Via Gawker:
Embassy-Closing Terror Plot Uncovered on Al Qaeda Conference Call
For the first time in history, a group of managers were able to sit down and prepare for a major project on a conference call. It’s just that all the managers were al Qaeda managers, and the major project was a terrorist attack.
A bizarre story from The Daily Beast, based on clearly targeted leaks from U.S. officials, holds that the communications intercepted by the U.S. government wasn’t just any old email or text—it was a full conference call between nearly two dozen representatives from various al Qaeda branches.
“This was like a meeting of the Legion of Doom,” one U.S. intelligence officer told The Daily Beast, referring to the coalition of villains featured in the Saturday morning cartoon Super Friends.
In case you were wondering why al Qaeda has thus far been unable to follow up on the spectacularly successful (from their point of view) September 11 attacks, this conference call may provide a critical clue: Perhaps, like many a Silicon Valley wunderkind before them, al Qaeda’s senior management team transformed a once-agile organization into a stodgy, hidebound old clunker of a corporation and have since occupied themselves with meetings, PowerPoints and mission / vision statement revisions. Either that or someone droned the shit out of every new project launch leader.
The Gawker article also contains some interesting speculation on why US officials are releasing this information now, why they’re willing to reveal intelligence-gathering methods they want to jail Snowden for disclosing, why they’re closing down embassies again, etc. Worth a read.
dmsilev
If we indeed inflicted Powerpoint on al Qaeda, I can understand why they would want to bomb us. And for that matter, understand why they have a supply of people willing to be suicide bombers.
Corner Stone
Are they really trying to tell me that AQ is using a freakin phone to chat about “Death to America!” ?
Bill Arnold
Power corrupts, Powerpoint corrupts absolutely.
Corner Stone
I hope they throw the reporter in jail until he rolls over on his source(s) for this classified intel leak(s).
Corner Stone
It’s times like these I miss valued commenter Bob Loblow. As a brown American, he could really shine some light on to what his terror commander had planned.
Ah, another victim of the The New Era of Civility ™ .
Cris (without an H)
Al-Qaeda used to train terrorists. Now they require recruits to prepare for the third-party Terror Professional certification exam.
MattF
It’s what they call a ‘systems’ approach. ‘Synergy’ also. Too.
catclub
@Corner Stone: Right after Goldman Sachs executives go to jail for their crimes.
catclub
One could encrypt one’s H.264 stream to your collaborator.
Or you could use skype.
Corner Stone
I think, at this point, we have to seriously ask ourselves exactly wtf it is we are doing/have been doing.
If after all this time, blood and treasure, we’re still expected to believe AQ and its subparts remain a viable threat to our national interests, then what in the holy hell have we been doing all this time?
scav
@Corner Stone: Only the Olds use facebook anymore. We learned that iphones can handle voice yesterday.
MattF
Also, makes me think the drone strategy is to kill off the younger tech-aware crowd, leaving the old farts to wonder ‘What button should I push now?’
Matt McIrvin
Or, they’re just messing with us at this point and either the real attack is something else, or they’ve realized they can do more damage to our society by faking the chatter than by actually doing anything.
NonyNony
@Corner Stone:
I would guess that it’s actually some kind of VOIP that the AQ people involved thought was secure but wasn’t, but other than that sure why not? AQ is not some kind of superteam of highly trained commando spy operatives. They’re basically a coalition of a bunch of militia groups spread out all over the Mid East who have all flocked to the name “Al Qaeda” because AQ had a big success and the name scares the shit out of Westerners now.
What I want to know is why anyone is stupid enough to leak this. Even if they’re trying to defend the NSA, this is the kind of thing you take to the Senate in a closed door session to say “look, we’re doing good work here – look at what we’ve picked up using this program” so that you don’t, you know, let them know that you’ve got them bugged and can listen in on everything they’re doing…
MattF
@NonyNony: Is possible that NSA knows a thing or two about the channel that AQ thinks is really really secure.
Joe Buck
If this (a massive al Qaeda conference call) is really the “intelligence” that led to closing every American embassy in the middle east and north Africa, I question the competence of our leaders. After all, the al Qaeda leadership knows about NSA’s capabilities and has long avoided the use of phones or the Internet to communicate anything important. Perhaps they wanted to be intercepted, and their real goal was a massive American freakout. After all, a truck bomb at an embassy might not even make it close enough to hurt anyone inside the embassy. But a scary, nebulous “plot” closed about 20 embassies.
But since no one dies, the Republicans can’t hold “Benghazi” hearings so everyone’s ass is covered.
max
The Gawker article also contains some interesting speculation on why US officials are releasing this information now, why they’re willing to reveal intelligence-gathering methods they want to jail Snowden for disclosing, why they’re closing down embassies again, etc.
Well, assuming what they told Eli Lake was true (and this is Eli Lake, investigative arm of NeoCon Central, so you should drop a salt brick on everything he says and see if it keeps moving), then the description sounds like the AQ guy just made a campaign call. As in: ‘Yoo hoo, guys, we’re still herrrreeee!’ (This incidently, undermines the argument that has been made that we killed bin Laden (true) and that therefore AQ Central is dead (wounded, not necessarily gone)
If the US actually intercepted a courier carrying letters (which was what bin Laden used, intelligently enough), that might be more solid.
Well, given that the NSA/FBI/Pentagon apparently has either 1) been spoofed by AQCentral* or 2) spoofed themselves, I am thinking we’re talking more ‘Legion of Fail’ here. That’s all assuming that the shutdown wasn’t meant as a pro-surveillance campaign move. (Although it might be both! Since AQCentral is keen for the US to continue waging the War on Terror, ideally as stupidly as possible.)
Summary: this is all bullshit, except for the fact that AQC is apparently still staggering along.
max
[‘Jesus H. Christ.’]
* But well-played there. You ASSHOLES.
fuckwit
This one is easy: BENGHAZI!!!!!
Obama is not going to let Al Queda give their allies the Republicans (in their shared goal of more war and destruction) any more political ammunition than they need to cause havoc. All the Rethugs need is another embassy attack to dominate everyone’s attention again
Obama has caught a lot of shit for not doing enough to protect that embassy in 2012, and he tends to never make the same mistake twice.
Also, yes, this is quite cynically being leaked in order to protect the NSA spy progam. We were listening in to all their calls.
Thirdly, what a fucking clown car Al Queda has become too. Conference call, really? Jeebus. I guess whatever we’re doing, it’s working, because these guys have become less scary and more ridiculous with each passing year.
catclub
@NonyNony: “What I want to know is why anyone is stupid enough to leak this.”
Well, if that mode was rapidly shut down by the AQ guys, then they know as well. No point in keeping it secret, and NSA gets credit for the intercept – just not the botching of the use of the intercept to blow the method.
Belafon
@Joe Buck: bin Laden and his team knew not to use these types of communications, but his operation also didn’t involve trying to get a bunch of groups to work together, they didn’t exist.
How, in the 21st century would you get groups all across the globe to communicate?
ruemara
@Bill Arnold: win.
I’m assuming AQ forgot the one great rule that keeps CostCo a success. Do not hire any business school grads in management.
Punchy
Fuckin Chryeest…..now I have to hear every single newsie now refer to this as “Legion of Doom”. Once they choose a moniker, they use it ad infinitim. This will be comical.
Gin & Tonic
Their plot was completely successful. Hold one conference call, and the USA runs around with its hair on fire for weeks, shutting down embassies, air-freighting staff out of Yemen, over-reacting like crazy. Side benefit for AQ, is you see where your communication weak points are.
Setting off a bomb and killing people isn’t always the goal, you know.
hoodie
@NonyNony: To answer the latter question, at least two possible reasons. (1) There was no such phone conference and this is all just bullshit eagerly gobbled up on a web already hyped up by the Snowden revelations; or (2) maybe the NSA is not always able to catch such conference calls, but they want AQ to think they can. It’s a leak; it doesn’t have to be true. Talking to the Daily Beast is not testifying to a congressional committee. Intelligence is not always just protecting information, it’s also disseminating disinformation.
Belafon
@Belafon: OK, I tried to reply.
ETA: It sounds to me like al Qaeda has turned into what any group eventually does when it’s original leadership goes away: A group entirely committed to its own survival, rather than continuing its original goals. It sounds like the solutions to the problems at Nortel when it was collapsing: Have more meetings.
fuckwit
@NonyNony: I’m not sure I’m buying this. The more hindrances you put on communications, the more difficult and the more security measures you require them to take, the more you disrupt/delay/weake the communications.
I see nothing wrong with leaking that their supposedly secure call was not really secure. Now they have to scramble to figure out some other way to communicate, and that will delay them and make their communiations more difficult. Vigilance consumes time and money and resources, we have plenty of all of the above, and if we think they are short on all of those, then great, keep them bogged down in all that shit.
Remember: most people don’t use encryption because it is a pain in the ass; we’d rather just let Google and the NSA read all our shit instead. The more pains in the ass we create for Al Queda, the better, IMHO, and if nobody else gets hurt or killed (i.e. this is less dangerous to bystanders than drone strikes) the better.
Roger Moore
@Bill Arnold:
Where would you like your internet delivered? I am so stealing that line.
different-church-lady
@Gin & Tonic: The soft bigotry of low expectations?
NonyNony
@Punchy:
I wish they would have used “Cobra Command”.
fuckwit
@catclub: Skype has a backdoor, IIRC, and isn’t true end-to-end encryption. Perhaps they really did use Skype, the fucking idiots.
aimai
Warning: this call may be monitored to assure Quality Control.
Press 1 if you would like a transcript forwarded to the NSA
Press 2 if you would like to conduct this transaction in another language
Signed: the Legion of Hold, Please, your terrorism is valuable to us.
JustRuss
I expect we’ll be hearing more from AQ once they start using the new cover sheets for their TPS reports.
catclub
@fuckwit: exactly my point. The only reason to be on skype is that it has a phonebook directory. If you know the IP address of your collaborator, use your custom, encrypted H.264 stream to their computer.
Steeplejack
Legion of Doom? Pfft. The Guild of Calamitous Intent is who we really should be worried about.
NonyNony
@fuckwit:
Except that if you let them continue to believe that their insecure calls are actually secure, you can keep listening in. In fact it would be better to claim that you had an informant pass you a transcript or recording of their call so that they waste time looking for a mole when they should be shoring up their encryption.
But that brings me back to thinking that this is all bullshit disinformation being spread to bolster the NSA’s program while also keeping AQ in the dark about where their leak is and sending them on a wild goose chase to fix non-existent problems.
different-church-lady
I can’t quite tell if I should be okay with this because I supposedly “feel safer” or overwhelmingly outraged because one of the conference call participants might have been an American citizen who’s 4th Amendment rights might have been extraordinarily rendered to a data center in Utah.
I suppose I shall have to wait for Greenwald’s next column to resolve this conflict for me, since he is the only journalist left on the planet willing to tell the truth.
Roger Moore
@fuckwit:
This. If we can’t catch them all or blow them all up, at least we can keep them on the defensive. If they spend all their time worrying about keeping themselves alive, they won’t have any time to plan how to attack us.
kindness
No doubt Republicans will scream treason or some such lunacy for the release of this data. Hey….I’m not thinking it’s treason or even illegal but do not forget that Republicans are a sandwich or two short of a picnic as a requirement nowdays it seems. Maybe that is why they always want their wimmens to make them more sammiches.
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
My thought exactly.
This smells of “see, the NSA really is protecting us!” bullshit.
I’m not buying this story for a nanosecond. One of the reasons bin Laden stayed alive for so long is that the vile deserting coward needed him alive to be a boogy man, and furthermore, the vile deserting coward and his minions were too fucking lazy to do actual detective work, instead relying on lazy passive SIGINT which bin Laden was clever enough to bypass by using couriers.
WereBear
We’re miserable, demoralized, and our economy is on life-support.
The Republican Congress is doing their job for them!
catclub
@Roger Moore: ” If we can’t catch them all or blow them all up, at least we can keep them on the defensive.”
Seems more likely than actually doing some good that gets appreciated.
Global force for Good, my left asshole. The money is in munitions.
The Moar You Know
Reminds me of the story about the Al-Queda guy a few months back who was getting bitched out for not submitting his expense reports on time.
It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, it’s all the same bullshit.
Hill Dweller
FWIW, Richard Engel said this on twitter:
? Martin
Interesting that AQ used either an unencrypted or a poorly encrypted call. There are strong encrypted end-to-end video/audio chat solutions. I’m assuming that AQ didn’t use this because if NSA could listen in (and they might be able to decrypt AES-128) they certainly wouldn’t admit to that – the ability to bypass anything considered secure would be held as classified, and AQ would certainly know what kind of encryption they relied on.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Moar You Know:
Perhaps the Al Qaida guys who used “safe phones” for the conference call had their credit cards cancelled before they could pay their cab fare from there to their cribs?
The Moar You Know
@Belafon: Put the appropriate limitations on it, to avoid getting caught, and it becomes quite an exercise:
No phones – this includes fax
No email or internet traffic of any kind
No snail mail
This gets hard and expensive very quickly.
Suzanne
I would just like to point out that half of my clients, consultants, and colleagues have a hard time successfully holding or attending conference calls. Apparently the members of Al Qaeda are all down with it, though. Maybe one of them wants to be our office manager. Our current office manager sucks.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
It’s under appreciated, but everywhere writing has developed, it was invented by bureaucrats so they could keep better records. All the other uses of writing, like literature and preserving culture, were johnny-come-latelies.
? Martin
@Villago Delenda Est:
This is a pretty big conspiracy if so – closing embassies in a dozen countries is not a trivial thing. It involves thousands of people and sharing of intel between many agencies as well as with Congress and the military. And you would have us believe the same guys that are screaming about Benghazi are now backing Obama’s decision to close embassies based on intel that they’ve actually claimed to see from being on the intel committees, which you now suggest is a lie. I have a hard time imagining Obama’s enemies being so eager to prop up the intelligence community when proof of a legitimately impeachable offense is sitting in their lap.
And if the government is lying about this sort of thing, they should expect whistleblowers to start to come out of the woodwork over it. You’re assuming that the people that are interested in going into national security work are also interested in lying on behalf of they government. In my experience those two things don’t naturally go together.
different-church-lady
@? Martin:
Don’t be an idiot: ever since Holder shoved bamboo splinters under Manning’s fingernails the government hasn’t been able to recruit any competent whistleblowers, so Obama shut down the program.
piratedan
@Steeplejack: bonus hipster points for the Venture Brothers ref, damned shame that hipsters have no point redemption program, still…
this sure looks like a bigger bang for your buck scenario… call into question the efficacy of the NSA programs? Booya, here’s what they’re doing on your behalf fellow citizen….
call into question that this Administration is soft on terrorism… oh well, no worries, “we got this”…..
is this all eleventy dimensional chess? I can’t say, but it sure as hell isn’t Cowboy shrub and his corporate raider outfit club. I really don’t think the Obama Administration is into games, they’re into results and as such, they’ve been fairly consistent in how they handle AQ, they take them seriously and do everything they can to disrupt, behead and generally make them look as ineffective as possible. Yeah, they’ll get lucky once in a while and seize a target of opportunity (Benghazi) but where the US can reach, they’ve been reached.
Corner Stone
@NonyNony:
We’ve been blowing the absolute ass off of AQ #2 commanders for the last 10 years! We think they don’t know how we’re finding them? It sure as hell isn’t by HUMINT.
cathyx
@? Martin: @different-church-lady: Oh yes. If the government were really doing wrong and illegal things, whistleblowers would be coming out of the woodwork to expose it. Since that hasn’t happened, the government is acting aboveboard.
Corner Stone
@Matt McIrvin:
Like I metioned in a recent thread about the empty suitcase left in an airport bathroom, I think this kind of thing absolutely has to be some mix of Denial of Service attack combined with a threat probe of our possible defense/response.
schrodinger's cat
@WereBear:
That is an exaggeration worthy of Fox News.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
“al Qaeda’s senior management team transformed a once-agile organization into a stodgy, hidebound old clunker of a corporation and have since occupied themselves with meetings, PowerPoints and mission / vision statement revisions.”
Don’t forget quality assurance/quality control. Especially if AQ have adopted six-sigma.
Paul in KY
@NonyNony: Could have used K.A.O.S. Here that one is available.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Bit harsh on B-school grads in general. True, I’d run, run, run away from anything run by an Harvard B-school grad. But MIT MBAs are very, very good and data driven. (MIT Sloan school did the research on CostCo and Trader Joe’s that showed that paying retail workers more led to better corporate performance.)
mike with a mic
@fuckwit:
Skype is not secure. It’s not just about the encryption not being truly encrypted, but there is software you can obtain that just rips the information out of the audio processor and memory itself. Full copy of the call, date and time stamps, IP, location. Skype isn’t secure at all.
The only way to “secure” your communications is to go human/drug/arms trafficking style. Get a phone without a GPS or an android one where you can hardware nuke it and use a custom rom. Make sure it’s a prepaid phone from an area you don’t live in and keep multiple of them, you’re going to toss them periodically (which is why they are burner phones). Get a custom secure linux distro for your computer that does not save any local information. Connect through VPNs, use TOR (just turn off java script that’s how the kiddie pron people got caught), use SSL for everything. The only way you should communicate are through deepnet/darknet IRC groups and rapidly deleted with no store USENET groups.
Even if you do all this, one slight user error and you’re fucked, the gig is all over. Even if you don’t screw up they have caught people (usually through screwing up though) and with enough man and processing power you can be tracked down.
But the one thing to really remember, if you chose to do this, you’re a suspect now. Most of the public has no idea the amount of information they voluntarily put out daily. The people who are aware and go through great pains to cover their tracks are either intelligence themselves, or up to some incredibly shady shit that will make your stomach crawl. You’re jumping in with the sharks and the worst of the worst. The feds will assume you are no good.
MattR
@? Martin:
Couldn’t there be a legitimate threat that led to the closing of embassies that was discovered using methods other than an NSA wiretap of a conference call?
@NonyNony:
OTOH, if you have a mole in their organization who gave you intel about a threat, then leaking that you got the information by tapping a conference call makes sense.
scav
AQHR: There are the scariest set of four letters in the universes, known and unknown, parallel and tangent.
piratedan
@Herbal Infusion Bagger: I can only imagine what a support call to the AQ Help Desk might sound like…..
“yes, sir… and have you rebooted the vest and it still won’t explode?”
Emma
@Joe Buck: Maybe perhaps you should consider the lesson taught by our previous president. Of course, he was a Republican, so the MSM didn’t make as much of a fuss as they should have, but can you imagine the blowback if a Democratic president were to ignore something along the lines of “Al-Quaeda Prepared to Strike at American Targets”?
fuzz
I remember reading after the Bin Laden raid but also in 07-08 in Iraq how surprised a lot of intel people were by how detailed but also un-coded AQ’s records were. They had a finance department, complete rosters with the actual names (not the nom de gueres a lot of them take when they go to jihad) of all their fighters, the amount of materials they were using, what they needed, etc. I guess they still do things like that.
Billy Dilly
Chancellor Sutler
? Martin
@cathyx: That’s not what I’m saying. Typically when the government has done wrong and illegal things, it’s a passive act toward the public. It happens in secret. It’s not discussed. That limits who is impacted by it, and limits who might blow the whistle on it. And we tend to trust that secret things ought to be secret because we second guess why they are being kept secret.
This is far from a passive act. As suggested, this is an active campaign not only to lie, but to then act on that lie. That impacts a lot of people. And the lie is so transparent and self serving (under VDEs hypothesis) that people who might otherwise trust something kept in secret will recoil against this. And I don’t buy that GOP members of congress would go along with such a lie if they know they could take Obama down by it. They’re just too craven and self serving to pass that kind of opportunity up – particularly folks like Graham who have a reelection fight on their hand.
I’m not saying that the government doesn’t lie or do things that are illegal, but this doesn’t look like that kind of effort to me.
schrodinger's cat
@Herbal Infusion Bagger: On BJ all business school grads have cooties and are worse than any pitbull.
Mandalay
@Gin & Tonic:
This. Whatever scenario is actually the real one results in Al Qaeda winning this round…
– If the evidence is real and there was a genuine plot.
– If the evidence is real and but there was no genuine plot.
– If the evidence is fabricated to puff up the NSA.
In this country you read that this is a victory for our security services and no lives were lost.
I suspect that elsewhere you can read that the craven infidel dogs have closed their embassies, and run like cowards.
Corner Stone
Maybe there was no conference call at all. And the US is totes spoofing on AQ. We’re all like, “Oooo, burn!” and all the living #2 commanders are all pissed off and pouting because they think they were the only ones left off the conference call.
“How could you have a conference call and not invite me?!”
“What do you mean! I thought you held the call and didn’t tell me about it!
“Was it Ricardo? Did he have the call and tell us?
Bastard!!
eemom
@different-church-lady:
dude, he’s ON the motherfucker.
Emma
Apropos of nothing (says she, whistling innocently) it didn’t take long to start on the “this is an Obama’s false flag”, did it?
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: LMAO! I’ve gotta admit I take a dim view of the breed because of personal experience, but I try to keep an open mind. About both.
cathyx
@? Martin: So you’re saying is that it’s not feasible that the government could lie about something this huge because there would be so many people who would recoil at such a coverup that they would expose it?
Belafon
@Emma: There’s also an innocence factor: Bush was first. No one else gets to ignore the “Two al Qaeda operatives entered the same bathroom in Yemen” briefings.
gbear
All this talk of the Taliban getting caught on a conference call reminds me of this pretty awful but still funny bit that turned up after 9/11. It’s better without the visuals.
Corner Stone
@cathyx:
Whistleblowers? Don’t you mean cowards, traitors, spies and child pr0n junkies who strangle neighborhood kittens while kicking your grandmother?
Botsplainer
I wonder if AQ headquarters has some of those dumb motivational posters set up around the cube farm, and the Arabic equivalent of that squeaky voiced girl from Office Space answering the phone, saying “Al Quaeda, please hold…Al Quaeda, please hold…Al Quaeda, please hold…”
schrodinger's cat
@Emma: Obama is both the evilest worse than Bushie President and also the weakest President at the same time. Just as he is too black and not black enough.
Belafon
@cathyx: What he’s saying is that they wouldn’t have staged this huge of a response to a lie without a number of people, a lot of them Republicans who are briefed on these actions, coming out about it.
cathyx
@Corner Stone: Yes, of course.
piratedan
@cathyx: he’s saying that if there was the merest taint that this wasn’t legit wouldn’t you expect that the loyal opposition wouldn’t go to town on this? Look at their past behavior, can you believe that this group of self congratulating asshats that have voted to repeal the ACA 40 times and made such hay out of Benghazi and the IRS stuff wouldn’t gloatingly do a victory lap over this?
Mandalay
@? Martin:
Like when they passively invaded Iraq for non-existent weapons of mass destruction?
Patricia Kayden
@Joe Buck: I don’t get your point. An over abundance in caution is better than an AQ attack. Period.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Thanks, I appreciate that, since I have a graduate degree in finance, although I am not a Pitbull, though I do wear lipstick sometimes.
pamelabrown53
@Villago Delenda Est: I agree with much of what you and @Corner Stone say…and I think you’re correct in positing that OBL stayed alive for so long because of his avoidance of tech. communications. However, staying alive took precedent over planning future attacks. Isn’t that a good thing?
How can AQ get its mojo back in planning simultaneous attacks if they have to rely on off the grid methods with leaders strewn through the Middle East, North Africa and various cells?
Belafon
@Corner Stone: Well, yeah, if they have to run off to China and Russia, or are Tim & Helen. As for someone going the Bezos Post or the NYT and telling them what’s going on, we’d probably call them whistleblowers.
Corner Stone
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
If we really wanted to be rid of AQ we should bribe some AQ insider to introduce them to ITIL.
I’d give them maybe…a Friedman Unit.
different-church-lady
@piratedan: Because anyone who did would be MURDERED JUST LIKE MANNING!!! Jesus, wake up sheeple!
shelly
Looks like Weiner just keeps classing it up.
“The exchange between 69-year-old Republican candidate George McDonald and the 48-year-old Democrat was caught on camera by the TV station NY1.
After Weiner touched McDonald’s chest in greeting, McDonald barked, “Don’t put your hands on me ever again.”
Weiner responded by telling McDonald he has “anger issues.”
When McDonald disagreed, Weiner said, “Yes, you do, Grandpa.”
Joe Buck
@Belafon: while many terrorists are idiots, Zawahiri (bin Laden’s right-hand man) is not. He has managed to elude capture for more than a decade despite being the #1 wanted man (after bin Laden). I’m sure that he expected this call to be intercepted.
One possibility is that he counted on it: he does want the people he called to attack American targets, but he made sure that no operational details were revealed in the call, so that the American side would be forced to defend more possible targets than they could possibly defend. So maybe he figured he could accomplish three goals at once: terrorize Americans without any cost, get the al Qaeda brand back on the western world’s front pages, and inspire allies to go on the attack.
Corner Stone
@Belafon: Sure you would, amigo. Sure you would.
As long as they stayed here and faced the music for their actions we’d treat them with respect and honor!
GregB
Word has leaked out that Zawahiri is about to launch a recruitment drive on Myspace.
Corner Stone
@pamelabrown53:
IMO, OBL stayed alive as long as he did because he was in house arrest in Pakistan under protection. When he was no longer more useful than as a bargaining chip, that protection dealt him to us.
Mandalay
@? Martin:
You make this argument just after Obama cancels talks with Putin because they refuse to hand Snowden over?
A cursory examination of the way the Administration has treated whistleblowers in the few years would explain why potential whistleblowers would keep their mouths shut: if they go through official channels then maybe nothing happens, and if they go to the media their lives are ruined.
Belafon
@Corner Stone: In your world, Turing didn’t crack the Enigma code, the Germans just got tired of being ignored.
cathyx
@piratedan: So if it were illegal, the republicans would be opposed to it since it’s a democrat who is continuing it. This sounds like all of you who are now supporting it. You didn’t support it when Bush was the president, but it’s all good now. And by the way, of course the republicans love this Bush program to continue.
And the legality of it? We don’t really know since the government will not let it go to court since it’s all considered classified information.
Mike in NC
If Al Qaeda is only hiring MBAs, that’s gotta be a good thing for our side.
jon
Suliman Grundy and Bazaaro Shariahman never expected the Batdrones! Curses! Foiled again!
piratedan
@Mandalay: people that divulge classified information aren’t whistleblowers, period. There’s this piece of paper that you sign when you take on certain jobs and responsibilities that hold are essentially taking an oath that you will abide by the laws that entail working in that field. There are whistleblowing protocols that exist, not all of them require having a press conference.
Hill Dweller
@Mandalay: Why are elected Republicans playing along with this purported NSA publicity stunt? Fox News is pushing the Greenwald false flag angle. Many just voted to defund the NSA last week. Why play along now?
piratedan
@cathyx: no, this is an application of cleek’s law…. I have no problem with the government going after AQ post 9/11. I have a problem with guys like shrub stating that OBL wasn’t important anymore and not finishing Afghanistan at the expense of settling family grudges at the expense of American Live in Iraq.
Belafon
@cathyx: Please tell me how often Obama has raised the terror alert level. Cause I have only heard it a few times, unlike Bush, where it seemed to get changed biweekly, and tended to correspond to elections.
Corner Stone
@piratedan:
That’s pretty convenient for a Govt that has wildly exploded the amount of TS info it deals with over the last 10+ years, and doesn’t seem to have revamped the classification criteria for some time.
cathyx
@piratedan: So when you take a job, you have to continue the illegal activities or quit and be quiet.
When is a whisteblower a whistleblower then?
Mandalay
@pamelabrown53:
Al Qaeda has managed to get the United States to close thirteen of its embassies in the Middle East and North Africa based on no attacks at all.
What now prevents an endless pattern of get-threats-close-embassies?
Or even worse get-threats-don’t-close-embassies-then-embassies-go-boom.
Al Qaeda’s low risk mojo is doing just fine. We just don’t like to admit it.
Corner Stone
@Belafon: He lived there for 6+ years IIRC, within earshot of a military training institute. Am I correct in understanding that you believe Pakistan did not know he was there?
The Moar You Know
@Herbal Infusion Bagger: Christ, I’ve had my dealings with six-sigma. Run, do not walk. If AQ ever really took that shit on they’d be done as a functional organization.
Gin & Tonic
@Patricia Kayden: How big an overabundance, and for how long? Closing one embassy for a month is better than 3,000 people being killed, right? What about closing 19 embassies for two months, compared to 20 people being killed? Better, worse or the same? How about closing 50 embassies for six months comparecd to three people being killed?
“We’re just negotiating the price.”
LanceThruster
So does that mean Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss is AQ #2?
Belafon
@Corner Stone: No, but you’re arguing that Pakistan gave him up when he was no longer convenient, rather than the US finally figuring out where he was.
piratedan
@cathyx: lovely assumption that the job you’re performing for the government is already illegal…. It’s like any other job, you find someone breaking the rules or breaking the law, you go up the ladder or to the people that handle those issues. If the people up the ladder are complicit, then you go to the cops. Snowden isn’t the star of Three Days of the Condor here.
burnspbesq
@dmsilev:
Where do I go to sign up?
cathyx
@Belafon: If Obama adds the terror alerts to every election, then you would be against Obama continuing this Bush program?
Mandalay
@piratedan:
Well that depends on the nature of the classified information. If you have a legitimate beef and go through the official channels and it gets resolved then that is great. We have no way of knowing how often that happens.
If you have a legitimate beef and go through the official channels and it gets covered up then that is not so great. If you then choose to go public I think that can be legitimate whistleblowing (depending on the information revealed). For me, Iran-Contra would be a good example of the legitimate whistleblowing of classified information.
Opinions obviously vary on the legitimacy of Snowden’s “whistleblowing”, where he specifically avoided the use of official channels for his concerns.
Corner Stone
@Belafon: Surprisingly, that is indeed my argument. Pakistan had him under house arrest, he was more useful as a boogeyman than any kind of operational planner, and IMO quite crazy from long term illness.
The muscle in Pakistan made the decision to get something for him and finally told us to take him.
piratedan
@Mandalay: I’d have no problem with that example if the normal channels didn’t show that the illegal activity hadn’t been stopped after appraising the responsible parties as to what has been going on
ericblair
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
Thanks a lot. We had AQ running around bankrupting themselves with consultants trying to get ISO 9001 certified and now you spill the beans.
Villago Delenda Est
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
Big deal. Adam Smith figured this out two centuries ago.
MBAs are still more concerned with raw numbers than human beings. This makes them all suspect.
Despite this, Wall Street still hates CostCo because it treats its employees decently. That’s fucking heresy as far as the parasite vermin of the 1% are concerned.
Mandalay
@Hill Dweller:
Do you have an example of any politician claiming this is a “stunt”?
The Republicans I read about are damning Obama with faint praise: yes, it’s probably prudent to close the embassies based on our intelligence, but even so the Obama blah blah blah…
JD_Rhoades
I’m reminded of the episode of The Wire where Stringer Bell is trying to create the “Co-Op” at a meeting of Baltimore’s crack dealers. Suddenly he turns to Shamrock and asks what he’s doing.
Shamrock: Robert Rules say we gotta have minutes for a meeting, right? These the minutes.
Stringer: N____, is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?
Belafon
@cathyx:
1. I think the AUMF needs to end because the war on terror has gone on too long. I think we need to concentrate on people not nouns.
2. I think a proper role of the government is to spy on people that they think are going to cause harm to the country. That’s why I don’t have any trouble with the US spying on the Russians because I’m pretty sure there are enough Russians spying on us.
3. Everything that can be used for good can be used for evil. It doesn’t matter what it is. Therefore, you have to put the people in that you believe will do the most good.
4. I think that most people, contrary to what we like to say on these blogs, are OK with giving up some of their freedoms for security. Actually, we have a name for that kind of agreement between a people: Government.
5. I think most people don’t like giving up their freedom in the abstract, but would do exactly what Boston did after the bombing if it meant keeping people from being killed. I also think that a lot of these people would give up a lot of their freedoms to prevent something that would never happen in the first place.
6. I think people here and other blogs like to wave their hands and say “NSA” like its some big single autonomous entity, like when Republicans use the word “government”, but most people try to do their jobs, do them well, and try to keep us safe and healthy.
Villago Delenda Est
@? Martin:
If they’re senior management, they are, by nature, lying sacks of shit.
I don’t trust this “leak” one bit. It’s too fucking convenient for the current circumstances, and simply does not pass the smell test. Conference call, my heir to the Prussian throne ass. Al Qaeda is not composed of middle management suckups.
Roger Moore
@Botsplainer:
Islam isn’t big on representational art, so they probably don’t literally have the same motivational posters, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they have some of their favorite, pro-jihad verses from the Qur’an done up in big, elaborate calligraphy. It would be a rough cultural equivalent.
pamelabrown53
@Mandalay: So what if they (AQ) succeeded in closing 13 embassies for a few days now and in the future? How does that harm us in any material way. Sounds like a hollow victory, IMO.
Elie
@piratedan:
Don’t waste your time… Mandalay isn’t interested in facts or the logic that follows such facts. Really.
So, read any good books lately?
Mandalay
@Belafon:
You think that Republicans cannot tell a lie? All those “national security” Republicans would waterboard their mother if it beefed up their resume. Consider what Peter “psycho” King is saying:
Republicans LOVE threats from Al Qaeda, and they really don’t care whether they are real or not.
Corner Stone
@Belafon:
I think we have a fundamental disagreement about government and its role in our society/lives.
Roger Moore
@Mandalay:
The problem is in defining “legitimate beef”. If you’re talking about something that’s actually illegal and you’ve exhausted the official channels of dealing with it, then yes, bringing it to public attention is legitimate. But that’s not what most of the “whistleblowers” have been doing; they’ve been bringing stuff up that appears to be legal but they dislike on policy grounds. There may sometimes be legitimate grounds for doing that, but they’re much, much higher than the grounds for divulging something that’s actually illegal.
Mandalay
@piratedan:
So are you making the argument that if the government engages in illegal activity involving classifed data, and it does not address the issue, then it can never be legitimately exposed?
Belafon
@Corner Stone: Really? Like when the states gave up their rights to individually negotiate with other countries? Or when I give up my right to be a judge, jury, and executioner against someone who I think has slighted me? Or my right to take over part of my neighbors yard because I need the room?
We may have a difference of opinion on how big the government should be, but I doubt we have a difference of opinion on what a government is.
The Moar You Know
@Mandalay: Good lord, you can hear him fapping in the background while reading that quote.
And it’s Peter “I hate Al-Queda but love the IRA” King. It’s a color thing, I do believe.
piratedan
@Elie: well over in the general fiction side, Hiaasen has a new one out called Bad Monkey which was pretty good. Also Scalzi’s latest in the Old Man War series was very entertaining too, although this has some serious homage to Laumer’s Retief series imho.
Gearing myself back up to dive back into Stephenson’s Baroque series again and I have Glen Cook’s latest Garret book waiting in the wings as well.
The Moar You Know
@Roger Moore: Actually, that is not true. It will still get your ass jailed, because THAT is how the law is written.
Sometimes doing the right thing can really cost you. The measure of a human being’s true bravery is that, when facing severe consequences for doing the right thing, they do it anyway and take the hit. The civil rights protesters, for one, understood that, and accepted their jail time.
Mandalay
@Roger Moore: I agree with most of that, but with a couple of caveats….
– We have no way of knowing how many careers get curtailed or dead-ended simply because someone goes through legitimate channels, regardless of the validity of their concerns.
– There is now a real problem with knowing what is legal and what is illegal. Until Congress grows a spine and demands real accountability from our security services then that situation won’t change; the tail will continue to wag the dog.
Roger Moore
@JD_Rhoades:
The problem is that you need record keeping to keep an organization functioning properly, even if that exposes you to risk. Maybe a small-time hood can keep track of everything in his head because he doesn’t have enough of an organization to keep track of, or a rare genius can do it for a medium sized operation. But any decent sized organization is going to need to keep good records or it’s going to fall apart under its own weight.
That’s why crooked businessmen bother to keep a second set of books that tell the true story, or at least as accurate a version as they can get. It’s not because they want to provide the police with evidence if they ever get caught; it’s because they know their crooked partners and subordinates will rob them blind if they don’t have access to accurate numbers. The threat of the organization falling apart if they don’t keep good records is worse than the threat of outside enemies knowing their secrets if they can’t keep the records secret.
Belafon
@The Moar You Know:
@Mandalay:
And don’t forget the real reason it’s supposed to be hard to leak secrets: Real world consequences like Russia ending up with the bomb without having to develop it on their own, or people dying.
Dave
@Villago Delenda Est: @Villago Delenda Est: It really is though. That’s the dirty secret of anything that lasts for a time. It becomes just another organization. Sure one with shitty values and goals but don’t overestimate these guys they are just as much shortsighted idiots as any other people. Ours included. And is this conveniently timed to a degree yes. It doesn’t mean it’s made up but that it is well timed. And the hardest part of the security state stuff is that the majority of people involved believe they are doing the right thing and they are even correct fairly often. Just not often enough.
Corner Stone
When the DNI repeatedly lies to Congress, and we have elected Senators on record saying it’s worse than what they have testified to, who can say what is legal or illegal at this point? We elect officials to enact laws but if they don’t know what’s in there, or think they do but are being lied to, then what kind of a law is that?
The Moar You Know
@Villago Delenda Est: I couldn’t be happier. I buy their stock every chance I get some spare cash to do so, and Wall Street keeps it affordable for people like me. They pay dividends! Money in the fucking bank every quarter. If you turn up your nose at that, you’re not an investor, you’re a gambling addict yanking the lever at some third-rate riverboat casino, cheapass drink in your sweaty hands, thinking this will finally be the big jackpot.
The Moar You Know
@Villago Delenda Est: I couldn’t be happier. I buy their stock every chance I get some spare cash to do so, and Wall Street keeps it affordable for people like me. They pay dividends! Money in the fucking bank every quarter. If you turn up your nose at that, you’re not an investor, you’re a gambling addict yanking the lever at some third-rate riverboat establishment, cheapass drink in your sweaty hands, thinking this will finally be the big jackpot.
Comrade Jake
@JD_Rhoades: Clearly one of the best shows ever put together, if not the best.
Corner Stone
@Belafon: I believe govt can be a force for good in peoples’ lives, both in the larger abstract and also in the individual case. I also believe one of govts legitimate roles is in providing not only national security but a framework for people to achieve some modicum of personal security as well. I feel that govt frees me to work and play and provide for my family without overly worrying about Attila cresting the hill or some neighborhood bad guy terrorizing me. The time, stress and energy I would have to devote to otherwise provide that level of security means I would have much less to use elsewhere. I believe that is a kind of freedom and I understand not everyone subscribes to that theory and also quite a few do not feel the govt can/does provide for their overall security to live freely. That’s a sad fact for too many people, but I believe that is a role govt must essentially play.
I find your examples and your rationale around them to be awful, and frankly, a little off.
Mandalay
@Corner Stone:
Not forgetting that when officials know they are being lied to they can’t go public, which is exactly where Senators Wyden and Udall find themselves.
This is the giant elephant in the room. It’s insane. It is the cause of so many problems, and few seem to want to talk about it.
Putting aside issues of honesty, ethics and morality, this is a lousy, stupid, impractical way for a country to run its national security. It is a poor approach that will lead to poor results.
Trollhattan
NY Mag has the meeting minutes
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/08/al-qaedas-conference-call-transcript-zawahiri.html
There’s more, plus extra snarky comments.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mandalay:
That might get in the way of the important stuff, such as defunding Obamacare.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
I didn’t say it was legal; I said it was legitimate. I respect Daniel Elsberg in a way I don’t respect Edward Snowden because he was willing to face the consequences of leaking the Pentagon Papers. I even think that some level of leaking to expose bad but legal policy may be legitimate, but I think the bar on how bad the policy is, and how hard it would be to disclose any other way, must be very high.
The Red Pen
Wingnut site Flopping Aces scoffs at the leaked intel asking, “Really- when’s the last time Al Qaida had a conference call?”
It’s worth a click-through because the post is headed with a Goering quote about using false threats to get people riled up for war. So, I’d have to ask them, remember when you had absolutely no capacity for critical thought when evaluating “evidence” of Iraq having a nuclear program?
Note that they were still flogging this badly-decomposed horse as late as 2011. We’re in “non-bizarre delusion” territory here.
piratedan
@Mandalay: then what, pray tell, do you propose as a way to handle our national security?
Belafon
@Corner Stone: Yes, but you did give up the right to be your own police officer. It is generally a larger benefit to you that you have done so, but what about the person – you know, those that like their guns a lot – who really wants to make those decisions on his own?
You might think those ideas are abstract, but consider the water rights issues we are seeing throughout the country. Consider how land right have been throughout our history, or human history. Because we have given up some of these “rights” to the government, not even our wealthy (except for the really paranoid) have to keep security details in order to protect their property.
We give up some of our freedoms specifically to make some things easier, and like you said, to make other freedoms easier to enjoy.
xenos
I had to live through a presentation some Russians put together using Prezi. Powerpoint will bore you to madness but Prezi parachutes you right in there with a combination of motion sickness and confusion.
Lets not encourage AQ to escalate this.
Roger Moore
@Mandalay:
They could always stand up and say what they know or think they know on the floor of the Senate. This is explicitly legal according to the Constitution (Article I, Section 6: “for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”) and backed up by the Supreme Court in Gravel v. United States.
The Red Pen
@Steeplejack:
They’re busy figuring out who’s arching Hillary in 2015.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore:
Did that involve throwing a large stone into a lake?
piratedan
@The Red Pen: Well, Dr Girlfriend Mrs. The Monarch is still available….
Yatsuno
@The Moar You Know: Mental image. Did. Not. Need.
Corner Stone
@Belafon: I don’t consider having a functioning legal system a giving up of my rights or freedoms, for example.
The discussion of water rights and also land rights is an interesting one but I’d prefer to not get into a “well, what about this case?” argument.
My argument isn’t that govt always functions efficiently or even fairly, but the role they play in society, both intra and inter, doesn’t (or maybe I should say “should not”) limit my essential freedom or rights.
edited slightly
Bill Arnold
@Roger Moore:
It’s used very occasionally where I work; didn’t look it up until now; it is attributed to Tufte on Wikiquote:
“Power corrupts, PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.”
Ed Tufte, Wired, issue 11:09 (September 2003)
Betty Cracker
National Review op-ed proposes granting immunity to Mr. Snowden.
Mike G
@Dave:
Every organization begins as a cause, turns into a business, then degenerates into a racket.
We can only hope AQ are into their “You forgot the cover sheet on your TPS reports” phase before degenerating into fratricide.
Mandalay
@Roger Moore:
That is a legal answer, but it is hardly a practical solution as you well know, and proves my point that the current system is lousy. Had they gone down that path they would have received a Snowden-like reception, and probably been removed from the Senate Intelligence Committee
The resolution is for our security services to be genuinely accountable to Congress. Anything else is BS and nitpicking.
Suffern ACE
Shouldn’t the Legion of Doom have more members than just AQ affiliates? The point of the Legion is that it contained criminal elements of all sorts. Aliens like Sinestro, Apes like Gorilla Grod, enemies of Aquaman, and Wonder-woman. Freeze powers and superhuman strength. I mean, shouldn’t the legion of doom have something like AQ, but also Nepalese Maoists, Mexican Drug Lords, and the Pink Panthers? Maybe a rogue scientist and some Fukishima executives? This legion is kind of a one trick pony group.
Someguy
@Corner Stone:
This looks more like an intentional leak. If I was a betting man I’d guess it’s meant to distract from the NSA scandal. As if GiGi isn’t doing enough to distract from the underlying issues enough.
Roger Moore
@Bill Arnold:
The attribution to Tufte is completely believable. I have a copy of the first edition of his “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint“. I don’t remember him using that quip in the book, but it sounds like his style.
jeffreyw
160+ comments, I think we need a kitteh now.
boatboy_srq
@Corner Stone: No, AQ uses a VoIP phone. Freaking phones are for the Luddite Teahadists, right up there with incandescent light bulbs and steam-powered ceiling fans.
@dmsilev: Did you notice that AQ activity coincided with the windows between major releases of MSSQL? Maybe Microsoft should coordinate with DHS and ship major versions more frequently.
@cathyx: There’s a difference between being opposed to a particular public policy/initiative/department/whatever, and being outraged by it only when one’s opposition is in a position to use it. The GOTea voted for the whole GWoT hook, line and sinker, and slandered anyone raising any concern whatever as “unPatriotic”. While the tools remain as unethical as ever, whinging about them only now only says that what they’re most afraid of is that the NSA will somehow learn about their affairs with their mistresses/boys/farm-animals, their Caymans bank accounts, their S Corps in Bermuda, or their gun/drug-smuggling enterprises – and that their fear is more that the Scary Black Man in the White House will know about it than that they’re actually found out at all. They had their chance to be ethical with intelligence and security, and they blew it in stupendously grand fashion all through the Bush years: fixing the intelligence-gathering mess would be nice, but if all they’re going to do is point fingers, then the time for them to STFU was 9/12/01.
catclub
@Belafon: “Bush was first. ” Actually, Clinton was first and he DID not ignore those briefs. They were quietly going crazy going after bin Laden.
Bush was first to ignore the briefs.
noodler
@Gin & Tonic: i was not exactly air freight asshole. but go ahead and act like a smart ass.
catclub
@Betty Cracker: Robert Zubrin! He was already crazy in college (Swarthmore).
boatboy_srq
@NonyNony:
Srsly? Have you looked at the GOTea Senate contingent? Do you think for a picosecond they wouldn’t immediately find some way of their own to leak/spin/distort this? Straight to the MSM is far more effective – and likely more secure.
The Red Pen
@noodler:
Pax or pallets… it’s all just capacity to TCAQ.
Corner Stone
@Someguy: I hope they throw the reporter in jail until he rolls over on his source(s) for this intentional classified intel leak(s). They should find a nice deep, dark hole to throw him in and charge him with espionage and aiding the enemy until he gives it up.
And who is GiGi?
Corner Stone
@boatboy_srq:
Are they really trying to tell me that AQ is using a freakin VoIP phone to chat about “Death to America!” ?
? Martin
@Mandalay:
And the whistleblowers came out all over the place on that one, like I suggested above. Hell, there were loud denials on that one before they ever got in front of the UN. Where are the whistleblowers on this? I haven’t seen even an unnamed hill staffer denying this.
Or is this our Obama is just like Bush moment?
rikyrah
doesn’t that say it all?
LOL
Ted & Hellen
@Villago Delenda Est:
Doesn’t this make you a CONSPIRACY THEORIST?
Mandalay
@? Martin:
They did indeed, but irrelevant since I was challenging your claim that “typically when the government has done wrong and illegal things, it’s a passive act toward the public”, citing the invasion of Iraq. That was hardly a “passive act toward the public”.
Mandalay
@Villago Delenda Est:
That was then. This is now:
Still going with the boogy man. And, more importantly, still going with the implicit reminder “…and you need me to protect you from the boogy man“.
The Red Pen
@Villago Delenda Est:
Also, too, it’s obvious that the recent series of prison breaks that put hundreds of Al Qaeda operatives back on the loose was also staged by the Obama administration. Too.
Sloegin
Love that Eli Lake CV posted at the end of the Daily Beast article, it does turn what sounds like a BS-story into a nitro fueled BS-on-wheels story.
Villago Delenda Est
@catclub:
Bush ignored the briefs because Clinton’s people told them that his most grave national security concern was Al Qaeda. You know, those guys with Saudi backgrounds? The Saudis, the best buddies of the Bush Crime Family? Also, too, it was CLINTON’S people telling him this, and we don’t listen to Clinton. Nope, we’ve got our own plan…make the Chinese our new gravest threat, because it means the SDI boondoggle has “relevance” which those Russian bastards, damn them, took away when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Then again, you have to consider the cost of a conference call to the costy of the response that was triggered. Perhaps AlQ has hit on a really cheap way of draining the US treasury?…
NonyNony
@Corner Stone:
Yes. If you haven’t been following the news for the last decade and only got your vision of what al Qaeda is from Hollywood blockbusters and political campaign commercials you might be under the impression that AQ is some kind of highly trained outfit of superterrorists who can use their weather dominator to destroy America remotely from a series of caves in Yemen.
If you’ve been following the news instead of Michael Bay films, however, you will quickly realize that any group of morons can start using the name “al Qaeda” to scare the crap out of Westerners. So every fundy militia group in the Mid East is doing it. Most of these groups are full of screw-ups who can’t get jobs anywhere else and are working the terrorism/organized crime gig because they resent the fact that their lives suck and they can’t do anything else.
Al Qaeda at this point is a collection of groups very similar to the militia groups that infest the midwestern US, except they’re Muslims instead of Christians and it’s harder for them to get guns and ammo. They’re dangerous, but mostly to their own neighbors and family members.
Mandalay
@Phoenician in a time of Romans:
Right. There are plenty of ways to badly screw with the United States without flying planes into buildings. A single conference call has closed nineteen US embassies, possibly until the end of August.
What does the government do the next time they listen in on another Al Qaeda call making similar threats….close embassies yet again?
For those hostile to the west, the United States already looks like Al Qaeda’s frightened bitch on this.
Kathleen
@Mike in NC: It means terrorism will be outsourced to a call center in Singapore.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Red Pen:
Red, I never heard about that? What’s your info source? FreeRepublic or Newsmax?
Chris
@fuckwit:
Well, with Doctor Evil out of the picture (… or is he?), Number Two is now proceeding with his dream of “turning this two bit evil empire into a multimillion dollar corporation.” Conference calls go with the new decor.
Betty Cracker
@Mandalay: That’s what the wingnuts are saying. I’m not trying to disparage your assertion with that comparison — you can credibly make that argument. Just pointing out that this is definitely how it’s perceived on the right. Which would, of course, have immediately started impeachment proceedings if the admin had NOT shuttered the embassies and if even the lowliest subaltern had received so much as a hang-nail from an attack.
Bill Arnold
@Phoenician in a time of Romans:
Well, 9/11 was roughly in excess of a 10 million to 1 damage to cost ratio. (1 trillion vs 100 thousand). But perhaps you’re right; and they’ve achieved 100 million to one. Perhaps the next goal will be to turn a profit at the same time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Villago Delenda Est:
BENGHAZI, Libya — More than 1,000 prisoners escaped from a prison near here on Saturday, security officials said, after a wave of political assassinations and attacks on political offices across Libya.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/world/africa/libyans-turn-on-islamists-and-liberals-after-killings.html
Hundreds of convicts, including senior members of al-Qaida, broke out of Iraq’s Abu Ghraib jail as comrades launched a military-style assault to free them, authorities said on Monday.
The deadly raid on the high-security jail happened as Sunni Muslim militants are regaining momentum in their insurgency against the Shia-led government.
Suicide bombers drove cars packed with explosives to the gates of the prison on the outskirts of Baghdad on Sunday night and blasted their way into the compound, while gunmen attacked guards with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/22/iraq-prison-attacks-kill-dozens
Chris
@Mandalay:
Wrong. Groups that already existed have “mutated” (as in, changed their name) to include “al-Qaeda” because 9/11 (and, almost as much, the subsequent war on terror) turned them into a brand name that went with terrorism like McDonalds with fast food, so claiming their name was a way of gaining street cred.
Example: the Algerian GSPC (Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat), which renamed itself the AQIM (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib) a couple years after 9/11 and otherwise stayed the same.
Other example: the “al-Qaeda’s Jihad in Europe” group in whose name the London bombings were claimed, which was then never heard from again.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
If you can stomach it, look for Reagan administration era briefs on the Middle East. I’ve stumbled onto a couple, and it pretty straightforwardly says “yeah, there’s two kinds of Muslims, Sunnis and Shi’a, the Shi’a are prone to radical, populist, crazy behavior, but the Sunni tend to be moderate and reasonable.”
Not hard to guess which country was benefiting from the sympathies that made it possible to write such fucking stupid dreck.
Suffern ACE
@Chris: And those briefs were just reporting the conventional wisdom. Criminies, that’s what I was reading in Time magazine and what I “learned” in school.
Corner Stone
@NonyNony: All my info I got from repeated viewings of Team America: World Police.
Your post offers a few interesting ways to go.
If, in fact, this was a bunch of “morons” who have not looked outside their window in the last dozen years and smelled the drone exhaust, then why the fuck are we bothering thinking they present a legit threat?
WTF have we been doing if a bunch of Muslim variety of Michigan Militia extremists can effect this kind of response?
If, on the other paw, the threat is valid and their capabilities are real, then WTF have we been doing for the last dozen years that they can still pose a credible threat?
Your post is a tangled web of what-ifs.
ruemara
@piratedan: Homage to Retief? Really? I thought I was the only one who was fond of that series and the Corbin Bernson covers. I may have to check it out.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
In the good old days, when you had a senior person you needed to put out to pasture but couldn’t fire, you’d invent some b*llsh*t title like “Director of Special Projects,” and wait for them to figure out they’d really been effectively fired and take retirement.
Now, you put them in charge of Six Sigma or Knowledge Management or some other dogshite idea the CEO read in a book they bought in the business section of the O’Hare Airport bookstore.
Mandalay
@fuckwit:
Hardly. We listened in to an Al Qaeda conference call and closed nineteen embassies as a result. Our security services seem to think that they are scary, and possibly with good reason (though posters here have no way of knowing either way).
Even if you are correct, and Al Qaeda is no biggie any more, no politician would dare to say that. There is no upside, and their career would be over if some bad shit happened.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@Bill Arnold:
Well, 9/11 was roughly in excess of a 10 million to 1 damage to cost ratio. (1 trillion vs 100 thousand). But perhaps you’re right; and they’ve achieved 100 million to one. Perhaps the next goal will be to turn a profit at the same time
Well, it depends on how paranoid you are, but…
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/putcall.asp
Mandalay
@Betty Cracker:
Not so sure about that. The wingnuts in your link (Mark Steyn and Daniel Pipes) are wackos, and the only GOP politicians I see criticizing the the embassy closures are Gohmert and King….also wackos. Most Republican politicians seem to be supporting the embassy closures as a prudent measure.
Mandalay
@Chris: Interesting. I suspect that you know a far more about this than most, and since you are disagreeing with Peter King I’m on your side.
fuckwit
@Mandalay: I dunno that they’re no biggie anymore, but I see them becoming less and less of a biggie and more of a smallie every year. Seems like a continuum, and I like the direction the trend is going. I think whatever we’re doing is working, not only the intelligence stuff, the NSA spying, the money-tracing, the targeted military strikes and police work, but also the diplomacy and huge things like pulling our forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan and holding the neocons back from whatever next country they are itching to invade. Still on the TO-DO list are to stop the fucking drone strikes and close Guantanamo, those will help a lot. Basically: isolate the radicals, weaken them operationally, and take away things that’d cause ordinary people to sympathize with, side with, or support them. I don’t mind being overly cautious like closing embassies if there’s a threat on the horizon, better safe than sorry, and you know that was done mostly for domestic reasons so that there is not another BENGHAZI!! for Rethugs to throw around. Overall, AFAICT, the Obama plan is working well. I live in hope that Clinton or whomever continues this trajectory.
mclaren
And perhaps the real reason Al Qaeda hasn’t been able to follow up on its 9/11 success is that the entire Global War on Terror is bullshit and there is no terrorist threat.
None at all.
The Global War On Terror is a con game being perpetrated by power- and money-hungry politicians in league with equally greedy military contractors, incompetent Pentagon ticket-punching careerists who are terrified of losing their funding in the wake of the end of the Cold War, and a bunch of incompetent muggers with badges who find it much easier to do policing if they can shoot first and answer questions never because they shout “Terrorist!” as the all-purpose justification for their out-of-control thuggery.
Bill Arnold
@mclaren:
Both “The Global War On Terror is a con game” and “there is a terrorist threat” can be true at the same time. Black swan terrorism events like 9/11 are possible, and lesser events happen all the time, all over the world.
BruinKid
@NonyNony: Or, maybe it actually was a mole, and we used the conference call intercept as a distraction so they wouldn’t be looking for a mole like in The Departed.
mclaren
@Bill Arnold:
Fewer people have died from terrorist attacks in the entire history of the United States than from slipping and falling in the bathtub last year.
Case closed.
We’re done here.
Someone turn off the lights when you leave the room.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Wow. Funny that never made the teebee news.