It would be comforting to believe that there really is a major intelligence value to allowing these sites to remain up -- one that by its nature cannot be revealed. Sort of like in World War II when the British ULTRA effort cracked the German Enigma cipher. Information gleaned from German messages often could not be acted upon if there was the slightest chance it would alert the enemy that their communications were compromised; it was of overriding importance to maintain the Ultra secret.
So maybe something similar is happening in this case. Maybe one of the websites is giving us a backdoor connection to Al Queda, and its crucial importance will only be appreciated decades from now, long after the war is over.
Unfortunately, I don't have that much faith in the competence of our intelligence services. One reason for my lack of faith is what happened immediately after the invasion of Iraq. During the first three weeks we saw Baghdad Bob (Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Information Minister) continue to broadcast absurd reports to the Iraqi nation. Why wasn't the U.S. prepared to immediately bomb all Iraqi radio and TV transmitting stations (which would have been trivial to home in on, by definition), and then set up our own portable transmitting facilities in their place to broadcast our own propaganda on the same frequencies? We should have controlled the airwaves from day one! Control of communications is an essential part of modern warfare.
So my suspicion is that we allow terrorist websites to operate not because of some ultra secret necessity, but rather because the officials who are supposed to be in charge of such matters don't know what the crap they're doing.
>>>>>Control of communications is an essential part of modern warfare.
I suspect there is an entire catalog of today’s bureaucratic incompetence that could be compared to our more effective handling of Germany and Japan in the aftermath of WWII.
For example, in Germany we launched an immediate national ID program using American military and trusted locals, and every single applicant (meaning every German citizen) was subjected to questioning about their sympathies, loyalties, and activities. Those who didn’t pass muster were then passed on for more detailed questioning. This was all in an effort to ID the good Germans, and to isolate the remaining Nazis.
Did Paul Bremer do an ID program in Iraq? No. Did he make ANY effort to identify Baathists from “normal Iraqis” and from loyal Saddamists? No. Did he make any effort to ID “good” Iraqi policemen and soldiers to help with security? No. Nothing. All - the good and the bad - were simply disbursed into the local population. How could one not expect an insurgency?
100% correct.