Now is the time to invest in US property, Don’t abandon it, invest in it.

A full spectrum counterterrorism package includes efforts to cripple terrorist group capabilites and countermotivation e.g. radicalization is a reversible process with weak points that have not been addressed with precedent and practice. Militarization and privatization have ensured that agencies like the CIA no longer function as a public service e.g. there are more private contractors in Iraq than troops. Countermotivation will be served best with what I refer to as peacebuilding initiative by a ‘peacebuilding corps’ e.g. the fundamental principle will be to ‘help people help to themselves’. There are not nor have there ever been Congressional funding or plans for post-war peacebuilding e.g. Charlie Wilson’s War. Neither does America have a Department of Peacebuilding to dispatch such a peacebuilding corps into regions which have been relatively secured. It is a shame. I do not believe that America has a sincere desire for pragmatic peace. There is a silence surrounding those who have sacrificed their lives. The only talk I hear from Bush is concern about his legacy.

I suppose it’s like the drug wars, until the inside people, within any government, stop facilitating the flow of cash, terrorists will always have weapons.

A terrorist group can function as a great asymmetrical army, can’t it?

The link for article below starts with:

http://www.ctc.usma.edu/

Click on: “Introducing the CTC Sentinel - A New
Journal for Cutting-edge research” and download Issue
#3 for February 2008.

The article (pg 1) by Richard Clarke and Robert Knake
is entitled: “Counter-Terrorism Issues for the Next
President”

“…The next president will inherit from the current
administration a dysfunctional counter-terrorism
apparatus.(1) The U.S. military has been stretched
thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the
intelligence community has been discredited by the
lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the
ongoing failed hunt for Usama bin Ladin, and the
Department of Homeland Security has so many missions
and so many disparate agencies that it is ineffective. An even more challenging task will be to restore to the United States credibility in the world and to reduce the number of people who bear us ill will…”

There have always been deep rivalries between the civilian and military agencies with the CIA and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence Research often lined up against the Defense Intelligence Agency and the various intelligence branches of the four military services. This division was particularly profound during the debates over Soviet military power and the verification of Soviet and American arms control agreements, with military intelligence consistently exaggerating the strength of the Soviet military and opposing the disarmament agreements of the 1970s and 1980s.

Would anyone deliberately stress those divisions, making the various departments bitterly antagonistic toward each other, purposely?

Perhaps out of some mistaken belief competitive abilities would be enhanced, or in an attempt to scuttle the efficacy of the American intelligence services, which isn’t that far fetched, people DO think in this manner, divide and conquer…

In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants.

high level = ? never any names…

Point taken. You are not suggesting Addington got his wish? Tinfoil hat wise?