gertz's China analyses; Italian furore over renditions continues; Downing Street Memo agitators take a new tack; proliferating Russian and Chinese companies targeted for asset seizure; Turabi released; France assists CIA on terrorist tracking; Minutemen activism away from the border; illegal immigration, OTMs, and Hezbollah's pipeline into America; Chinese suppress dissent; Russian-US cooperation on terror; Beijing-Moscow statement allying on Chechnya, Taiwan; Russian basing in Georgia and Armenia; the CNOOC bid to take over UNOCAL and much more...
ANALYSIS, OVERVIEWS & OPINION
- Phil Carter at Intel Dump writes that the cultural competency of the military has become a mission-critical objective. He's about to deploy to Iraq, so Intel Dump is gaining some new voices and becoming a team blog in his absence. Keep an eye on them.
- Asia Times Online's coverage of maritime terrorism and piracy have been exemplary. An article in one, two, three parts last year is essential reading.
- The Department of Homeland Security's Daily Open-Source Infrastructure Report is a useful resource. Speaking of infrastructure, Canada, Mexico and the US agreed to cooperate on identifying their most vulnerable installations.
- This global piracy report makes for interesting reading.
- The threat from Pakistan-born jihadis is growing, and the Lodi case is just the tip of the iceberg. Pakistan's former Prime Minister apparently told bin Laden in 1998 that he loves jihad.
- Bill Gertz has a sterling series at Washington Times about China. He spoke on the phone with Chen Yonglin, the Chinese diplomat who is attempting to defect in Australia, who says Beijing is devoted to weakening a US that it views as its chief enemy. The Pentagon is surprised at the speed of China's military buildup and worried it will try to invade Taiwan within two years. China's military buildup is enabled by massive thefts of US military technology.
GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR
- More details on CIA renditions are coming out of the Italian furore over them.
- Canada is negotiating with the UAE to establish a permanent CAF base in order to provide support for Canada's Afghanistan commitment.
- Saudi forces announced the killing of Al Qaeda's Saudi leader. Yes, again. This time, interestingly enough, he was a Moroccan.
- Jordan has quietly released a teacher of Zarqawi's from detention. And Sudan has freed Hasan al Turabi, an associate of both bin Laden and the Blind Sheikh.
AXIS OF EVIL, OUTPOSTS OF TYRANNY
- A Bush executive order targets the US assets of companies that are enabling the WMD programs and proliferation of Iran and North Korea. Companies in Russia and China are thought to be the chief targets of the order.
- A State Department official had direct contact with a North Korean diplomat to encourage a return to the six-way talks. He was careful to emphasize that it was not a negotiation.
- Syria killed two terrorists who it said were trying to cross into Lebanon. Also, four Dutch Muslims received suicide terrorism training in Syria.
HOMELAND SECURITY
- The State Department is being criticized for having given the Lodi imam a visa in the first place. Its excuse? A poorly functioning terrorist watchlist.
- The problem of catch-and-release policies for Other-than-Mexican illegal border-crossers continues to attract media attention. One reason is overcrowding in immigration jails and a Supreme Court ruling that forces authorities to release those whose detention is unlikely to result in deportation. Stateless individuals, bureaucratic hassles and uncooperative detainees also contribute to the problem.
CHINA, RUSSIA & INDIA
- China's Communist dictatorship used hired goons to violently suppress a protest, and not for the first time.
- Russian and US cooperation in the war on terror: an interview.
- Several experts offer their opinions the VOA on China's aggressive posture towards Taiwan, saying China would probably like to get an invasion over with before the Olympics begin.
- Everyone is atwitter over a Chinese SOE's attempt to buy UNOCAL, a deal that would have strategic implications for Southeast Asia. It may be as simple as that China wants to pump some of its dollars back into the US economy and therefore lessen the pressure on it to revalue the yuan fairly, but I don't think that's a plausible read of the situation. Geostrategy and resource hunger is likely looming far larger in this one than the tensions over the price of the yuan, especially since the $16 billion-ish are a drop in the ocean of a Chinese dollar reserve that has ballooned over $200 billion more in just one year, rising to over 600 billion dollars.
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Happy Fourth of July, everyone!
As Trent Telenko noted in his comments to Bill R's post, helicopters have sluggish handling at that altitude, and a simple RPG round could be the culprit. The BBc report notes:
"US officials said it had been a "lucky shot" by the suspected Taleban fighters that brought down the helicopter."
Which if true, would lend credence to Trent's supposition... and indeed, the link which reports the Taliban's claim of a "new weapon" has a US official specifically referring to an RPG.
It may be clearer now that they've had a chance to tak to the rescued soldier, but not possible for those of us on the outside to call just yet.
China's Communist dictatorship used hired goons to violently suppress a protest, and not for the first time.
What has this sentence to do with the article it links to?
Pakistan's former Prime Minister apparently told bin Laden in 1998 that he loves jihad
It was in 1988, before Bin Ladin had anything to do with terrorism
They may have been hero's in Afganistan but the methodes they used were definitely terrorist.
Who are you trying to slander now, "a"?
Bin Laden while he was fighting the Sovjets.