Original avuncular Vulcan, the nigh indestructible cardiac wise regime changing fan VP Cheney took his gig deadly seriously after 911. Mainly, discover items brother Vulcan and then Def Sec Rumsfeld called 'known unknowns and unknown unknowns' in regards to blood oath enemies like super villan OBL's Al Qaeda.
"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."
Like future plans, plots and organizational/operational methodology. Hop on the way machine for a sec and try to remember the aftermath of 911.
It was frightening. Scary new words like 'Ground Zero', "anthrax", "Taliban", "sniper" and "weapons of mass destruction" were intro'd to kids across America - live in our living rooms with a horrific huge smoking 20 acre crater in the heart of the world.
And the seemingly most unravelable rats nest of all - "Al Qaeda"
It was only a matter of time before a repeat attack occured. Truly, AQ brought Great Satan to her knees.
Despite fleets of stealth bombers and satellites the most important prevention tool in the shed was and is known as 'human intelligence'.
"Humint" in spy talk.
The recent ABC IView with the refreshingly unrepentant VP shared a bit of humint .
"I think, for example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was the number three man in al Qaeda, the man who planned the attacks of 9/11, provided us with a wealth of information. There was a period of time there, three or four years ago, when about half of everything we knew about al Qaeda came from that one source."
Whoa! So as recent as 2004 and 2005 nearly 50% of known knowns about AQ came from a single source.
"It means that three to four years after 9/11, everything else the
U.S. Government did to learn about al Qaeda equaled, in terms of overall value, the intelligence collected from the interrogations of a single terrorist.
This means that all of the other techniques and intelligence programs
put in place to understand al Qaeda have been, comparatively speaking, less effective (in terms of a basic cost-benefit analysis).
Ex CIA cat Geo Tenet's "At the Center of the Storm" reveals that after one especial session with the Korean war era Chinese refined water torture, quizzing KSM ignited a chain of events that gave AQ's planners and operatives a nasty surprise that pre empted and prevented the 2nd wave of attacks.While these other programs certainly led to some successes, they
clearly did not produce a relatively large amount of actionable intelligence if KSM’s interrogation alone produced half of what they knew."
Obviously, AQ has more gossip and secrets stashed than KSM knew, knows, could or can guess at. Kinda makes you wonder what all Great Satan didn't know then or doesn't know now.
A few future quizes remain - after charges of torture and rendering hapless murderous jerks, creep and retards uncomfortable, how should Great Satan conduct leisured, thorough investigations and interrogations?
How and what techniques will be used? Will any procedures be as effective or as controversial in the future as certain ones are now?
And what about such magical humint enhancing locales like Gitmo?
VP Cheney admits that is a great question.
"One suggestion is, well, we bring them to the United States. Well, I
don't know very many congressmen, for example, who are eager to have 200 al Qaeda terrorists deposited in their district."
Pic - Gitmo Dick
4 comments:
Mr. Veep has nothing to repent for, certainly not in the war against terror and darkness. The Left paints him as the most evil of evils; the Left won't recognize the real enemy until that enemy starts hacking off the heads of the Left. And THEN, the Left -- mired in their fanatical hatred -- will continue to excuse their executioners and blame Bush and Cheney.
When Lenin branded the Left "useful idiots", he knew well about what he spoke.
Merry Christmas, Courtney!
"Repent"? no... probably not.
But he did start, back in that time just after 9-11, by talking of walking "the dark side" , which is not so named for the lack of street-lighting.
Innocent people were roughed up too. The real enemy is not always easy to spot. We think of them as just more casualties?.
perhaps but..
I'm reminded of one of the most right-wing of Israeli leaders who forbade "rigorous interrogations" because he'd been dealt with that same way when a prisoner of the KGB. There are things this man - a militant defender of a country under seige - did not wish on someone who could in truth be his most savage of enemies...
What place in the dark side had he come to... that he would think that way?
Nice posting, Courtney!
Cheney was totally dead on when he said Biden won't have near the historical consequence as he did!
Have a great Christmas.
Courtney - Thanks for posting this. It is a subject I've been spending a lot of time researching lately. Those who have trashed the U.S., Dick Cheney, and the President for suppossedly torturing people like KSM must now try to get that very valuable, life saving information without tough techiques like water-boarding. Good luck! Cheney's comment that half of what we knew came from KSM only tells us just how important thorough, and yes if need be, very tough interrogations of high value terrorists are. My guess is removing these tactics will only make the homeland very vulnerable to attack. Fighting terrorists is about preempting them. You can't if you don't have the information in the heads of those your've captured and can provide information to stop it.
If we are attacked while Obama is in office I hope the press does its job (good luck) and looks into what the government knew pre-attack and what the government "didn't do" to try and save innocent lives. Most Americans have no idea that some of our politicans are not willing to dirty their hands in any way to save innocent people. This is a subject that needs to be discussed more openly and questions thrown at the President.
I will be posting something on this myself.
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