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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck who wrote (20155)	11/28/2002 9:52:01 PM
From: lorne	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27666

Plot to bomb embassies November 29 2002 By Mark Forbes Canberra Islamic extremists plan to bomb the Australian, Canadian and other Western embassies in the Philippines within days, according to an intelligence report that has led to their immediate evacuation. It is believed the American embassy is also a target of the plot, thought to originate from the radical Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The attacks are timed to coincide with the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan on Sunday. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer ordered the closure of the Australian embassy in Manila after receiving the report late on Wednesday. The threat was credible, specific and originated from Islamic extremists linked to al Qaeda, he said. The threat emerged as a leading strategic think tank accused the Federal Government of underestimating the likelihood of more attacks on Australians at home and abroad and lacking an integrated approach to terrorism. An assessment in the wake of the Bali bombings by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute calls for a counter-terrorism commander to co-ordinate the national response to the new threat. It says Australia should be on a high alert, rather than medium alert. Following the intelligence warnings, Australian agents are understood to have examined the Manila embassy, located in a high-rise building, and concluded it could not be secured against attack. The European Union embassy in the same building has also been closed. Canada confirmed it shut its embassy due to a "specific and credible threat". The US embassy was closed for Thanksgiving and staff were unavailable for comment. Mr Downer said there was a "very real risk of a terrorist attack against our embassy in Manila". The information was specific about time and place, and came from sources in the Philippines, he said. "The intelligence doesn't tell me why they're targeting us. But . . . . these are people who are part of this network of Islamic extremist fundamentalist organisations," he said. Mr Downer denied claims that the group responsible was the Abu Sayef guerrillas, saying: "I think it's another group in the Philippines but these groups are nevertheless linked to each other." The Moro Islamic Liberation Front is fighting for a separate Muslim state in the Mindanao region. It is linked to Jemaah Islamiah and al Qaeda, which have provided funding and whose members have attended the front's training camps. Moro bomb-making experts were allegedly part of the JI plot to bomb the Australian High Commission and US embassy in Singapore this year. Moro was allegedly funded by JI to conduct bombings in the Philippines two years ago. Philippines Consul-General Laureano Santiago said the closure of the embassies risked giving would-be terrorists a feeling they had succeeded. Mr Santiago said he did not dispute the Australian move, but the Philippines was as safe as any nation in the region. He claimed the terror warning originated from national police. However, intelligence sources indicated the information originated from US or Australian spy networks. Prime Minister John Howard said the warning was explicit and it would have been "recklessly negligent" not to act on it. Australians are advised not to travel to the Philippines. Earlier, ASPI executive director Hugh White said: "We now need to approach the task of responding to terrorism on the basis that further attacks on Australia or Australians are more likely than not." theage.com.au

To: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck who wrote (20155)	11/29/2002 10:16:35 AM
From: Richnorth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27666

Pentagon Chief's New Theory For A Lightning War With Minimal Human Cost In The Persian Gulf Nov 29, 2002 Rumsfeld's 'blitzkrieg' (1) Air attacks using precisions bombs will paralyse Iraq's ablility to fight back (2) Highly-mobile ground troops will then move in to finish off the enemy WASHINGTON - Pentagon officials have come up with a 'new' idea for attacking Iraq. Their so-called 'effects-based' strategy is an adaptation of the blitzkrieg, or lightning war, perfected by Hitler's Wehrmacht in World War II. It would comprise highly accurate, meticulously coordinated air attacks on critical targets to disrupt Iraq's ability to fight back cohesively. Fast-moving ground troops would then move in to finish the job, according to Wednesday's Wall Street Journal. Blitzkrieg was used to devastating effect by the Germans. In 1940, for example, they captured Copenhagen on April 9 and Oslo the next day. They took The Hague on May 14, Brussels three days later and Paris precisely one month after that. Speed and surprise were the keynotes, light-tank units supported by planes and infantry were the weapons employed to achieve success. While the benefits of the Pentagon's 'effects-based' operations are yet to be proved, the strategy itself has been eagerly endorsed by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Generally, such operations propose a different take on well-tested methods of warfare. While the goal of traditional warfare is to deplete an enemy's forces and destroy its military infrastructure, effects-based warfare seeks to paralyse it. The 'new' approach would enable the military to accomplish objectives quicker with less cost in lives, money and personnel, according to Air Force Major-General and author David Deptula. When the first shots are fired in the next Gulf war, for example, helicopter-fired Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs will destroy radar sites and render Iraq's commanders incapable of tracking American aircraft. Soon afterwards, 1 kg satellite-guided bombs will hit radio-relay stations, cutting the fibre-optic communication lines between field commanders and their bosses in Baghdad. Effects-based operations are heavily dependent on technology and that has advanced significantly since the US last went to war against Iraq in 1991. Then, the US bombed from the air for 40 days before the ground invasion began. Less than 10 per cent of the bombs dropped were guided by satellite or laser signals. Nowadays, Pentagon officials say more than 80 per cent of bombs would be precision-guided. There is only one problem with the Rumsfeld-approved theory, according to critics: It has never been employed on a large-scale and there is no guarantee it will work. Aspects of effects-based warfare were tried in Afghanistan and Kosovo but these were conflicts on a far smaller scale than the war envisaged against Iraq. Rather than viewing the Afghan war as a triumph of high-tech weaponry, as Mr Rumsfeld did, some Army officers believe the conflict underlined the technology's shortcomings. Operation Anaconda, for example, was a skirmish that was supposed to conclude in three days but lasted two weeks as 1,000 Al-Qaeda fighters fought back from their hideouts, undetected by any high-tech surveillance. The concept of effects-based operations was born in a place known as the Black Hole, a top-secret Air Force planning cell in Saudi Arabia where the Gulf War air campaign was orchestrated. When Defence Secretary Rumsfeld took office two years ago with a mandate to make the military more nimble, he quickly embraced the concept. Recently, he has ordered senior US commanders to rewrite their plans, capitalising on precision weapons, better intelligence and the effects-based concept. Some tried it out in Poland in September when they directed a military exercise dubbed Victory Strike. The exercise began when helicopters from V Corps - one of the first units likely to be deployed for a war in Iraq - set off to destroy simulated radar and missile sites. They rehearsed razing enemy radar sites and opening up the skies for F-16 pilots to begin a mock-attack with satellite-guided bombs. >> News Archives