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Penetration, however slight, is sufficient ...

Darth Rotor

Salted Sith Cynic
Darth Rotor
Joined
Aug 4, 2006
Messages
38,527
... to complete the act.

Or is it? A current news story thinks it is so.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33083683/ns/world_news-washington_post/

The Washington Post presents us with a lilly gilding exercise.

Those within the administration who have suggested limiting large-scale U.S. ground combat in Afghanistan, including Vice President Biden, have pointed to an improved counterterrorism effort as evidence that Obama's principal objective -- destroying al-Qaeda -- can be achieved without an expanded troop presence.
Click to expand...
Non sequitur. The troops are more and more being justified by the Taliban resurgence, not Al Q.

This excerpt from the administration demonstrates an inability to grasp who the players in Afghanistan are, and what Al Qaeda is: an extranational network of somewhat like minded trouble makers whose goals and aims are successful if they can, via defiance and the now and again violent act, keep their own story and legend alive and well in front of potential recruits to their cause.

Newsweek has a semi-nice article bout being inside the brain of a potential suicide bomber.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/216401
The brevity is notable, but the three common threads are testosterone, a narrative fantasy, and a desire to engage in theater. (The lady suicide bombers are overlooked as too rare, I guess.)

Now, back to Al Qaeda penetration.

Their influence has spread far beyond their own operations, as they have established that through successes and failures, they can make things change, they can make an impact. This is an inspirational narrative to copy cats the world over, and a message Al Q has spread, as have Al Q's foes.

So, even if there are now more spies inside their ranks

RANT! WHAT EFFING MORON PUTS THIS IN THE NEWS, WHO IS A PROFESSIONAL SPY MASTER/COIN OPERATOR????????


that has only the potential to shut down one set of malcontents who are riding the Al Q bandwagon.

Sorry, but the story isn't good news for two reasons:
1. The narrators don't seem to grasp how this whole terrorism thing works
2. Whomever is bragging about infiltrating Al Q is either lying to put Al Q on the defensive via propaganda, or hasn't a clue about how to run a black operations.

Anyway, penetration is not sufficient to complete the act.

DR
 
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One of the things I've hated about Biden's approach is that it seems to completely ignore any and all mitigating factors toward basically turning Afghanistan into a Taliban stronghold all over again, rinsing and repeating the stupid cycle that put us over there to begin with. For all the criticism I might levy at the Bush administration for going into Iraq to begin with, the operations of the military over there since Petraeus started over there have been effective at actually stabilizing the country, at least enough to justify a serious draw-down of forces and lowering of expenditures. McChristol seems to have a reasonably smart head on his shoulders with regard to the challenges in Afghanistan (which are remarkably different than Iraq), and this current Biden-championed plan of a "smaller, more specialized" task force operating in that theater sounds just as blazing stupid as the technocratic BS that Rumsfeld attempted to employ in Iraq 4-6 months after we went in there, which effectively left our troops without support structures they needed and turned the war even uglier than it had been (not to mention letting the entry and growth of AQI). If anything, Biden needs to take a ******* lesson from the recent past and take McChristol's suggestions more seriously.
 
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