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Sometimes a story just doesn't seem to be "all there." Cinnamon Stillwell suspected as much in a NewsBusters item on January 10: Call me overly suspicious, but the story of 16-year-old Farris Hassan traveling to Iraq on a whim strikes me as unbelievable. Hassan's interview with Rita Cosby of MSNBC, a Florida newspaper columnist's skepticism, and a January 18 posting by the Northeast Intelligence Network (NIN), which describes itself as "a small contingent of experienced investigators ..... founded by veteran private investigator Douglas J. Hagmann," all appear to confirm Stillwell's suspicions. What is known of Farris Hassan's saga at this...

Just a note on Election Eve to anyone who would threaten the Constitution......

The Republican National Committee (RNC) published an update at its BarackBook.com website yesterday that accuses Barack Obama presidential campaign bundler Jodie Evans of supporting the insurgency in Iraq. http://www.barackbook.com/Profiles/JodieEvans.htm Evans is co-founder of the so-called antiwar group Code Pink. The RNC quoted a January 15, 2006 column by Robert Novak that said, "Code Pink, At A Mock War Crimes Tribunal In Istanbul June 27, Signed A Declaration That The Iraqi Insurgency 'Deserved The Support Of People Everywhere Who Care For Justice And Freedom.'" Evans represented Code Pink at the mock war crimes tribunal. In addition to expressing Code Pink's support...

ARLINGTON, Va. — Marines in Fallujah will transfer their headquarters to Ramadi in the next six months, said Marine Col. Lewis Craparotta, commander of Regimental Combat Team 1. The 412 Marines and sailors in the regimental combat team’s headquarters will make the move as part of an effort to reduce the U.S. presence in Fallujah, Craparotta told reporters Monday. Both Fallujah and Ramadi were once hotbeds for the insurgency, but since 2007, local Sunnis have allied with U.S. troops to drive out al-Qaida. On Monday, Craparotta said the enemy in his area has been "neutralized;" however, he noted a series...

USFK commander takes war cue from Iraq By Franklin Fisher, Stars and Stripes Pacific edition, Sunday, June 29, 2007 CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea — The top U.S. military commander in South Korea plans steps to ensure U.S. forces are ready to counter any Iraq-style insurgency tactics that North Korea might try to use in a conflict on the peninsula. In a brief interview with Stars and Stripes on Friday, U.S. Forces Korea commander Gen. Walter Sharp said he thinks it’s likely North Korea has been keeping close watch on the tactics used by insurgents in Iraq and would no doubt...

The deeper problem here is the belief that the best way to deal with insurgents is to address the "root causes" of the grievance that purportedly prompted them to take up arms. But what most of these insurgencies seek isn't social or moral redress: It's absolute power. Like other "liberation movements" (the PLO comes to mind), the Tigers are notorious for killing other Tamils seen as less than hard line in their views of the conflict. The failure to defeat these insurgencies thus becomes the primary obstacle to achieving a reasonable political settlement acceptable to both sides. This isn't to...

Researchers at Harvard say that publicly voiced doubts about the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a "measureable effect" on insurgents there. Periods of intense news media coverage in the United States of criticism about the war, or of polling about public opinions on the conflict, are followed by a small but quantifiable increases in the number of attacks on civilians and U.S. forces in Iraq... The increase in attacks is more pronounced in areas of Iraq that have better access to international news media, the authors conclude in a report titled "Is There an 'Emboldenment' Effect? Evidence from the Insurgency...

....Overall, the results presented in this paper suggest several important facts. First, the findings suggest that there is an explicit and quantifiable cost to public debate during wartime in the form of increased attacks. Based on these results, it appears that Iraqi insurgent groups believe that when the U.S. political landscape is more uncertain, initiating a higher level of attacks increases the likelihood that the U.S. will reduce the scope of its engagement in the conflict. However, the magnitude of the response by Iraqi insurgent groups is relatively small. To the extent that U.S. political speech does affect insurgent incentives,...

**EXCERPT** BAGHDAD, Feb. 9 -- On Nov. 3, U.S. soldiers raided a safe house of the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq near the northern city of Balad. Not a single combatant was captured, but inside the house they found something valuable: a diary and will written in neat Arabic script. "I am Abu Tariq, Emir of al-Layin and al-Mashadah Sector," it began. Over 16 pages, the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader detailed the organization's demise in his sector. He once had 600 men, but now his force was down to 20 or fewer, he wrote. They had lost weapons and allies....

BANGKOK (AFP) - Brutal killings have reached unprecedented levels in Thailand's Muslim-majority south, experts say, as the region enters the fifth year of a separatist insurgency that is tearing communities apart. ADVERTISEMENT A government policy of reconciliation in the region has backfired, analysts told AFP, with rebels beheading, mutilating and even crucifying victims to try to spark a backlash and create divisions between Buddhists and Muslims. "They kill in such brutal ways: beheaded, hacked to death, set on fire ... the idea is to provoke a strong reaction of the Buddhist Thais against Muslims," said Sunai Phasuk, a Thailand consultant...

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Quotes from David Kilcullen - a reserve lieutenant colonel in the Australian army, doctorate in political anthropology and senior counter insurgency adviser to General David Petraeus. "... focusing the campaign on how to defeat one particular enemy is perhaps not the best way to approach ...the more we focus on the population and protecting them, the easier it is to deal with the enemy. The more we focus on the enemy, the harder it is to actually get anything done with the population. ... There has never been a successful counterinsurgency that took less than 10 years. ... It's evolution....

Below and attached is a Joint Staff DD-WOT unclassified analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood STRATEGIC GOALS FOR NORTH AMERICA MEMORANDUM that was placed into evidence in the Holy Land Foundation Trial a copy of which I sent to you last Friday [but attached again] bundled with other important jihad doctrine and strategy documents. This assessment makes the point that the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered a threat organization and the affiliated US domestic Muslim NGOs and associations identified in the strategy document should likewise be considered part of the Muslim Brotherhood network, that these are “front” functional organizations operating as...

Just as the rockets landing in the Green Zone are from a foreign source -- Iran -- the jihadis who destroy themselves in explosions aimed primarily at mass killings of Shia civilians are almost all foreigners. This is al Qaeda, not Iraq. Even more to the point: The Iraqis basically ignore the al Qaeda car bombs, mourn the dead and then go to work, to school, join and continue to serve in the military and police -- and life goes on. There is no terror if no one is terrorized. Let us, the American people, not be terrorized into retreating...

Earlier today, the Italian news service AKI reported that the presumed leader of the largest insurgency in Iraq will start cooperating with the Iraqi government. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, one of the highest-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's government, reportedly pledged to work with Iraqi and American forces to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq: The leader of Iraq's banned Baath party, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, has decided to join efforts by the Iraqi authorities to fight al-Qaeda, one of the party's former top officials, Abu Wisam al-Jashaami, told pan-Arab daily Al Hayat. "AlDouri has decided to sever ties with al-Qaeda and sign up to...

WASHINGTON, June 29, 2007 – A new Iraq strategy that targets multiple terrorist outposts and capitalizes on Iraqis’ growing dislike of al Qaeda are combining to degrade insurgent operations in the country, a counter-insurgency expert said today in Baghdad. “The intention behind the counter-operations that we’re doing is to try to knock over several insurgent safe havens simultaneously,” David Kilcullen, the senior counter-insurgency adviser to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of Multinational Force Iraq, said during a conference call with military analysts. Operations Phantom Thunder, Arrowhead Ripper and other ongoing, surge-affiliated actions in Iraq are being conducted simultaneously across...

Terrorism's Newfangled Insurgent Advantage Terrorism's Newfangled Insurgent Advantage By David Brooks Published on 5/19/2007 in Home »Editorial »Perspective The war on terror has shredded the reputation of the Bush administration. It has destroyed the reputation of Tony Blair's government in Britain, Ehud Olmert's government in Israel and Nouri al-Maliki's government in Iraq. And here's a prediction: It will destroy future American administrations, and future Israeli, European and world governments as well. That's because setbacks in the war on terror don't only flow from the mistakes of individual leaders and generals. They're structural. Thanks to a series of organizational technological...

It’s Way Past Miller Time for the War in Iraq By J. Neil Schulman Sometimes I wonder if people even listen to themselves talk. The Bush administration tells us that the United States has not yet achieved its objectives in the War in Iraq so American troops have to stay there until a stable Iraqi democracy can fend for itself against an insurgency fueled by al Qaeda-fed Sunni Muslims and Iranian-fed Shia Muslims: that the Iraqi InSurgency has to be fought with an American Surgency The Democratic Party opposition tells us that, because of this InSurgency, the Bush administration...

Iraq is a mess. Not so much in the sense of what Gen. David Petraeus is physically dealing with on the ground, but in the sense of what we have allowed the effort to morph into here at home and worldwide. We’re not losing the war — not by any true combat leader’s estimation — but we are struggling to get our arms around the conflict’s realities; and that in itself is undermining the effort. The biggest problems as I see it are the politicization of the war to include subtle attempts to micromanage ongoing “surge” operations; and not-so-subtle attempts...

On How to Treat the Populace of Iraq After Their Insurgency Niccolo Machiavelli - Paraphrased (The Pasadena Pundit - April 10, 2007) (Appearing before the Congress, Gen. David Patraeus spoke of) what should be done with the territories and cities of Iraq. These are the words he used, and the decision that the Congress reached, more or less verbatim, as (the resurrected ancient Roman historian) Livy reports them: "Congressmen! What needed to be done in Iraq with armies and wars has, by grace of god and the skill of our soldiers, been done. Slaughtered are the enemy armies of the...