Subscribe"As far as I'm concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better," says Abdul Haq, the social worker. "I know it's going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid - I pray for it, I look forward to the day."
"Pass the brown sauce, brother," says Abu Malaahim, the IT specialist, devouring his chicken and chips.
"I agree with you, brother," says Abu Yusuf, the earnest-looking financial adviser sitting opposite. "I would like to see the Mujahideen coming into London and killing thousands, whether with nuclear weapons or germ warfare. And if they need a safehouse, they can stay in mine - and if they need some fertiliser [for a bomb], I'll tell them where to get it."
RIRA structureThat is pretty clear, isn't it? I bolded the part that supports your argument, and left plain the parts that support mine. The reverse seemed like showing off. The RIRA's leadership is composed entirely of ex-PIRA leadership. They have some "new young recruits previously uninvolved in paramilitary activity," so that makes the situation somehow very complicated?
Following his departure from the PIRA, the ex-QMG went on to form the RIRA with an embryo structure along PIRA lines. The new group is said to have an Army Executive and an Army Council, with the ex-QMG as so-called chief of staff (CoS). He was joined by other senior PIRA figures, including some members of the General Headquarters Staff, which comes below the Army Council in the PIRA chain of command.
RIRA build-up, strength, location of key members, capability
The indications are that the RIRA's main strength is in the Irish Republic and that it has taken over sizeable elements of the PIRA's Southern Command. It recruited up to 30 experienced operators from the PIRA ranks, mainly in the Republic but also in some areas north of the Border, especially South Armagh, as well as a number of 'foot soldiers'. In addition, it embarked on a clandestine campaign to enroll new young recruits previously uninvolved in paramilitary activity.
The RIRA CoS who, with some of his close aides, is based in north Co Louth, succeeded in recruiting some of the PIRA's top bomb-makers, including a Dublin tradesman in his thirties known as 'The Engineer'. This man has been a prime garda suspect for the manufacture of the Omagh bomb - and also for the London bombs that devastated The City financial district (1993) and Canary Wharf (1996). . . . Other important recruits were the former head of a PIRA bomb-making unit in Monaghan and an experienced bomb-maker from Drumintee, South Armagh. The enrolment of such men meant that the RIRA had a vital bomb-making capability. These men have the skill to make home-made explosives (HME), to prepare bombs and to assemble a range of mortars.
Other key figures who joined the RIRA included the Dublin-based former chief of the PIRA Southern Command, a Belfast man who was sacked after a dispute with PIRA leaders about two years ago. Two important figures in the Munster region who tended local arms dumps also defected. One was the QMG in the Fermoy region of Co Cork; the other was the QMG in the West Limerick area. The RIRA boss also recruited a senior PIRA figure in Cork city. An entire PIRA unit in Tipperary is said to have gone over to the RIRA with its arms.
The RIRA is believed to have some members in the south Donegal and north Leitrim region. The organisation is also believed to have enrolled former PIRA members or sympathisers in counties Kildare, Wexford, Laois, Louth and in the greater Dublin area. Many members of the Dublin Brigade of the PIRA are said to have gone over to the RIRA.
North of the Border, the RIRA CoS recruited at least two senior PIRA men in the South Armagh area, as well as other support. Some analysts believe that after the gardai foiled a number of RIRA operations, the group moved its main bomb- making factory from the Louth-Monaghan area of the Republic across the border to South Armagh, a traditional hotbed of Republican support. The RIRA is also believed to have some members in the Newry area of Co Down as well as the Omagh area. There are some members in Belfast, but the RIRA has apparently made little attempt to recruit in that city or in Derry; Republicans in both centres have mostly remained loyal to the PIRA leadership and the Adams/McGuinness peace process strategy.
One of the RIRA chief's top aides is a Co Louth-based man who was formerly head of the PIRA in Newry. This man, now in his forties, served time in Northern Ireland for a variety of terrorist offences. He is suspected of being one of the gang who killed three RUC constables in Newry in 1986.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, added after the Civil War, elaborates:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.Don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing anyone of treason, and I don't believe the administration is, either. I'm simply stating that the authors of our government found the issue to be important enough to make it part of the document we base our entire system on. I've talked before about morale being imperative to any military venture, and we all know that our troops don't live in a bubble. They have internet access, telephones, email, blogs. There is something to be said for psychological warfare. When terrorists hear Americans criticizing their own soldiers or justifying terrorism, it gives them comfort. One might even say it aids their cause, strictly from a morale perspective, of course. We are, after all, reading the same internet worldwide, instantaneously. In many ways it's good, but in others, it is clearly detrimental.
Part of my 11 years in the United States Army was spent serving in a Psychological Operations unit. The primary job of such a unit is quite simple -- use basic principles of human psychology against our enemies in order to lower or eliminate their will to fight. In other words, to destroy their morale.Sound familiar? Some of you should be getting paid for your service. Or, disservice, rather.
How do you destroy the enemy's morale and will to fight? It's simple, really.
First, you call into question their mission. Make them question why they are fighting. Make them question whether they are doing the right thing. Soldiers unsure of their mission question their orders and hesitate to act when quick action is most necessary. In combat, you're either quick or you're dead.
Second, call into question their leadership. Make them question their commander's skill and honesty. Make them question the motives of the political figures that made the decision to go to war. Soldiers unsure of their leadership may refuse to follow their orders or take direct action against their leadership. In combat, failure to immediately follow orders usually gets soldiers killed.
Third, make them homesick. Point out how miserable they are; remind them how long they have been away from home; how much their loved ones miss them; accentuate the bad and ignore the good; tell them there is no foreseeable end in site (no, you won't be home by Christmas). Homesick and depressed soldiers are not effective soldiers. Ineffective soldiers often become dead soldiers.
Fourth, make it all about them. Point out that the war is not in their personal best interest. "Hey, you can lose an eye (or worse), doing that." This last step, converting the soldier back into the psychological equivalent of a civilian, is the most deadly. Soldiers who start thinking only of themselves stop acting as members of a team. A soldier concerned only with his own safety stops watching his buddy’s back. Unit cohesiveness breaks down. Desertions and insubordination becomes rampant. Casualties mount higher.
Conversely, the same propaganda that can destroy enemy morale can boost the morale of friendly forces, and vice-versa.
The War in Vietnam was not lost on the battlefields of Vietnam. It was lost in the halls of Congress, in the boardrooms of corporations, in the executive suites of foundations, and in the editorial rooms of great newspapers and television networks. It was lost in the salons of Georgetown, and the classrooms of great universities. The class that provided the strong leadership that made victory possible in World War I and World War II failed America in one of the crucial battles of World War III—Vietnam.Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to defect from the Soviet bloc, said this about Kerry's testimony during the Vietnam War:
The exact sources of that assertion should be tracked down. Kerry also ought to be asked who, exactly, told him any such thing, and what it was, exactly, that they said they did in Vietnam. Statutes of limitation now protect these individuals from prosecution for any such admissions. Or did Senator Kerry merely hear allegations of that sort as hearsay bandied about by members of antiwar groups (much of which has since been discredited)? To me, this assertion sounds exactly like the disinformation line that the Soviets were sowing worldwide throughout the Vietnam era. KGB priority number one at that time was to damage American power, judgment, and credibility. One of its favorite tools was the fabrication of such evidence as photographs and "news reports" about invented American war atrocities. These tales were purveyed in KGB-operated magazines that would then flack them to reputable news organizations. Often enough, they would be picked up. News organizations are notoriously sloppy about verifying their sources. All in all, it was amazingly easy for Soviet-bloc spy organizations to fake many such reports and spread them around the free world.I'm not trying to comment on Kerry, but these ideas referring to Vietnam exemplify what I see as a similar situation today, in those who condemn any good news coming out of Iraq as mere propaganda, while any bad news coming out of Iraq is undoubtedly the truth. I find it sad that it is done with such blatantly partisan subjectivity.
"As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements throughout Europe. KGB chairman Yuri Andropov managed our anti-Vietnam War operation. He often bragged about having damaged the U.S. foreign-policy consensus, poisoned domestic debate in the U.S., and built a credibility gap between America and European public opinion through our disinformation operations. Vietnam was, he once told me, 'our most significant success.'"
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The video showed five men wearing headscarves and black ski masks, standing over a bound man in an orange jumpsuit - similar to a prisoner's uniform - who identified himself as Nick Berg, a U.S. contractor whose body was found on a highway overpass in Baghdad on Saturday.
``My name is Nick Berg, my father's name is Michael, my mother's name is Susan,'' the man said on the video. ``I have a brother and sister, David and Sarah. I live in ... Philadelphia.''
After reading a statement, the men were seen pulling the man to his side and putting a large knife to his neck. A scream sounded as the men cut his head off, shouting ``Allahu Akbar!'' - ``God is great.'' They then held the head out before the camera.
``For the mothers and wives of American soldiers, we tell you that we offered the U.S. administration to exchange this hostage with some of the detainees in Abu Ghraib and they refused,'' one of the men read from a statement.
``So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls. You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins ... slaughtered in this way.''
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 11:14 AM on May 11, 2004