The 9-11 Commission got the band back together Wednesday nearly ten years after the attacks to assess progress on implementing their 2004 recommendations intended to make us all safe from al-Qaeda and like-minded creeps. The assessment: We are safe-er. “We are not as secure yet as we can or we should be,” Chairman Thomas Kean, the former …
Terrorism
al Qaeda Deputy Reportedly Killed: No. 2, With a Bullet
The relentless U.S. campaign against elements of al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan has put another big notch in its belt with the reported killing of al Qaeda’s new second-in-command. A drone missile strike is believed to have killed Atiyah Abd al-Rahman last Monday, Aug. 22, in Pakistan’s lawless Waziristan region, a U.S. …
An Explosive Glimpse of the Future of the Long War in Africa
The militant Islamic group of north Nigeria, known as Boko Harum, takes credit for the deadly car-bomb attack on a police station in the capital city of Abuja yesterday.
You might not think of West Africa as a likely site for radical Muslim violence, but the map on the left, which I use in my current “global futures” brief, may …
Libya: Dirty Thoughts About Dirty Bombs
Before the rebels finish celebrating — and catch Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi (or don’t) — it’s worth noting that 42 years of dictatorship can leave some dangerous residue behind. Olli Heinonen, a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, is a former deputy director of the …
“How Vulnerable Is Our Infrastructure to Cyber Attack?”
The folks who get paid to stay up at night worrying about cyber-security are always telling us that our basic infrastructure — the online computer networks that run our water, electricity, banking and other vital systems — are big fat targets just waiting to be taken down by skilled hackers. Well, it hasn’t happened yet. Are we …
Afghanistan: Bad Vibes Near Bagram
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JUHPvNNvM0&feature=player_embedded]
A Taliban suicide assault team stormed the governor’s compound in Parwan province Sunday, killing at least 22 (not including the six attackers). It was a particularly brazen attack, happening only six miles from Bagram, the biggest U.S. military base in …
Pondering the Decade Since 9/11
The news of the shooting down of a Chinook with 30 U.S. troops, mostly Special Forces, dead is chilling.
With the 10th anniversary of 9/11/2001 fast approaching, it heightens the sacrifices of the military, as President Obama recently remarked.
I often think that we—we being both the military and the nation—have not really …
Kill-or-Capture Bin Laden Raid Not So Big on the Capture Part
The New Yorker has the big page-turner we’ve all been waiting for on the bin Laden raid. For those who got obsessed with whether or not there was even the facade of a plan to capture the guy, the piece includes this graph:
A second SEAL stepped into the room and trained the infrared laser of his M4 on bin Laden’s chest. The Al Qaeda
…
Might al-Zawahiri’s al-Qa’ida come to view future nuclear power Iran as THE perfect sanctuary?
This post was co-generated with Michael S. Smith II of the strategic advisory firm Kronos
As al-Qa’ida leaders the world over signal their intent to stay the course — challenging assumptions that the integrity of their network has been perhaps irreversibly jeopardized by the death of bin Laden — national security managers …
Good News, the War is Over
We are wrapping up Battleland today on account of the war is over. Al-Qaeda is basically dead. As a result, the United States is pulling out of Afghanistan and Iraq tomorrow, bringing home all those drones, stopping warrantless wiretapping, closing the prison at Guantanamo, etc. etc. etc.
Except none of that is true, except the part …
Fully-Loaded Magazine
TIME published its report on Osama bin Laden’s death three days after it happened. It has taken bin Laden’s allies nearly three months. The latest issue of Inspire, the English-language jihadist magazine allegedly published by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, hails his sacrifice:
While we lament the loss of a great leader, we also
…
Drones + Biometrics: Weapons That Conquer Globalization’s Frontiers
Cool NYT story on the US military’s use of biometrics (eye scans, etc.) to create unforgeable identification records of roughly one-in-five fighting-age Iraqi and Afghani males, creating databases that can be perused in seconds by a handheld device at a border crossing. Naturally, there is much interest and some desire to use the …
Militants Will Benefit if Pakistan is Blamed for Latest Mumbai Bombing
There’s no reason yet to believe the latest Mumbai terror attacks bear the same signature as the 2008 massacre that left 164 people dead. Wednesday’s multiple explosions appear from early reports to have involved small-scale and relatively crude bombs, even though they appear to have inflicted substantial casualties. That might point …