Saturday, February 28, 2009
Torture & Confessions in a post-9-11 World
| Seems Khalid Shekh Mohammed has confessed to just about everything short of the Kennedy assassinations. For some gossip on that, see http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArt icle&code=KUP20070315&articleId=5087 , which speculates that KSM was set up as a stooge. Which shows the problems with using psych techniques over the course of years to unhinge a suspect’s mind. Guantanamo is all about psych techniques. I have compared Guantanamo to Russia’s gulags, but the comparison is not accurate. In some ways, the gulags were more brutal but also more free. There is no freedom whatsoever at Guantanamo, just psych treatment, 24/7/365. Total control. So, I don’t know if Khalid Mohammed was involved in anything. His confession means nothing. And I don’t trust our government to not lie to us about Mohammed. Masterminds, masterplans. You can look in detail at any detailed plan and find flaws and places where it almost went astray. Take Pearl Harbor for example. Masterminded by Adm. Yamomoto. The Japanese fleet ran the risk of being discovered by long distance patrol aircraft. Or they could have been sunk by a typhoon. Didn’t happen. What did happen was that the incoming flight of Japanese aircraft was detected, then dismissed as being American planes from Hickam AFB. Prior to that, a Japanese mini scout sub ran agound and was captured. There were two chances for alert U.S. personnel to derail the attack. Two chances wasted. This is typical. Mistakes abound on both sides. So it was for 9-11. So many opportunities were missed to detect the perps or to thwart their plan. Loopholes which the hijackers knowingly or accidentally took advantage of. Who was it who first thought of using aircraft in that way? Tom Clancy? Or the Japanese kamikazis of WWII? It was hardly a surprise, until it happened, then it was, “Where did that come from?” 9-11 was successsful because of luck and extreme American stupidity and hubris. They were successful despite themselves. We helped a lot. The next attack will have to be better planned and executed by an order of magnitude. Designing a high-tech nuclear weapon is beyond anyone al Quaida has. Designing a truly portable nuclear weapon is beyond Pakistan’s technology. (The plans that hit the news yesterday were for a missile-carried, medium-sized warhead, not a suitcase bomb.) Smuggling in a bomb is easier, thanks to our not having any adequate screening. Suitcase or briefcase nukes are unlikely for a few years. The technology required is too fancy. Pakistan-type nukes can be smuggled in only in a truck, most likely from Mexico, or offloaded from a ship. (Or a cargo aircraft, but that is less likely.) Even a klutzy, WWII style “Big Boy” can be smuggled in in a ship. Buy a freighter keeping any terrorist connection remote from ownership or operations, install bomb amid lead ballast or welded into a hidden compartment, go about business, then sail into a harbor such as Port of Los Angeles, Port of Houston, Miami, or New York, detonate bomb, ideally at a time when the prevailing winds will carry fallout inland from the harbor. As a higher-tech alternative, the ship could be outfitted to carry a missile with a nuclear, biological, or chemical warhead, and launch miles from the U.S. coastline. This is less fool proof, though. Whole lot more technology. more to go wrong, modifications to ship more detectible by the CIA. Could such a ship be detected and the ship intercepted? Yes! But we would need radiation detectors, mass detectors, many more Coast Guard personnel, and a policy of boarding and inspecting all incoming ships on open waters. As it is, the Coast Guard is the bastard stepchild of our military, when it should be the most important and most heavily funded service branch. I think the Coast Guard should be built up to about 50-100 times its present size and assigned all coast and border inspection duties--no more civilian Border Patrol, except as pertaining to INS processing. |
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