Bin Laden and the reward that was not claimed

Who protected Bin Laden in Pakistan? We don't know. Any government turns out to have murky ideas as far as terrorists are concerned. If you doubt that, look at the history of the U.S.A. with colonel Khadafi. Is it clear to you?  What strikes me is that Bin Laden did not have a large force to protect him; he counted on anonymity rather than on the government. It is interesting. He probably had some protection, but not full support.
By contrast, I clearly remember the French village where the Ayatollah Khomeini took refuge in 1979: it was peppered with security officers from the Gendarmerie Nationale. They always had a police bus in front of the compound. Not only the protection was official, but you could see high antennas on the roof of the property: it was before the time of the Internet; Khomeini sent his messages by radio all over the Arab world, with the full complicity of the French. Murky, murky, and we have been in trouble ever since.
And how come the multi-million dollar reward offer had no effect? As I am very old and I have traveled a lot, I can tell you this: there is one very greedy person on every block of every town all over the world. No exception. Somebody sold Jesus, remember? Treason during World War 2 was common. What about Bin Laden?
There is something that we have not done right. I guess a lot of people would have liked the money and feared retribution: they wanted to stay home and enjoy the money, they did not want to emigrate here under our protection to enjoy it.  Our reward program abroad has to be modified: logic tells me it should have worked better than that.

Terrorism and Tacit Consent

Some years ago, I was convinced that my neighbor was a drug dealer, because I saw dealers going in and out of her apartment all day long. I was wrong: she would never deal because she was a very Christian person, but she sheltered the dealers. It was a totally new concept to me. Why did she do it? Because, she said, they were kids with no hope of getting a job. These dealers were hard to eradicate: they had been on our street for decades, but when that neighbor moved away, the dealers on the corner of my street moved too. It convinced me that dealing is the kind of crime that most often comes with a support group.

It reminded me of another Christian I had met in Ireland. He would never commit an act of terrorism, but he would always hide a terrorist. The idea of calling the police seemed to him equivalent to a betrayal.

Similarly, I knew of a very pacifist Palestinian who would never commit an act of terrorism himself, but he understood and would have protected terrorists. Why? He understood what they were fighting for, agreed with the ends if not with the means. And of course he was constantly subjected to propaganda. For instance he told me that the proof that "the Jews own America" is that the star of David is on the US dollar; I guess he meant the 13 stars from the 13 first states.

I do not understand tacit consent: to me, it is like shooting yourself in the foot; but it is a force that we ignore too often.

Administration vs Terrorism

Image from http://epistemysics.wordpress.com/

So, somebody made a spelling mistake in the name of a terrorist. Mistakes in official documents also happen, according to my experience of 70 years and lots of travels, about ten percent of the times, more so, obviously in countries that are not your own. I have had in turn on my passport/identity/visa forms/driver's license and various permits the wrong first name, the wrong middle name, the wrong date of birth, and one time the wrong sex. Several times, the authorities refused to correct their mistake: it was not in the power of the person handling me the document.And the name Lambert is shorter to spell than Abdulmutallab.
I am quite certain that somewhere in the US archives, somebody has statistics about mistakes done on uncommon and difficult names. And obviously nothing came out of it. As Justin Fox remarked today in his blog, how come the State Department is not equipped to handle this? Police files have many cases of people trying to escape justice by changing themselves a small detail in their own identity, so we must account for our own administrative mistakes plus a number of cheaters.
If you had asked me a few days ago how I imagined the State Department verifies if you have a visa, I would have said: "They probably have a list of similar names coming up with access to your picture, face recognition stuff, prints, possibly coded access to your whole file and the various alerts from different departments, CIA, criminal files, etc." I would also imagine that if you look for a Nigerian who has been a student in Britain, they all come up on the touch of a button.You could check on the list who also has a visa for the US. All this is elementary, so I also hope they get a good intersect with other agencies. Is it too much to ask?

Why is it the way it should work? I do stuff like that all the time with history problems. For instance, if I want to know who was at the US embassy in Vichy during WWII, it comes up, at the touch of a button and in a few minutes work.

Searching is a skill: it can be learned. How educated are people of the State Department in searching? How fast do they find ten red balloons?
How do you do a decent job without a decent instrument? A good no-nonsense search software seems to me more efficient than waterboarding!

Journalist of the month: Borzou Daragahi

Libya's coup: Turning militants against Al Qaeda
This is the first encouraging paper about terrorism in a long long time. As a Pulitzer finalist, Mr Daraghi does not need the congratulations of my little blog, but this is a fine paper indeed. It baffled me.
Moreover, the Los Angeles Times is one of the best papers in the world for international politics:it is about time I nominate one of their great journalists with this heartfelt thank you.
I did not know that Libya was making any effort of that kind. Seen from here, many countries seem a bit apathetic regarding terrorism, just like for the Israel-Palestinian conflict: it is complicated, and there are people very active at taking advantage of it. People and politicians who thrive in wounds, like fly larvae.

So today, some good news. I needed that.

It would be funny, if it were not so sad

you got to read this.
I am not commenting on it: I am speachless

9/11

It is the exact same pain I feel. Does not seem to subside with time.

Does torture work? YES it does. It would with me.

I am getting tired of watching young (compared to me, they are all young) reporters discussing whether torture works or not. Of course it works. I for one would tell anything to my dentist. Any American who is afraid to go to the dentist should understand that torture has a very good chance to work. Let us quit the attitude and use common sense. MOSTLY, it "works": many people would talk.
So, a lot of people are like me and would say anything under duress. Here come the questions:
1) Would I tell the truth or anything to please the dentist and escape the experience? What would you do?
2) Do I know anything interesting? I do not. Most of us do not know squat, and most of our enemies do not know squat. How many people who do not know anything are we willing to torture? Do we even know who is the enemy? In this kind of war, we don't. Where do we stop? Are we going to torture a hairdresser just in case he or she has heard something useful?
3) If torture is so efficient, how come we never learned where was Osama Ben Laden?
4) There has been a vast experience of torture in the last 60 years. Nazis tortured, got good information and lost the war. French tortured, claimed it saved lives and lost Algeria, Britain tortured and did not keep India or Ireland, the KGB tortured and communism lost.

You make your own mind. I think that the strength of Americans is that they can outsmart their enemies.
Let us not forget it: outsmarting is something Americans are good at.

Revamping the CIA

I have been wondering why it is that the CIA always has a worse rep than their equivalent in other countries. All nations have spies, and all spying institutions sometimes misbehave. We got spy scandals in every democracy I have known in the last fifty years, It goes with secrecy that bad stuff is committed and that a few traitors are somehow generated. We got to keep both down best we can.

So there are scandals galore everywhere: how come the CIA is always the only bad guy in the news? I think it is cultural: Americans are raised to tell the truth, to talk in you face and go for a good fight: dissimulation is just not American. It is not true for the British, who have been raised in the complex heritage of Victorian times: all their education is about keeping to the weather, keeping a straight upper lip and all the restraints of the rules of good conduct. They may like a good fight too, but they understand the need for secrecy much better. As for the French, they have a large practice of double entendre and an unhealthy respect for the authority in place coupled with underlying rage: it is why they always leak information.

But of course we need our spies and they need to be respected. It is time to stop playing "I am a good person because I don't like the CIA". Maybe part of the bad stuff that happened at the CIA did so because they could not recruit in a net large enough. So all these people who felt too good for the CIA are to be blamed too.

It is time for the CIA to have a good image: it will help the institution inside and outside. They should spend a few million dollars on self-promotion. They battled Communism by supporting good anti-communist books, so they know the power of books, they should support themselves with good pro-CIA literature. The trouble with present CIA mystery novels is that they are based on the British model, and it does not quite "take" over here, except if the hero is British. The key, I think, is to put the accent on outsmarting. Let us leak some stories where we have been outsmarting bad guys (there must be leak-free stories, there always are) and pay some popular writers to enhance the CIA image.
I am getting tired of that constant criticism of the CIA: it is like walking on your own foot.

Torture useful?

All these gallons on water, and we do not know where is Osama Ben Laden.

Robert Gibbs: torture, outsmarting the bad guys

It is ironic that I came to this country because it was against torture: I was not sure about any other country, but I was sure about this one. I found it extraordinary that many journalists today seem to imply by their questions to Robert Gibbs that torture is the only way to acquire knowledge of the enemy. Of course it is not: do not believe an instant that the CIA is powerless without torture!
I had in the past worked for several human rights agencies and collected stories from people who had been tortured East, in communist countries, and in Greece under the colonels and West, specially in South America, and South from Spain to Iran to South Africa. Keeping notes of torture was a despairing job: torture was almost everywhere in the 70s, but it was nothing like seeing the results with your own eyes. I do remember people with burns, people without nails, and people with arms or legs torn and unusable: I still have nightmares filled with blood. The Prime Minister of the “New Yugoslavia” was once interrogated about Kosovo, in London, and answered: "All history books should be kept away from children." This gave me a bitter pleasure.

To me the Nazis tortured and lost the war, the British and the Americans used another weapon: they outsmarted them.


When each generation comes to war, there is a temptation to save lives by forcing some people to talk under torture. It is easy to find young men who believe that by torturing, they achieve a greater good, save lives of their countrymen, protect their own. And then, they are not sissies; they have to do what has to be done. The discourse is successful in any country. It was in France in the 60’s, a country that has many faults but is generally considered civilized.
The problem is that we never really know who knows, so we torture innocent people. The problem is that most of our enemies don’t know squat, and they tell us what we want to hear. The problem is that with each wrongdoing, each atrocity, we create a century of hate. I know exactly what the Germans did to my family in 1914. Armenians know exactly what the Turks did. Black people remember their history. You will have a hard time finding Japanese Americans who do not know that their grandparents were in camps during the war. None of us wants to forget 9/11. It is a pity that each generation has to be explained this again and again and again, and that so many governments hide bad deeds, poor administration and stupid revenge under the guise of a need for information.
Legal wartime behavior is not easy to achieve: there is the pressure of war, the rage of seeing your friends killed, the fear, the sense of urgency. So I do not condemn soldiers who go too far: wanting to pummel somebody’s face to get to the truth is very human. What I criticize is the executive for its lack of vision and for the lack of training in appropriate techniques of war when it will boil down to man-to-man contact.
What do we want after the war ends? All wars end. It used to be that Americans, specially the army, were admired worldwide for their restraint as opposed to the Nazis’ immorality and for the way they carefully protected works of art in all of Europe during wartime. We seem to have lost our interest in protecting art.
At the end of the day, let us be efficient and use restraint, protect children, protect history, protect art. But let us also outsmart the bad guys. We got a weakness there that waterboarding never compensated for.

Ways to treat civilians in Afghanistan

This from a CNN documentary. You could see some American soldiers coming to a remote village of Afghanistan armed to the teeth. They came with a translator and asked if there was any terrorist around. My heart bleeds for these soldiers, because I think that the way they have been told to act is not right and that it puts them in more peril than it should.
What would you think if you were an old Afghan peasant who never saw a foreigner before? Now suppose you yourself go to work and there is a Martian there with big weapons asking you if there are terrorists around? What would you say?
A lot of Afghans have no idea what a terrorist is to start with. It is not the right question, because Afghan have a whole series of subdivisions in their mind, and Talibans is too big a word: some they like, some they dont. Explain that you are there for peace, ask them if there are problems with robbers or armed people that you can help with, but asking for terrorists or even Talibans directly are not good words and it is no way to start a conversation. It is like saying we came to kill more neighbors of yours, not a great idea.

You know this, but people forget: there is a cultural difference between people who live from agriculture and city people. You can see that in the United States: the values, the rhythm of life, the politics are different. In general, agricultural societies are more set in their ways and live more by rules, because they see less diversity.

I did work next door to an Afghan young man many years: we were in France; he could not go back to his country thanks to the Russians. He was a very peaceful and nice gentleman with no sense of time. He was also very sensitive to what is polite and what is not: it is basic in all agricultural societies. There are ways to talk to people. Many years ago, I worked in Ireland and I observed the same thing: the sense of time was not the same as mine, and the rules of politeness could not be overlooked. In Ireland, for instance, it is impolite to ask a direct question before you have a conversation, it is why Gallup answers were so unreliable at the time: many people considered that the method was offensive; I do not know if that has changed. My guess is that it has not changed much in the western part of the island.

The mistake here is to come as a bare army: why on earth, at least on the documentary I saw on CNN did not they come to a remote small village with some elders from the next village, it they were willing? They would, as a courtesy, because they are very polite and neighborly people, and they want to protect visitors. They would of course if they did not think of us as the new invader. To say the least, soldiers need to come with more people in civilian clothing: people that old civilans can relate to. It takes more time, but it is the way it should be done: make friends here, go to the next place. Why on earth are our soldiers not told to have a conversation before they ask about terrorists? If there was one in the surroundings, the elders would not tell us anyway, because the perception of us is not good, so it is just as well to spend five minutes talking about the weather and the fact that we are on a peaceful mission, and ask if they have enough food. It is basic politeness, folks. Being blunt and efficient is not the way Afghans work.

I am not saying that all Afghans are "nice", I know that there is a lot of armed people and small tribes of thugs, drug dealers and terrorists, but how are we going to find them in that difficult terrain if we behave like the Russians? There is a U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual that every soldier should read: it is full of good advice, and it is not that complicated; in one sentence: Talk to people as if they were your grandparents, but do not believe that they will behave as your grandparents would.

We need the population to help us, and it will not, if we do not respect its customs and if they do not understand what we want. Let me recommend the book of LCOL John A. Nagl Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam. It is a fantastic read for anybody interested in our success in Afghanistan. If one of your loved ones is in Afghanistan, send this book over: it could save lives.

The next terrorist

This nice-looking, highly educated young man, Jean Bastien-Thiry tried to kill President De Gaulle and was executed. When I was in France, some colleagues of mine, to my surprise, brought flowers to his tomb years and years after his death.
Many people tend to view terrorists as inflamed Muslims: it is a dangerous view. Terrorism always starts at home. Indeed terrorists have one thing in common with pedophiles: they recognize each other, communicate with each other, help each other and commit crimes together. They grow up at home, in a family who defines itself as "victim" and has "enemies". Look at the Balkans, at the IRA, at Palestine, at Serbia, at Kashmer, at Mumbai, and look at Timothy McVeigh. These guys all reason the same way: it is a community of minds.

They are now linked together, thanks to technological progress and globalization. It does not take much for a big hit:
- an intellectual leader and fund provider (remember the Marx-Engels team? Engels, who was of a well-off family was paying all of Marx expenses: terrorists thrive of that kind of alliance).
- a clique of poor and poorly educated idealists trained to be ready for anything.

Terrorism is ancient: the best description of a terrorist was written in 1885 by Emile Zola in Germinal The most instructive movie on the subject is still probably The Day of the Jackal: you got to see Edward Fox in a very impressive interpretation. I met some terrorists, I know what they look like, and they look just like that.

In a way, it is a blessing that they are so wired towards taking lives and getting headlines, because it limits the damage they do. But don't count on it to remain this simple. At Mumbai, they tried to start an Indian-Pakistan war with fake messages. It is interesting, because it goes further than "kill and get the press".

What is next? An alliance with Mexican drug dealers and an attack of the Internet.
Why the Internet? If we get no computers, we cant even go to war. The Internet remains our weakest spot. Yes, the Bush government has spent money on Gov sites' protection, but it is a short view. We need to protect the communication network per se and have banks and businesses protected too.
Why Mexico? 1) It is the closest country with major corruption, it is the easiest way to snuggle in, and there is a lot of cash around. 2) 30 milions Americans are on drugs. Who needs a Muslim terrorist? The pie is here, and it is ready.


How did I form this bizarre opinion? With a bunch of fun information. Here it is.

An old book by Cliff Stoll The cuckoo's egg. This is the true story of a young astronomer from Berkeley making some money as a computer assistant manager. Cliff is in charge of finding the origin of a 75 cents discrepancy between the two systems allotting computer time and billing at Berkeley. This 75 cents error is the astonishing start of the discovery of an international spy network. What you got to remember from the book is that almost nobody takes security at heart for a long time. Since the book, the technology has changed, people have not changed: we all have sloppy records on security.
In Vernon Vinge's Rainbows' end, a man recovering from Alzheimer has to learn new technology. It is just the start of a complex plot. The book deals with augmented reality and virtual worlds and all kinds of exciting concepts.
George Alec Effinger mixed humor, dark thoughts and dark visions in a very unique way. When Gravity Fails is set in a time where the Arab world dominates a decadent western civilization. All kinds of gadgets appear in the book that can modify one's brain.
On the dangers of all this technology to freedom, I thought that The net (1995, with Sandra Bullock) presented a good case. Some people thought that it was too far-fetched: all the stolen info in the movie comes from a popular program. Guess what? It is just what the Russian internet thieves did."A Russian company that sells fake antivirus software that actually takes over a computer pays its illicit distributors as much as $5 million a year." Source:John Markoff, NYTimes, Dec 5, 2008.
As for Mexico, go buy the last Newsweek (Dec,8,2008, Bloodshed on the border) and the last Counter Terrorism (winter issue 2008 Welcome to hell: the mexican drug war).
You add the money that drugs lords make and the money that internet thieves make, you got to conclude that we are more rich than we think. We can afford to lose $100 billion a year (see Markoff paper above) in internet fraud and 65 billions a year in illegal drugs (see drugcaucus.senate.gov). We could buy cars with all that money!
In the meantime, where does the drug money go? To friends of the US? Not a chance.
Time to ask yourself and your kids what we asked after 9/11: "Are you funding terrorism?"