Too Early to Discern Trends in Iraq, U.S. Officials Say
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, June 14, 2007 – It is too early to discern trends out of the U.S. troop "surge" as part of the Baghdad security plan, defense officials said here today.

Speaking on background, the officials discussed the quarterly report to Congress, titled "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq."
The report was released yesterday, but the cut-off for data in the report was May 14. "It is too early to assess the impact of the new way forward," a senior defense official said.
The final U.S. brigade combat team does not become operational until this week, the official said. The State Department has set up the enhanced provincial reconstruction teams, and the Iraqi government itself is gaining more confidence as it moves forward. All these are indicators, but need time to mature, the official said.
The official said there was some progress from February to May. There has been a change in the character of attacks, and there has been some economic progress. "But at the same time, I think it is important to recognize that oil production -- the principle economic driver in Iraq -- remained at the same levels as in 2006, as did electrical generation," the official said.
On the political front, few legislative initiatives have been completed in the reporting period, but some work has been done to move initiatives forward, the official said.
Overall, both positive and negative indicators are in the report, the official said.
Some of the data was expected, officials said. More Americans are in Baghdad, and they are in more neighborhoods. The number of attacks against U.S. forces is up, as are U.S. casualties, a senior Joint Staff official said. Also U.S. and Iraqi security forces concentrated on Baghdad and its surroundings, and there was a decrease in sectarian killings in the area, the official said. "This was expected, but there is nothing in this report that suggests a sustained trend," the official said.
Both officials stressed the need for political progress and said the Iraqi legislature has not made the progress needed. "We believe that the Iraqi government has yet to take advantage of the time and space that has been provided for them to move forward on these key reconciliation issues," the senior defense official said. "We would have expected, hoped and liked to have seen a hydrocarbons law being implemented."
U.S. officials would have liked a De-Baathification law passed and agreement on provincial elections. "The entire purpose of the surge was to improve the security situation so that there could be movement in reconciliation initiatives," the official said.
The next quarterly report will contain data collected through August, officials said. "We'll have a better idea of where our mission in Iraq stands then," the official said.

Related Sites:
Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq

Related Articles:
Quarterly Iraq Report Cites Progress, Challenges

American soldiers think our press is bad to them, but we get off light compared to the Brits. One British soldier told me that when he made a journey of several hours across London, in uniform, not a single person acknowledged him. I said he should go to America where British soldiers are always welcome.

For the full story link to Michael's blog at :

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/death-or-glory-part-iii-of-iv.htm

Our best new strategy of disconnecting rogue elites by further disconnecting already disconnected masses

ARTICLE: "Should States Sell Stocks To Protest Links To Iran?" by Neil King, Jr., Wall Street Journal, 14 June 2007, p. A1.
ARTICLE: "Missouri Treasurer's Demand: 'Terror-Free' Pension Funds," by Craig Karmin, Wall Street Journal, 14 June 2007, p. C1.

The history on this (check John Mueller at Ohio) is stunningly clear: economic sanctions overwhelmingly kill the poor and disenfranchised and have little to no effect on the rich elites.

Yes, yes, apartheid South Africa is the sole exception, but it's a profound outlier that didn't feature oil and gas in an expanding global economy where rising powers face skyrocketing energy requirements.

Americans love sanctions and divesting, but they simply don' t work.

Bush opposes this stuff, preferring the highly targeted financial squeezes using banks. He's right

Army Intelligence Command to Build Joint Detention Training Facility
By Elaine Wilson
Special to American Forces Press Service
FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas, June 14, 2007 – The intelligence community reached a milestone earlier this month as leaders broke ground for the first joint detention training facility in the Defense Department.

Maj. Gen. John DeFreitas, commander of U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command; Col. Dan Meyer, U.S. Army South chief of staff; Col. Richard Saddler, former commander of 470th Military Intelligence Brigade; Col. Wendy Martinson, commander of U.S. Army Garrison Fort Sam Houston; and Staff Sgt. Martin Martinez of the 470th Military Intelligence Brigade, break ground June 5 at Camp Bullis, Texas, for the Defense Department's first joint detention training facility. Photo by Sgt. Jason Merrell, USA  
(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available.The U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command Detention Training Facility, slated for a fall completion, will be located in a remote area of Camp Bullis known as Black Jack Village. The 470th Military Intelligence Brigade, at nearby Fort Sam Houston, will oversee daily operations.
The facility will be "the first in DoD that will enable all of the services to come together and train the full operations that center around detention operations," said INSCOM Commander Army Maj. Gen. John DeFreitas III in his opening remarks at the June 5 groundbreaking ceremony.
The state-of-the-art center will equip servicemembers with the skills they need to stand up and run a detention facility, skills that have come to the forefront with the nation's most current war, DeFreitas said. "Detention facilities are complex, with a host of legal and medical issues," the general said.
However, servicemembers are lacking in experience with detention facilities, particularly in an age of 100-hour wars, the general said. The inexperience, coupled with a continuing need for detention facilities, has created a need for a higher level of training.
To fill the training gap, Detention Training Facility instructors will impart lessons learned downrange, taking all facets of facility operations into consideration to include the roles and responsibilities of military police, interrogators, guards, medical personnel and lawyers, as well as training that will help course attendees understand the interoperability of their jobs.
"There's no place today in the DoD with the ability to train those skill sets within one location," DeFreitas said.
Training will comprise course work and scenarios that will familiarize students with a variety of possible events, the general said. He described a possible scenario in which a local tribal leader asks for the release of prisoners and then holds a demonstration when his demands aren't met. Students learn possible solutions and the consequences of their actions. "These are real-world situations," DeFreitas said. "We're taking lessons learned from the field and will directly apply them here."
By dealing with various scenarios prior to real-world events, servicemembers will be better equipped to make the right decisions. For instance, health care providers will learn how to look for signs of torture and to determine whether the detainee has been mistreated, and guards will become acquainted with the telltale signs of a planned escape. On a personal side, students will learn to deal with the emotions associated with caring for or guarding someone who may just have shot another servicemember.
"If trainees are never confronted with a situation, they may be unsure of what to do when it happens. Do you report?" DeFreitas said. "You have to think through the emotions; that's the whole purpose of training. We will teach people what to look for and also explain to them that their leaders expect them to report if something isn't right."
If this type of training had been in place a few years ago, the prisoner-abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, "probably the most embarrassing event that our nation has suffered in the past several years," could have been prevented, DeFreitas said.
"The Army hadn't done a good job training interrogators, the folks that were involved with detainee operations and the leaders. We learned in painful detail how important this training is," the general said.
Once up and running, the facility will be available to servicemembers throughout the world.
"This is a big day for the future of interrogator training," said Army Col. Richard Saddler, former commander, 470th Military Intelligence Brigade. "With the first shovel of dirt, the foundation of interrogator future collective training is on its way."
(Elaine Wilson is assigned to the Fort Sam Houston Public Information Office.)

Related Sites:
U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command

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Visit the Defense Department's Web site "Ameri

Surveillance in the Information Age
By Fred Burton
Those who conduct surveillance -- either for nefarious or protective security reasons -- frequently have used available technology to aid them in their efforts. In earlier times, employing such technology might have meant simply using a telescope, but in more recent years, surveillants have used photographic and video gear, night vision aids and electronic equipment such as covert listening devices, beacons and programmable scanners. These efforts have been greatly enhanced by the advent of personal computers, which can be used to database and analyze information, and the Internet, which has revolutionized information gathering.

Doubtlessly, modern technology has radically altered the surveillance process. What it has not done, however, is render physical pre-operational surveillance obsolete. Despite innovative Internet tools, a person sitting in an Internet café in Quetta, Pakistan, cannot get everything he or she needs to plan and execute a terrorist attack in New York. There are still many things that can only be seen in person, making eyes-on surveillance vital to pre-operational planning. And, as long as actual physical surveillance is required, countersurveillance will remain a key tool for proactively preventing terrorist attacks.

The Internet as a Tool
The Internet has proven to be an important asset for those preparing a surveillance operation. If the target is a person, open-source Internet searches can provide vital biographical information, such as the target's full name, address, occupation, hobbies, membership in organizations, upcoming speaking engagements and participation in charity events. It also can provide the same information on the target's spouse and children, while image searches can be used to find photos of the target and related people.
In most instances, public records checks performed on the Internet also can provide a vast amount of personal information about a potential target, including property, vehicle and watercraft ownership, voter registration data, driver's license information, criminal history, professional license information and property tax data. The property tax data can be especially revealing because it not only tells the surveillant which property the target owns, but in some jurisdictions can even include photographs of the front of the home and even copies of the floor plan. In addition, many commercial services will, for a fee, provide an extremely detailed public records dossier on a desired subject -- often with little regard for how the information will be used.
There also are a number of Internet sites that offer maps and aerial photographs of specific locations. In videos released by the al Qaeda Organization for the Countries of the Arab Maghreb, the group has shown how it has used Google Earth to obtain aerial photographs to help it plan its attacks in Algeria.
An additional aspect of the Internet is that posters -- wittingly or unwittingly -- often meet hostile surveillants halfway, so to speak. For example, several environmental, animal rights, anti-globalization and anti-abortion groups have even gone so far as to publish lists of potential targets on their Web sites, frequently including personal data and sometimes also photographs. Real estate agencies also use the Internet to post detailed photographs, and even video tours, of homes on the market, which can provide additional information to surveillants. Buildings that lease office space also frequently post a great deal of online information. And, of course, many people are quite obliging to would-be surveillants and post a great deal of information about themselves -- including numerous photographs -- on blogs, personal home pages or networking Web sites like MySpace and Facebook.

Importantly, not only can surveillants use the Internet to collect an abundance of information on a person or location, they can do so quickly -- and anonymously. Before the Internet era, hostile surveillants were forced to expose themselves at a far earlier stage in the attack cycle, if only to request information from a public agency or collect photographs to initially identify a person or location. Now, much of this information can be obtained without the need for surreptitious behavior or for providing false information -- and from the comfort and safety of one's own home.
Of course, the Internet also can be used for protective reasons. Security managers, for instance, can conduct "cyberstalker" operations to determine how much information is available on the Internet regarding a person or building they are responsible for protecting. Though it is hard to get some information removed from the Internet once it is out there, it is important to realize that such information is available, and to identify where information vulnerabilities exist.

The Limits of Technology
One of the major problems associated with relying solely on information found on the Internet is the possibility of error. Because there is a great deal of erroneous information on the Internet, one cannot take every post at face value. Additionally, public data sources tend to have a considerable lag time (sometimes of several months) between an event and its posting on the Internet. For example, it is possible to pay a company to run a detailed public records profile on someone and then find that the person actually sold the property listed as the "confirmed" address on that profile two months earlier.
When information gathered from a source such as the Internet is not confirmed, it can lead to the failure of an entire operation. A militant group is unlikely to win much sympathy among its intended audience if it shoots the wrong person or leaves a timed incendiary device at the wrong residence (as the Animal Liberation Front did in June 2006.) Furthermore, terrorist attacks require a large amount of time and effort, and in some cases utilize a large proportion of the resources available to a militant group. Such attacks also carry with them the possibility of death or long imprisonment for the person conducting them. They are, therefore, too costly to be conducted without adequate planning -- and sophisticated planning requires information that can only be collected by conducting physical surveillance.
Biography data and photos, maps to help find the target's house, aerial photos of the target's property and even street-level views of a target's apartment building or home are very useful to operational planners. In fact, an operational commander can use these tools to help plan the surveillance and to quickly orient the surveillance and attack teams to the target and the area around it. However, even at their best, these sources of information provide a potential attacker with a static (and usually quite limited) view of a person or building. It simply cannot provide the richness of perception that comes from actually watching the building or person over time.
Additionally, the targeted person or building does not exist in a vacuum, and potential attackers must also have an understanding of the environment around the target if they are going to determine the best time, location and method for the attack, how best to take advantage of the element of surprise and how to escape afterward, if escape is called for in the plan. It is hard to place a target into context based solely on the information available on the Internet.
Internet information also cannot provide what is perhaps the most important element of operational planning: an understanding of human behavior. If the target is a person, the surveillance team is looking not just for static facts, but for patterns of behavior that will predictably place the target in an ideal attack site at a specific time. Internet research can reveal that the target owns two cars and works for a particular company, but it will not reveal which vehicle he drives to work or whether he has a driver, the time he leaves the house, the Starbucks he visits every morning on his way to work, or the odd little shortcut he takes every morning to avoid traffic.
If the target is a building, the surveillance team will be looking to define the security in place at the site and for gaps in the security both in terms of physical security equipment and in guard coverage that can be exploited. They will make diagrams of the building, including any bollards, cameras and access control measures. They also will monitor the guards to see how they operate, and note their level of training and alertness. Militant groups have been known to test the adequacy and response time of building security by attempting to park a vehicle illegally in front of a building or by entering the building without the proper identification. In the past, al Qaeda has even entered potential target buildings and collected detailed engineering data such as the measurements and locations of building support pillars, elevator equipment and air handling systems. This is simply not the type of information that can be obtained by looking at overhead photos or even at 3D street-level views of the targeted building on the Internet.
Though the Internet can provide surveillance teams with information that allows them to become quickly oriented to their target, and to condense some of the initial surveillance they would otherwise need to conduct, it has not been able to replace physical surveillance altogether. In fact, the same video in which al Qaeda's Maghreb node uses Google Earth to demonstrate how to plan attacks also shows operatives conducting physical surveillance of the attack sites. It also shows videos of attacks, meaning a surveillance team was on hand to record the event.
Although the Internet has become a valuable tool in the surveillance process, it has not come close to eliminating the need for eyes-on monitoring of a target. As such, countersurveillance remains a powerful and proactive tool in the counterterrorism toolbox.

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