they may not all have the same membership card, but... they all share the same goal to inflict as much damage to the Christian west as possible. it not rocket science...
Posted on 07/14/2008 5:46:23 PM PDT by Barbarian6
Former CIA agent: "We do not face a global jihadist 'movement'"
Glenn L. Carle "was a member of the CIA's Clandestine Service for 23 years and retired in March 2007 as deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats." In "Overstating Our Fears" in the Washington Post, July 13, he says this:
We do not face a global jihadist "movement" but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving Muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally regional in nature and almost all of which long predate the existence of al-Qaeda.
In a circulating e-mail, LTC Joseph Myers, who has served at the Defense Intelligence Agency as the Chief of the South America Division and Senior Military Analyst for Colombia from 1997-2000, responds:
This helps explain to me why we have strategically failed in the current war to identify the enemy and understand and template his threat doctrine and why seven years into the "global war on terror," we don't have a global threat model for it.
It is because, apparently, key CIA leadership responsible for "global threat" analysis has concluded that we have no "global" threat:
"We do not face a global jihadist "movement" but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving Muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally regional in nature and almost all of which long predate the existence of al-Qaeda."
So the underlying conditions of regional, ethnic and internecine struggles within the Muslim community are the problems we face. And the CIA theory for the war on terror is that we do not face a "global jihadist 'movement.'"
But what information does Mr. Carle marshal to defeat the oppositional theory that we are indeed facing a global jihad? None in this article.
Could his thesis and theory be tested by elaborating the al-Qaida doctrines, such as was done by [Jihad Watch's] Raymond Ibrahim in his book The al-Qaida Reader or by Stephen Coughlin, formerly of the Joint Staff J-2, and align al-Qaida's religious arguments against classic Islamic doctrines to show and prove that al-Qaida's doctrines are deformations and distortions of Islamic law and classical teaching?
Certainly Mr. Carle's model is simple and recognizable: regionalism and ethnicity, no need then to delve into ideology or religion, but sound intelligence analysis is not simply looking at and evaluating only the information that supports your conclusions.
Has the CIA conducted such a countervailing test and evaluation of their theory of the GWOT? They must have, by Mr. Carle's assertion. If no, then Mr Carle has no basis to make the claim he is making and undermines his argument that we are only confronting disgruntled bands of Muslims.
Secondly, Mr. Carle reveals a certain ignorance when he conflates the concept of "jihad" with those seeking to do violence to the US homeland. If he truly understood and has studied Islam, Islamic doctrines of warfare, Islamic law and jihad, then the diverse nature of jihad and sources of threat to the American homeland and national security would be clearer -- we do not face threats solely from those violent actors.
This is an example of letting policy drive your analysis. Since our policy is attack-focused and oriented on preventing attack threats, we circumvent the analysis of everything leading up to the attack event and do not trace it to its roots.
Thusly we short-circuit our intelligence preparation of the battlefield process. We do not analyze and template the "radicalization process" for what it reveals.
One thing for sure is in national security, if your theory of reality is wrong, then your courses of action to that point are going to be wrong too -- or at least imprecise and incomplete.
And he was the NIO for transnational threats. For me, I am glad Mr. Carle is retired. Positions like that require creative thinkers and analysts; what is written here reveals neither.
Well, I feel safer already.
Good article. Carle is an example of why the CIA has been giving Presidents bad or incomplete information for a long time.
Sounds like someone is writing letters to the editor in preparation for a book release...
they may not all have the same membership card, but... they all share the same goal to inflict as much damage to the Christian west as possible. it not rocket science...
Really?
I guess the news rports of the Islamoturds taking over Germany England, the Netherlands and much of the EU are false reports.
They are changing the face of all those country’s by coruptting their laws their systems draining their welfare systems tying up the police and the courts.
No doesn;t sound like a global jihad at all.......
Of course we face a global jihadist movement. It’s called Islam. It’s what all the “little regional” jihad movements have in common
True enough. It just happens that they operate globally and happen to like killing people, chief among them Americans.
Most of what we call "Al Qaeda" is just that, disparate movements that get help from various national intel organizations among whom Saddam's once figured, and the Soviets before him, and Tehran and Damascus now.
But just as it was impossible to do a complete take-down of Bin Ladin's group without going after Saddam, without putting pressure on Karachi, without pressuring Riyadh, its also going to be impossible to finish the job without separating Iran's mullahs from the institutions of national power there. And pushing Bashir out an upstairs palace window in Damascus.
I read somewhere or maybe someone commented here that the CIA is the most leftist organization in the government.
[Sufi thought leader] Muhammad al-Ghazzali (1058-1128 c.e.), in his Theology Revived. Ghazzali refers to the tale in a discussion on the problem of human action, a problem in which the inadequacy of natural reason becomes most evident. This is his version of the fable:A community of blind men once heard that an extraordinary beast called an elephant had been brought into the country. Since they did not know what it looked like and had never heard its name, they resolved to obtain a picture, and the knowledge they desired, by feeling the beast - the only possibility that was open to them! They went in search of the elephant, and when they had found it, they felt its body. One touched its leg, the other a tusk, the third an ear, and in the belief that they now knew the elephant, they returned home. But when they were questioned by the other blind men, their answers differed. The one who had felt the leg maintained that the elephant was nothing other than a pillar, extremely rough to the touch, and yet strangely soft. The one who had caught hold of the tusk denied this and described the elephant as, hard and smooth, with nothing soft or rough about it, more over the beast was by no means as stout as a pillar, but rather had the shape of a post ['amud]. The third, who had held the ear in his hands, spoke: "By my faith, it is both soft and rough." Thus he agreed with one of the others, but went on to say: Nevertheless, it is neither like a post nor a pillar, but like a broad, thick piece of leather." Each was right in a certain sense, since each of them communicated that part of the elephant he had comprehended, but none was able describe the elephant as it really was; for all three of them were unable to comprehend the entire form of the elephant.
True! And ICBMS do not constitute a global threat, because each one can only be in one continent at a time.
What nonsense.
He wanted to say “Bushes Fault” so badly...
All Freepers have that third all-seeing eye the normal pension-laden G-level intelligence operative has surgically removed in the secret operatory just behind the ficus tree in that Office of Diversity.
But know this: Suppose by the grace of God one of them is made seeing so that he perceives and knows the elephant as it really is, and says to them: "In what you have said of the elephant, you have indeed grasped some aspect of the elephant, but you do not know the rest. God has given me sight, I have seen and come to know the elephant as it really is." They will not even believe the seeing man, but will say: "You claim that God has given you sight, but that is only your imagination. Your brain is defective, and madness assails you. It is we who are the seeing."* * *
Jules Verne, a later mystic retold the tale in a variant form see: "In the Country of the Blind" ... the short story starts off slow, one can just skip to where the protagonist falls down the mountain and is lost from his party, whereupon he meanders until finding a strange village, not unlike a Federal Agency.
And all that because you see the Elephant in the room. It’s so easy for a Freeper!
Why should anyone trust the CIA run by the Clintonistas?
More so than the State Department?
So he worked for the CIA during 911. Where the hell was he?
This sounds like a one-two punch by the Wash. Post. They ran an book review (YESTERDAY) by A Prof. Bacevich (Boston Un) on a book about how the Bush Admin. has destroyed civil liberties in the US. One Bacevich’s points was that there was no threat to the US from an organized Moslem organization such as Al QAEDA.
This history professor was a Vietnam veteran and his son was killed in combat in Iraq, but his hate for America is beyond contempt.
What he have are a bunch of leftist losers who have gained positions of influence in the media/academia, or as “posters” of columns based on their careers. If Carle had been a successful CIA agent, wouldn’t it be fair to ask him why 9/11 happened? and the USS Cole? and Khobar Towers? and World Trade Center One; and the African Embassy bombings?
The CIA has been a notorious repository of leftist thinking for many years. Reagan felt he had to circumvent it for analysis. He could not have gone head to head with the USSR on CIA analysis and advice. It is the CIA that claimed from its beginning that the USSR was growing economically at twice the rate of thy USA and during each of 40 years that not only was that true but that the USSR’s economy was already about 50% of the USA’s. The CIA recruits out of Ivy League schools. It gets lots of IQ but it also gets an Ivy League outlook that is not further educable.
I sure wish he would have written a “book” a couple weeks prior to 09-11-01 warning us of the upcoming attack on the WTC.
Islam is a religion of headhunters, a stoneage mentality with tanks and working on nukes (they have some in Pakistan).
Is this the same CIA that had no clue about 911 until after it was over? The same CIA that hired Valarie? The same CIA that said there were WMD’s in Iraq? The same CIA that ran the bay of Pigs? The same CIA that...
I thought you supported our commander in chief.
“almost all of which long predate the existence of al-Qaeda
This is news? Of course they predate al-Qaeda. al-Qaeda means “the base” and it’s stated mission was to be the central clearing house and command center for all of those organizations, not to be a stand-alone organization. That’s what makes them more dangerous.
This guy influenced CIA policy? Ouch.
not no but hell no. try state.
not no but hell no. try state.
Why are there so many liberals in the CIA?
Disparate or not, these groups are still a threat ALL OVER THE GLOBE, so even though they may not be connected globally, they ARE a global threat. It is harder to ferret them out, but it has to be done, in order to find out which ones will be a direct threat to US.
btt
I’d like to recommend a website:
Prophet of Doom - Islam’s Terrorist Dogma in Muhammad’s Own Words
It has a free Online & Audio Book.
Left hand...meet...Right hand...now you two keep each other informed....OK?
History will show the CIA to be hostile to PResident Bush and to this country.
It needs to be disbanded. We already have the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Who needs people like Valerie Plame anyway. Turn Langley into prime office space or a mall. That would be a higher use of the property.
The State Dept. is another rat’s nest that needs cleaning out. And it has been since the 1930s.
Good point that bears repeating whenever liberals "misunderestimate" the terrorist threat. The Germanic tribes that overran the Roman Empire didn't necessarily constitute an "organized barbarian threat", but they got the job done, nevertheless. Sadly, it has become conventional wisdom that if a militant Islamist suicide bomber, kidnapper or assassin isn't carrying an Al Qaeda membership card, he/she isn't a real terrorist.
Since this guy is so smart, he should have got off his ass to help protect our country for the past 23 years.
"There are things we know we know, and that's helpful to know you know something. There are things we know we don't know. And that's really important to know, and not think you know them, when you don't. But the tricky ones are the ones - the unknown unknowns - the things we don't know we don't know. They're the ones that can get you in a bucket of trouble." ------- former US Sec Def Donald Rumsfeld
Never, never, never that to the all of us versus the few of them.
That is, we have things we do not know, and each of us has an special importance. In whole, we have much better intelligence than the CIA, and in whole we approach the elephant from many more different angles. And we communicate less hampered by institutionalized blindness than they.
More fundamentally, al-Queda was primarily a jihadist venture-capital firm.
Jihad groups from all over the world would make contact with al-Q for funding and training. If the al-Q leaders thought their business plan (proposed terrorist operation) made sense, then they would get funding
Osama's main role in al-Q wqas as liaison between the Operations people who needed funding, and the money men back in Saudi and Kuwait (the Golden Chain organization and the bin Laden clan)
Unfortunately the man who thinks he can “see” doesn’t see the underlying reality of energy waves and molecules that make up the true reality of what we call “elephant”. And so, the gist of the fable is that some might know more than others, but true understanding is an illusion.
Hmm, a religious conflict in Iran, perhaps?
A stray suicide bomber mistaking this for another ethnicity's tent?
Why do I get the feeling we would be better off if we just fired everyone in the CIA and started over?
I'll go out on a limb -- Truth is a illusion with a purpose. It is that purpose which is real. Moreover, for us, truth is all we have to work with, and for that we'd best stick with truth, because it is the only path to our purpose.
You’re right - the purpose can be real...
Me too.
Care to join me for lunch at Windows on the World restaurant?
It's on top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.