FBI collects material on Pak militant camps

FBI collects material on Pak militant camps Posted the Saturday, September 15 2001 @ 04:12:27 MEST NEW DELHI: As part of its investigations into the bloodiest terrorist attack in the US on Tuesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has taken several documents from India with detail information about terrorist training camps in Pakistan, informed sources said here on Friday. The material was handed over to the FBI officials based in the United States embassy here on Thursday night after a high level meeting with Director Intelligence Bureau K P Singh and chief of Research and Analysis Wing Vikram Sood, the sources said. FBI officials have had a series of meetings with various sections of intelligence agencies and police officials, who have been dealing with militancy, after Tuesday's terrorist attack in New York and Washington, the sources said. Significantly, a seniormost official from the CBI was also present at the meeting as the investigating agency has been probing the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts. As per an understanding, the authorities handed over several video films, procured through various means by RAW, showing methods of training to youths, who hail from many countries, at camps located on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border within Pakistan as well as part of Kashmir illegally occupied by Islamabad, the sources said. The informed sources said a list, which contains addresses of various dreaded terrorists and financiers of militant movement, was also handed over to FBI. It was an updated list of what Union Home Minister Lal Krishen Advani had handed over to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf during the latter's visit to India in July, the sources said. Besides some classified details about the functioning and capabilities of various militant groups, India has also given details about their allegiance and strength to the FBI. FBI officials were also given interrogation statement of Abdel Raouf, a Sudanese national, who was arrested by Delhi police for his alleged involvement in planning an attack on the United States mission in the capital. CBI was also understood to have given some vital clues to the FBI which the agency had gathered during its investigations into the 1993 Mumbai blasts. ( PTI )

I believe the authorization should have been given to the CIA and our military intelligence agencies to immediately begin working within our borders when we first were attacked by this asshole years ago.

I also believe that the military intelligence agencies of our allies should have been allowed to work side by side with our own intelligence agencies to root out all of these rats within our own borders.

I like everyone else believes that we need to bomb the shit out of something or someone first, but these low lifes are not going to stop until we track them down and kill each and every one of those bastards.

I thought that this 1998 article by Col. David Hackworth was prophetic.

Analysis

How Not to Fight Terrorism

by David Hackworth

To get the newspapers off his case for one day, Bill Clinton struck back at "terrorists." The costs: $200 million, one medicine factory destroyed, a campsite cratered, and every American a target.

Cruise missiles lit up the skies over Afghanistan and Sudan last week. Seventy-five fell on terrorist training camps and on the bad medicine factory in Khartoum. The going rate for a Cruise these days is a million bucks. Throw in what it cost to launch and follow up on the strikes, and you get a $200 million bonfire of the vanities.

You can declare war on terrorists with missiles. They make the kind of noise the whole world can hear. And there is no question that the message we sent needed to be sent. The problem is that while we can declare war with our Tomahawks, we can't fight terrorists with them. Worse, we won't win if we do.

The counterstrikes last week killed 50-odd terrorists in Afghanistan at a huge dollar cost, leaving who knows how many tens of thousands to go. You don't have to be H&R Block to do the accounting. Reach for the Tomahawk every time and you'll go broke long before the bad guys belly up.

Various reports put Osama bin Laden's personal fortune at anywhere from $250 million to $5 billion. That's all he's got to spend. If we agreed to limit ourselves to the same assets -- credit him with the whole enchilada -- and make it his $5 billion against our $5 billion, who do you think would win?

Right. Bin Laden is being a lot sharper than we are. That's what guerrillas and terrorists do. They don't outshoot us. They outsmart us.

Here are the basics. In the war that both sides have now declared, the United States presents a very big, fixed target. The terrorists present very small, very mobile targets. As soon as the President and Secretary of Defense, both of whom dodged the draft in Vietnam and have no first-hand knowledge of the basics, get over congratulating themselves on the strike, they are going to have to take a harder look at the truth: what we've done is try to wipe out a bee's nest with a baseball bat because one bee stung us badly.

The terrorist strikes on our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were an outrage that demanded retaliation. And the missile strikes did make our intentions clear. That's not the question. The question should be: what's the smartest way to wage this war?

And the record shows that the sledgehammer seldom works against terrorists. Israel has been fighting terrorists for 50 years. When a bomb explodes in that tormented land, bet on it, the suspected perps' home bases get clobbered.

Has all this firepower worked? Nope. A month seldom passes when a terrorist bomb doesn't explode on the streets of Israel. In 1986, Libyan terrorists blew up a Berlin disco, killing U.S. soldiers. Ronald Reagan responded with bombs. Reagan's security advisors did attaboys for several years. Until Libyan terrorists struck back, killing 270 people over Scotland on a Pan Am flight.

The Cruise missiles did four things: batted the bee's nest; gave the terrorist's cause the world-wide propaganda coup that's always their end game ("Just look at what that bully, the Great Satan, has done to us now -look at all the innocent dead"); unified Arab anti-American feelings around the globe; and made a ton of money for the missile makers while justifying all those expensive ships.

The Brits, who've been under siege since the invention of gunpowder, take a different approach. While they take the occasional hit, their primary goal is to catch terrorists through detective and intelligence work. Yes, they believe in punishing the terrorist, but they learned a long time ago that traditional military solutions don't work. So they use a scalpel rather then a sledgehammer, brains over brawn.

We should ask our British cousins to show us their way. For fighting terrorism is not about whoever makes the most noise. The smart way is through deterrence and prevention -- through clever intelligence, well-trained people and a strong proactive plan.

I hope our generals and admirals change their "bomb them back to the stone age" mindset. Sure, the sledgehammer worked in WWII. But it didn't in Vietnam, and it is a recipe for failure in our newest war.

Liberty, November 1998,

http://www.libertysoft.com/liberty/features/68hackworth.html

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