Brad Taylor's Blog, page 7

A Tale of Two Countries

On Mother’s Day I read two news stories that really got me thinking about what drives our foreign policy.  Twin car bombs were detonated in Damascus killing fifty-five people.  This set off a worldwide media frenzy about how fragile the current truce is and how the UN better get on the ball.  On the same day, a bus was found in Mexico with the bodies of upwards of seventy people butchered, their heads, hands and feet cut off.  The gruesome discovery was just a blip in the news cycle. 

Google “intervention in Syria” and you’ll find a plethora of articles all bemoaning that the United States is failing in its duties by letting the bloodshed in Syria continue unabated.  Senators have screamed for no fly zones and the secretary of state has lambasted the UN for not intervening. 

Google “intervention in Mexico” and you’ll find a plethora of articles discussing the US intervention in the Mexican revolution of 1917.  The only person who has ever mentioned any intervention in Mexico was Governor Rick Perry when he was running for president, and the idea was roundly dismissed. 

What’s the difference?  Is it the scope of the tragedy?  I don’t see how.  Two journalists were killed in the crossfire of Homs, Syria, and the entire world mourned.  The deaths made headline news for days.  Four journalists were captured, tortured unmercifully, decapitated, then dumped in a Mexican city, and they received barely a mention.  That’s four more journalists, I should say.  A protester gets killed by snipers in a crowd in Syria, and it’s on the network news.  In Mexico, a guy gets tortured to death and has the skin of his face stitched onto a soccer ball, and you can’t even find a reference to it in the American press.

Nearly 60,000 people have been killed in the Mexican drug war.  That’s a six with four zeros, in a conflict that has been raging since 2006.  In Syria, 8,000 have been killed in about 18 months. We’ve let the slaughter go on in Mexico for six years without any concrete discussion.  Within that time we’ve intervened in Libya and are poised to do the same in Syria when the death toll of the two combined pales in comparison to Mexico.  It can’t simply be for humanitarian reasons.   

Is it the strategic nature of the terrain?  Perhaps.  Ignoring Libya (since I can’t find any national security interests whatsoever), no doubt Syria is a lynchpin of a whole host of issues in the Middle East, from Iran to Lebanon.  Its destabilization could create a problem set that we’ll be dealing with for the next generation, much like the country’s creation after WW I created a problem set for this generation.  But is Mexico any less strategic?  How about the rest of Central America?  That’s where the cartels are currently spreading their tentacles.  Are a destabilized Mexico and Central America nothing but a blip on the radar?  The U.S. is wringing its hands about the encroachment of al Qaeda into potential failed states such as Yemen and Syria, and yet seemingly turns a blind-eye to what’s happening just across our own southern border.  

To be sure, I’m not advocating intervention in either place, and yes, I understand that I’ve completely ignored the fact that Mexico gets a vote.  The point of this isn’t to start a drumbeat for a cross-border raid into Mexico.  I’m simply wondering out loud what drives our policy.  Wondering if it’s nothing more than a self-licking ice cream cone predicated on what political points can be scored, instead of a measured approach that truly serves our national interests.

Whatever it takes to sell…or why I hate the press.

I was eight years old when Watergate broke, and I literally grew up immersed in the belief that the government was always out to cover something up, and the press was the white knight out to expose these transgressions.  After seeing the press shenanigans for the last ten years, I think a readjustment is in order.  I’m not saying give the government a pass – the inoculation took, and I don’t trust them as far as I can throw them.  I’m saying it’s time to shine that same light on the press.  They aren’t white knights, out to protect the poor shlep who can’t do it himself.  They’re out to make money, no matter whom or what it harms.  Everything else is just bullshit posturing in the name of the first amendment.

The Los Angeles Times released a story today detailing U.S. troops posing with the dismembered remains of suicide bombers.  Not bombers that had just attacked them, but corpses that the Afghans had reported to US authorities, and which they had been sent out to gather DNA for a database.  Cutting edge journalism?  Breaking open the next “big story” on the War on Terror?  Hell no.  The pictures were taken over two years ago, and the story was posted for no other reason than to sell papers.  Period.  Unfortunately, the story itself will also cost American lives and set back the COIN fight in Afghanistan.  But who cares?  It’s all freedom of the press.

Before I go on, some disclaimers, like a newscaster revealing their parent company:  1.  I served in Fallujah, Iraq with the brigade commander mentioned, when he was a battalion commander.  2.  Nothing in here should indicate that I think the soldiers in question deserve special treatment because they were “in combat”.  I think they should be hammered, just like the Marines who urinated on corpses.

The Marine story came out right when All Necessary Force was released, and very few interviews went by without someone asking my thoughts.  About 90% of the time the interviewer expected me to whine about the “persecution” of the Marines, when in fact, I was vehement about how wrong the action was, and how much damage it had done to our counter-insurgency fight.  Even forgetting the strategic implications, make no mistake, desecration of dead combatants is a war crime, period.  Yeah, I wasn’t there, and I’m sure it was horrific, but combat in and of itself causes a moral decay the moment you step into the arena.  You’re told your whole life “though shalt not kill”, then told, “here’s a gun – go kill that guy”.  There’s a reason for the Law of Land Warfare.  It’s to prevent armed conflict from devolving into the Lord of the Flies.  As for the Marines, they were snipers.  An elite.  Not a group the guy straight out of boot camp would belong to.  They weren’t kids, and they were wrong.

Now, to the LA Times story.  Or more precisely, the lack of one.  Why on earth did they release this piece?  What the hell is the burning issue?  Nothing.  Ostensibly, the photos were given to the Times because the soldier wanted to “prevent a tragedy” because “security was light” at his base.  Really?  You go to the Times TWO YEARS LATER and give them inflammatory pictures that have NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SECURITY OF THE BASE because you’re worried about your fellow soldiers?  Bullshit.  Plain and simple.

As for the LA Times, they’re murderers in my mind.  No different than the driver of a car for a robber who murders someone in a liquor store.  They can say all day long that they “didn’t know the effect it would have”, just like the crack-head driver, but they’re responsible for American deaths.  For nothing other than to sell newspapers.  I hope they’re proud.

I remember when Abu Ghraib broke.  I was off my first deployment from Iraq, and disgusted by the story.  Disgusted both by the soldiers involved, and by the press that reported it.  The Pentagon was already doing an investigation into the events, and would have pursued justice regardless of the stories, but the release itself was a strategic calamity that literally could be compared to Pearl Harbor in its damage.  There’s a ton of second guessing going on about how long Iraq lasted, but none is pointed at the press that caused it.

I remember reading Newsweek’s excuse for releasing the photos when I was fresh from the battlefield.  In summary, it said, “The Pentagon asked us not to release them because of the extreme adverse effect it would have, and we agreed.  Then, another news source said they were going to release them regardless of what the Pentagon asked, so we beat them to the punch because we would have lost the money involved with the scoop.”  That was the last Newsweek magazine delivered to my house.  In fact, the last one I have ever read.

Yeah, it was all about journalistic integrity.  And the almighty dollar.  There is no telling how many American – and Iraqi – lives were lost because those photos were published.  And for what?  In the end, the Army finished its investigation, and the primary face of the abuse – Lynddie England – received a whopping three years in prison.  Something she would have received whether or not the pictures had come out anyway.  The military, unlike the civilian courts, could give a rat’s ass about the press involved, and looked strictly at the facts.

You think I’m making up the concrete impact of a press for hire?  Two years after Abu Ghraib the mighty Newsweek published another story detailing soldiers in GITMO flushing Quran’s down the toilet in an effort to get detainees to talk.  The story was picked up in Afghanistan and the Middle East, and the typical riots ensued.  After at least fifteen deaths, Newsweek apologized.  Turns out the entire thing was bullshit, based on an “anonymous” source.  Oh well, at least it sold magazines.  Who cares how many people still believe it?

I fought for over twenty years defending the constitution, and like everything in America, some people do what’s right, and some people manipulate and cower behind the constitution to promote their own interests.  I’ll fight for both of them, but it sickens me.

In Abu Ghraib’s case, unsurprisingly, the “other press” that Newsweek wanted to beat to the punch was none other than Seymour Hersh, whom I’ve already shown in another post as a lying opportunist.  In the LA Times piece, it’s hard to show any redeeming reasons for the story.

In an ultimate twist of irony, the LA Times states in their earth-shattering scoop, “The photos have emerged at a particularly sensitive moment for U.S.-Afghan relations. In January, a video appeared on the Internet showing four U.S. Marines urinating on Afghan corpses. In February, the inadvertent burning of copies of the Koran at a U.S. base triggered riots that left 30 dead and led to the deaths of six Americans. In March, a U.S. Army sergeant went on a nighttime shooting rampage in two Afghan villages, killing 17.”

Wow.  Really?  The photos “emerged”, like they showed up in downtown LA walking down the street flipping off the pedestrians?  Or like you looked at your flagging sales and decided to publish some titillation for the American public that you knew would garner national press? Regardless of the international repurcussions, and despite the fact that the department of defense begged you not to?  Give me a break.  Liar.

At the end of the day, all counter-insurgency is a fight for legitimacy between the insurgents and the incumbent government.  It’s an information fight.  Stories like this undercut the COIN campaign in tangible, concrete ways, beyond the simple loss of life.  I remember very well collecting data on foreign fighters in Iraq in an effort to understand their motivations.  Overall numbers are still classified, but rest assured, when asked “Why are you here fighting”, the answer “Abu Ghraib” was in the top three.  And not because they heard it on the street, like some apologists would have you believe, as if the Newsweek story was lagging way behind what was already known all over the Middle East.  No, it was because they had the damn digital pictures in their hands courtesy of the American press.  Along with an incredibly unbelievable propaganda fantasy built with the bricks of the Newsweek piece.

Very few in the press understand- or even care – how sensitive the perception fight in COIN is, or how the LA Times’ straight-forward “story” can be manipulated overseas.  They live in a world of democracy that I protect, and use that to sell newspapers at the expense of United States’ national goals.  And U.S. citizen’s lives.  I, for one, am getting a little sick of the press prancing around in a halo, reporting anything they want and passing it off as a “Watergate” impact that we have to hear because the “evil” military is covering something up, when it’s nothing more than salacious BS designed to generate money, exactly comparable to TMZ reporting on Tiger Woods crashing his SUV.

Well, exactly comparable if the Tiger Woods reports had caused real follow-on death and destruction.

 

With Friends Like These…

The Syrian regime, like Libya a year ago, continues its slow slog to utter demise.  Unlike Libya, though, we haven't seen a bandwagon of countries jumping on board the Jihad to get rid of the region's latest despot in trouble.  

Considering the death toll in Syria is now around 8,000, I find this peculiar, but not particularly troubling.  As I've stated in previous blogs, I thought the whole Libyan intervention was short-sighted to begin with because eliminating a bad regime is only half the solution.  Ensuring something better comes along is the other half, and apparently no democratic government on earth has the staying power to make that happen.   

Unfortunately, it's a hell of a lot easier to topple a government than it is to ensure the replacement is better.  We should already know this;  just look at Iraq.  Or maybe Libya.  Nobody's watching anymore, because there are no longer any cruise missiles, but the place is still a mess.  Militia torture on a grand scale and threats of secessionist fighting splitting the countryside.   

In Syria, there have been some calls to begin using force to get rid of Bashir al Assad, which I find remarkably stupid for the same reasons as Libya—namely, we'll topple Assad, and then watch the country fall apart while doing nothing.  It's much easier to patrol the sky enforcing a no-fly zone than it is to patrol the street protecting the population from the fallout of the vacuum created.   Makes the west feel good while creating future issues we refuse to confront. 

There are a plethora of military reasons not to intervene in Syria:  

·         The opposition has no cohesive platform other than a hatred of Assad, with a ten-fold increase in various groups fighting compared to Libya's tribal striations – some clearly allied with Islamic fanatics.

·         The Syrian military is much, much stronger than Libya's; with an air defense umbrella that makes Libya look like a pee-wee football team against Pittsburgh's Steel Curtain.

·         The trans-national linkages and implications of a Damascus implosion will reverberate in ways that Libya never would.

·         Syria has a large amount of various WMD that will become uncontrolled in the fighting.  Etc, etc, etc.  

Even given all of that, in my mind there's a bigger reason not to intervene in Syria, and it's called Iran.  It's a cold-blooded assessment, but it's a cold-blooded world we live in.   

Syria is happy that Russia and China have blocked various UN resolutions, but its biggest supporter in its own backyard is Iran.  They constantly rail against "Western Imperialism" in Syria, stating that the whole thing is a western plot – and going so far as implicating Arab states at providing "mercenaries" propped up by western powers.  Syria loves the support from Iran, but in my mind, they would do well to take a look at why it's coming.   

What is the one thing Iran needs to build a nuclear weapon?  Clearly, it's time.  Time to get the technology.  Time to complete the tests.  Time to perfect the delivery system.  Time.   

Sanctions hurt, but Iran thinks they can outlast the pain.  Sanctions take time to be felt as well, and I believe the regime has calculated that it can accomplish its goals despite the worst sanctions.  Of course, Iran is no fool.  It will agree to talks to forestall that pain and give it the valuable currency it needs.  More time. 

In the end, Iran knows there's only one course of action with the power to stop its quest for nuclear weapons: the application of military force.  It also knows that military capability alone is nothing without the will to use it.  So how do you keep the Great Satan from employing its might?  How do you short-circuit that will? 

Simple.  Get the U.S. involved in another mid-east conflict.  Assad thinks Iran is a staunch supporter because they stand and fall together.  Friends to the end.  I think Iran is propping up Assad for a Machiavellian reason:  It hopes he'll commit enough atrocities that the U.S. will ultimately be forced to intervene.  It knows how hard that fight will be, and also knows the U.S. population's feelings about getting involved.  If that trigger is pulled, there's absolutely no way the U.S. will be able to intervene in Iran.  No way it will have the willpower for yet another mid-east war.  And Iran is absolutely right. 

It's a cold-blooded world, but the fact is that intervening in Syria will prevent the U.S. from stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions through military force.  One is something I'd like to do because Assad is an asshole (provided we followed through).  The other is a direct threat to our nation's security.   

All they need is time, and Syria is one more chess-piece providing it. 

Strange New World in the Levant

This didn't get much play in the press, but it's really big news.  There appears to be a crack in the Axis of Evil love triangle between Iran, Syria, and Hamas.  Last Friday, at a grand mosque in Cairo, Egypt, Hamas denounced Assad and overtly supported the opposition forces against him.  I was a little stunned on a variety levels.  

Iran and Syria have funded Hamas from its creation.  They're its sugar daddies, and Iran is definitely on the Assad bandwagon.  Hamas has now made a conscious effort to literally bite the hand that feeds it.    

Right off the bat, the pronouncement spits in the face of Iran's statements that the troubles in Syria are caused by "western powers" fomenting and aiding the rebellion.  It's going to be hard for Iran to continue saying this with a straight face when one of the primary terrorist groups against those same western powers supports the rebellion.    

Why, though?  Why would Hamas, which even has an office-in-exile in Damascus – well, at least it did – choose to denounce Assad with so much hanging in the balance?  

The doomsayers will state that it's proof positive that al Qaida and other terrorists are behind the rebellion – something that Assad says as well – because why else would Hamas back it?  Terrorists always back other terrorists, and Hamas wants to control the new government that comes into power.  There is some truth to that statement, but the connection isn't terrorism.  It's the constituency of Hamas and whom it sees as its future bankroll.   

The population of Syria is primarily Sunni, as are the Palestinians in Hamas, while the leadership of Syria is Alawite– a Shia offshoot (debatable, but that's what they claim).  It was no doubt becoming harder and harder for Hamas to sit by the sidelines when its own members were getting a little aggravated by the Sunni bloodshed.  Unlike Hezbollah to the North, a Shi'ite group firmly in Iran's pocket, the constituency of Hamas was demanding action to support its Sunni brothers in Syria.    

Even given that, it would take something more for the leadership of Hamas to thumb its nose at two of its greatest benefactors, Iran and Syria.  I believe what tipped the scales was the Arab Spring in Egypt.  Just a short time ago, Hamas had to deal with a hostile Arab country on its border of the Gaza Strip, namely Mubarak's government in Egypt.  In order to survive, it struck deals with Iran, Hezbollah, and Syria to help in its fight against Israel.  Now, Egypt is on the verge of being run by the Muslim Brotherhood – the very organization that created Hamas in the first place when it was an Egyptian underground organization, ruthlessly hunted down in the shadows by Mubarak.  It looks like Hamas now believes that the loss of material and political support by Iran and Syria will be offset by the new government of Egypt.   

It remains to be seen whether Hamas supporting the revolt is a positive or negative to U.S. national interests.  One thing's for sure: It's bad for Assad.

 

The Thin Red Line in Iran

Last Sunday on 60 Minutes the Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, said if the U.S. gathered intelligence that Iran was building a nuclear weapon, it would be a red-line, and all options were on the table, including military.

On the surface, I find the statement a little ludicrous.  Even the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran is developing nuclear weapons technology. The administration's official line is that they "aren't convinced" Iran has decided to make a weapon, and that maybe they're simply building the components for a nuclear device that someone can assemble later – should they choose.  Huh? That's not a red-line?

They're trying to make a bomb, period.  Given that, what will it really take to get them to quit?  In my mind, it's simple: Regime change. 

I'm not making the case that the only viable option is to invade them with ground forces.  I'm saying that threatening to attack their nuclear facilities will not deter the Iranian regime – even if we could do it.  That's not the Iranian center of gravity.  A credible threat against the regime, on the other hand, is.

All estimates are that Iran will have the capability for a nuclear weapon within 12 months, and all eyes are on Israel to see whether they will attack before that time.  There are some indications that Israel is gearing up for an attack.  Both Barak, the defense minister and Netanyahu, the prime minister, have elevated their rhetoric and the largest joint military exercise between Israel and the United States has been postponed.  The official reason is to avoid ratcheting up tensions in the region, but some speculate that Israel didn't want the hassle of protecting 5000 US soldiers from retaliation should they choose to strike Iran next spring.

Despite its preparations, Israel realizes they cannot destroy Iran's nuclear capability with a fly-by air-strike.  This mission won't be as easy as taking out Iraq's nuclear plant in 1981, or Syria's in 2007.  Iran has learned from those attacks, and has dispersed its capability over a wide region, along with burying it deep underground.  An attack on Iran's nuclear capability at this stage will involve something akin to shock and awe prior to the Iraqi invasion of 2003, whereby air defenses are neutralized, followed by days if not weeks of aerial bombardment.  And even that's no guarantee.  At most, airstrikes will set back the development by a few years, but it will still come.

Covert action has done a good job of slowing down the process, but it alone won't stop the development of weapons or deter the regime.  Inserting faulty equipment into the Iranian pipeline, spreading computer viruses, and assassinating scientists have all helped to turn what should have been a year-long project into a decades-long one, but progress still continues.

Speaking of covert action, another scientist was killed in Iran by a magnetic bomb last month, and everyone is pointing the finger at the CIA or Mossad, while forgetting the other countries in the region.  Make no mistake, the Sunni states of the Arabian Peninsula in no way want a nuclear Iran.  It's quite possible the killing could have been conducted by Saudi Arabia.  After all, they'd have much greater access and Iran tried to assassinate their diplomat last October.  There's no love lost between the two.  The CIA's access would be through Lebanon and Hezbollah, but since Hezbollah rolled up our entire network in November, I'm betting we have very little penetration capability, and Mossad would also have a tough time getting anything done inside Iran.  Given this was the fifth scientist killed, I wouldn't be surprised if Mossad and some other Sunni state were cooperating together.  But I digress.

The bottom line is that both overt and covert strikes only slow down the process.  Stopping it has to be a decision by the regime itself, either the current one or a new one altogether.  The current sanctions might engender this result if the population finally gets fed up and pressures the regime to quit, but I'm not holding my breath.  Sanctions, while a nice way to show we're "doing something", rarely result in a modification of behavior.  In fact, it's just as possible that the sanctions could have the opposite effect:  the population rallies around the regime because of the activities of the "Great Satan".  It's assuredly happened at the regime level, as the ongoing tensions with the west have tamped down the internal struggle between Ahmadinejad and the ayatollah.

The biggest problem with sanctions is not whether they will work or not, but the time required.  It could take longer for the population to get fed up than it does for Iran to build a weapon.  And once they do, regime change from the inside is no longer an option.  If they get a weapon, there will be no Arab Spring in Iran.  In no way would we want a repeat of the chaos inside Libya or Syria with a nuclear weapon in the balance. In fact, it's not exaggeration to say a nuclear weapon would ensure the regime's survival against any internal threat, as the west wouldn't do anything to support it– something which they are well aware of.

That survival instinct is what must be addressed.  Threatening to surgically remove their nuclear capability isn't enough.  The regime is the center of gravity.  Deterence involves a simple formula: threaten something held more dear than the goal they seek.  For totalitarian states, that is the leadership itself.  If the regime believed that we felt the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran was so dangerous that it would be worth the costs of getting rid of them – in effect, another Mideast war – they would stop.

There is another, cheaper, way than all out invasion, though we don't have the balls to say it out loud. I think deterrence could be achieved by simply intimating that instead of air-strikes on the nuclear facilities, the shock and awe would be directed at any and all government structures.  In effect, tell them, "you keep progressing forward, and we're coming after you, not the nukes".  This very application of force was used by Ronald Reagan in 1986.  Operation Eldorado Canyon was initiated to deter Libya from sponsoring terrorism.  Eighteen F-111s pounded anything related to Moamar Qadaffi.  The message: Knock it off, or we're going to kill you.

The problem here is credibility.  Iran would have to believe we mean it, and that's a tall order, because I'm not sure we do, even with all the rhetoric of red-lines.  We simply don't have it in us to conduct a counter-leadership campaign.  We'd rather go toe-to-toe with their military because somehow that's deemed more respectable, regardless of the exponential increase in both dollars and lives.  At this juncture, when we're fleeing both Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with the new defense guidance, nobody on the entire earth would believe America is willing to get involved in another ground war, regardless of the stakes.

Israel, on the other hand, could project the message just fine, and I doubt they have the same ridiculous notion of fair-play that we do.  National survival tends to trump that.  With Iran having already stated they should be wiped into the sea, I'd have no trouble believing Israel if they said they were going to remove the regime.

And neither would Iran.

New defense strategy: Back to the future.

The Obama National Security Team announced a dramatic shift in strategy for our military capability yesterday, and after all the bluster about "reorganizing for 21stcentury threats", I couldn't help but be struck by how everything said pointed back in time, not forward. 

The center-piece of the strategy is cutting down the size of our Army.  Making it "leaner and more agile".  No longer will we be structured for "legacy tasks" of stability and support operations or nation-building.  Nope, it's all about "responding quickly and effectively to a variety of contingencies."  Sounds a lot like what I heard during the Clinton drawdowns because of the "Peace Dividend" after the wall fell.  We would "pull back from our forward deployed bases" overseas and use "power-projection platforms" (read Army bases) to deploy "Joint Forces" (read Army guys in Airforce aircraft) to any contingency.   

While this draw-down has caused a hue and cry about losing our ability to fight two mid-intensity conflicts simultaneously, a corner-stone of U.S. military strategy for as long as I can remember, that's not what concerns me.  In reality, we haven't had that capability since Reagan was in office. 

When I joined the Army in the late '80s we had about 780,000 active duty soldiers.  By 9/11 we had about 480,000 –along with the mission of being able to fight two mid-intensity conflicts simultaneously.  Ten years later, I think it's been proven we'd lost that ability long before 9/11.  We couldn't even fight two low-intensity conflicts simultaneously, having to use Afghanistan as an economy of force while we focused on Iraq.  The Army rose to its current level of about 565,000, and the cuts being discussed will leave it around pre-9/11 size.  So, we'll basically have the Army at the same level we had before the towers fell.  We've just become honest with what that capability can accomplish.  

Along with the force structure, our strategy is returning to the past. And not the distant past, either.  The only buzz-word missing from Thursday's announcement was "information dominance", a term that was going to ensure we'd win every conflict with little more than a platoon.  You couldn't swing a dead cat without hearing it in the late 90s.   

"What's that, soldier?"

"An M-16 rifle.  It allows me to achieve information dominance on my opponent."

 Outside of that absence, every other buzz-word from the past was used.  No longer will we need the "legacy force" for large stability operations.  No, tomorrow's war will be quick and sharp, because we're "agile" and "adaptive".  Really?  Sounds remarkably like what Donald Rumsfeld said when we invaded Iraq in 2003.  We'd go in "lean and agile", and the whole thing would be over quickly.  When told otherwise by the then-Army Chief of Staff, a man with experience in Bosnia, Rumsfeld fired him for not toeing the party line.  It wasn't until the "Surge" in 2006 – which could rightly be called "The forces we should have had in the first place" – did we put enough combat power on the ground in Iraq. 

 Listening to the discussion I found it harkening back to a doctrine developed during the 1990s: The Powell Doctrine.  In a 1992 Foreign Affairs article, GEN Powell outlined a series of litmus tests for the application of military force, ostensibly gleaned from his experiences in Vietnam.  Boiled down, he said don't get involved in a conflict unless we can win with overwhelming force and have a concrete exit strategy.  And that's exactly what we did in Desert Storm, right down to not continuing on to Baghdad.  In GEN Powell's words, "Would it have been worth the inevitable follow-up: major occupation forces in Iraq for years to come and a very expensive and complex American proconsulship in Baghdad?" 

GEN Powell was right in the costs involved, but costs alone shouldn't dictate our strategy.  I don't know whether Iraq was worth it or not – history will judge that – but I do know that our security doesn't rest on what we'd like to do.  It rests on what we may be called on to do.  9/11 itself is proof of that.  Outside of SOCOM, nobody in the Department of Defense was looking at sub-state entities as a national threat.  Today is almost like Vietnam and Colin Powell all over again.  We slog it out for ten years in two hard-fought insurgencies and decide we don't like doing that.  So we won't do that.  Unfortunately, the enemy has a vote.  Saying we won't do stability operations is ridiculous.  We may not like them, but the alternative is worse.  Failed nation-states alone would be bad enough, but now, coupled with the terrorist threat that leverages such environments, it makes the strategy self-defeating.  I completely understand the abhorrence of stability and support operations.  They're nebulous, messy, and absolutely draining.  I've never liked them, and have never found any other military man who did, but we don't get to pick the fight.  There won't always be a big tank battalion to strike. 

To that end, the wording of the strategy is at odds with itself.  It's as if we understand the hazards, but don't really want to face them.  In the actual document, the first mission listed is Counter-terrorism and Irregular Warfare, and yet irregular warfare, by definition, is a stability operation.  The document goes on to say: Achieving our core goal of disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al-Qa'ida and preventing Afghanistan from ever being a safe haven again will be central to this effort.  Huh?  How are you going to prevent Afghanistan from being a safe-haven?  Cyber-warfare?

Leon Panetta stated we were "obviously facing 21st century threats",  like we should forget about humans and begin planning for Klingon invasions, yet the two largest threats on the horizon, outside of terrorism, are North Korea and Iran – threats that have been around for decades.  What's 21st century about that? 

 Holistically, the strategy implies that we will counter aggression, but won't take it to its natural conclusion should that be necessary.  We'll push North Korea back, should they attack, but won't continue on – because that would entail a follow-on stability operation.  The strategy itself states our forces…will be capable of denying the objectives of – or imposing unacceptable costs on – an opportunistic aggressor…  Read that closely.  It's basically stating we'll get them to quit, then call it victory. 

In the end, I'm not making a judgment on the strategy.  The fact is that we are in a financial crisis, and cannot sustain the defense spending we currently maintain.  Along with that, we're still going to have the force structure we had prior to 9/11, which nobody seemed to think was shallow back then.  I'm confident that we can, and will, be able to confront whatever threat presents itself.  What concerns me most is what happens after major combat operations are over – or worse the loss of preventing major combat operations because we refuse to conduct stability missions.  Are we really going to throw out that option until the blister becomes gangrenous, forcing a "short, sharp" war?  

 While paying lip-service to Stability and Counter-insurgency operations, what the strategy is really doing is telling the leadership to forget about such missions.  In so doing, we risk losing the very lessons learned through ten years of fighting – just like we did after Vietnam. We may never have to do nation building, counter-insurgency, or stability and support operations ever again, and that would be fine with me, but I think it's myopic to believe it.  The world is full of flash-points that may suck us in, regardless of our perceived national interests, such as Bosnia in the 90s.  Obama considered sending troops to Darfur, Sudan because of the genocide, and at this very moment, US troops are in Uganda helping combat the Lords Resistance Army.  It's a minimal deployment right now, but what if it expands into the dreaded "Stability Operation"? 

 When that happens, I don't want to pay for old lessons with new American blood.

Holy Moly! We lost a drone in Iran!

When we lost a drone to Iran the other day, I thought, "Wow.  Someone is in trouble."  What I didn't think was, "Wow.  It's the end of the world.  Now Iran has our most top-secret information."  I wouldn't even blog about this, because it's really a non-issue, but then a drone crashed in the Seychelles islands doing work over Somalia, and the next thing you hear is that OUR ENTIRE DRONE INFRASTRUCTURE IS IN DANGER.  Really?  Come on.  Drones are made for one thing:  Disposable intelligence.

Yes, we lost a drone in Iran, but it's not that big of a deal.  Yes, it's a semi-stealth drone, and yes, it had a lot of high-grade optics on board, but it's a DRONE.  We built the thing knowing we would eventually lose one.  We did not build it with our most precious secrets, then set it free wondering what we would do when it lost contact with its ground station.  Which happens all the damn time.  We lose drones on a regular basis.  Here's a database of such losses from official reports.  It happens frequently.  I saw it happen innumerable times in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It's just the price of doing business.  So, given that history, there's no way we would implant our most top-secret capability in a drone.

The biggest issue with the loss to Iran is whether it simply lost contact with its ground station (which happens more times than we like to admit), or whether Iran had the capability to hack our systems, given our encryption.  A lot of folks are talking about that right now, and maybe they're right, but I think not.  The evidence used is a specific group highjacking the downlink from the video – back when we didn't encrypt the downlink – and now applying that to the flight mechanics.   Yes, there have been some groups that have been able to steal the downlink of the feed – before we began encrypting it – but that's a world apart from highjacking the actual controls of the aircraft.  The downlink is nothing more than a signal like anything being used for Dish network on your TV.  It's like seeing the DVD movie in the headrest of a car, but not driving the car itself.  Bad enough, because the enemy was now seeing what we were seeing, but nowhere near as bad as taking control of the drone.

We now encrypt the downlink, and have always encrypted the flight controls, with a cipher that's about as hardened as possible.  I find it hard to believe that the Iranians brought down our drone by taking control of it.  Maybe I'm wrong, and will eat crow in a couple of months, but my vote is it crashed due to a glitch, which anyone who's an RF model pilot will tell you happens all the time.  When a plane loses contact, it goes into glide mode, attempting to land at the nearest opportunity.  This opportunity proved to be a boon to Iran, but it's not a catastrophe to us.

The intel collected on the mission profile is the only thing that would cause me to pause.  Luckily, the intel from the drone is real-time.  It's not taking pictures and storing it for a drop in outer space like the old spy planes.  It's transmitting continuously and being collected by computers at the ground station.  Thus, when the thing came to earth, it had nothing in its storage.  All the Iranians got were some high-speed cameras and a really big remote controlled plane.  The cameras themselves aren't classified, and, while the Iranians might learn something from them, the Chinese probably looked at them and said, "Ours are better."

Because they can't admit that we kick their ass in that arena…

Of course, the administration probably didn't expect the Iranians to find it in the middle of the desert and then display it to the world, but that's the way of things.  In the end, it's just not that big of a deal.

Al Awlaki: The Difference Between War and Peace

The death of Anwar al Awlaki by a predator drone strike last week has sparked a heated debate about the legality of the act. Constitutional bloggers are hysterically claiming that the president has set a precedent of murdering United States citizens without a shred of due process, and even republican candidate Ron Paul has stated that Obama should be impeached for this "assassination".

 The problem with all of these arguments is that they are confusing wartime actions with peacetime law enforcement.  The two are not the same.  Before I continue, I'll say up front that I consider fighting Islamic extremism to be a war.  We have the same intent as any war we have fought in the past, but it's different in character because we now oppose a global sub-state phenomena, not a state we can officially declare war against. I'm not alone in this belief either.  It has been the official U.S. stance since 9/11, which is why the terrorists at GITMO will be tried by military tribunal instead of civilian courts.  If that weren't enough, al Qaida themselves certainly consider it a war, and have said so on numerous occasions.  

Prior to 9/11, we treated all terrorist actions as individual crimes, and in some cases, that was correct, given the circumstances.  In the case of al Qaida, it was not.  The line is not black and white, and I'm not saying we should send the next Timothy McVeigh or D.C. sniper to GITMO in a knee-jerk reaction, but there is a line.  It was easier to discern in World War II, no doubt, but we dealt with such issues even in that era.  In 1942 two German saboteur teams infiltrated America with the intent of destroying U.S. industrial infrastructure.  They were caught by the FBI, and Roosevelt wrangled with the decision of whether to try them in federal or military court.  In the end, he chose a military tribunal, the first on American soil since the Lincoln assassination.  The story itself is fascinating, and if you changed the names and dates, reads almost like a modern day terrorist plot, complete with mistakes and turncoats we see in modern day terrorists that allowed us to unravel the conspiracy. 

One of the arguments made against a claim of wartime powers is precisely that we haven't declared war, thus there is no legal basis for invoking them. Al-Awlaki's death occurred within a state with which we weren't "at war", and is therefore illegal.  This is a little specious, as the constitutional framework for a formal declaration of war is designed for state-on-state violence.  Al Qaida is not a state, and thus it's hard to formally declare war against them in accordance with the constitution.  Congress did recognize the dilemma and drafted a joint resolution shortly after 9/11 that stated,

"That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons." 

It was signed into law on September 14th, 2001, and is the justification that the Obama administration used for targeting al –Awlaki.  (in a shameless plug, it's also what generated the title for my next book, All Necessary Force, out January 17th.  Pre-order now on the link to the right.  Okay, back to the blog.)

Given that we are at war with al Qaida, the rules of engagement change drastically from peace-time law enforcement.  International law states there are two major divisions in conflict:  Combatants and Non-combatants.  The first you may attack at will.  The second you may not attack at all.  The only protection afforded a combatant is if he or she is attempting to surrender, or is physically incapable of fighting – IE wounded or otherwise incapacitated.  Other than that, you can shoot, bomb or stab them all you want.  Note that, in accordance with the law of land warfare, you don't have to afford them the opportunity to surrender.  You just can't attack them after they have stated they wish to do so.  In other words, a soldier doesn't need to scream, "Surrender or I shoot!" on the battlefield.  He simply shoots.  This is why an ambush is a perfectly legitimate tactic, defined by the army as "a surprise attack from a concealed location on a moving or temporarily halted target."  It's also why a drone attack, merely a form of ambush, is also legal – provided the target is a legal combatant.

Herein lies the rub.  What constitutes a "combatant"?  A soldier in uniform is easy, but combatant extends further.  A civilian whose primary job is building tanks is also a combatant.  Simply because he happens to be working does not afford the factory protection as harboring non-combatants.  He's aiding the war effort, and has become a legal target.  Note that the term "civilian" and "non-combatant" are not the same.

This is the crux of the breakdown in the al-Awlaki argument.  Nobody is arguing that al-Awlaki was a good guy.  Nobody states he wasn't helping al Qaida.  Simply that he was a U.S. citizen and therefore should be considered differently from the Taliban we kill in Pakistani drone strikes.  But U.S. citizenship doesn't protect you if you materially conspire to harm our nation.  Period.  It has nothing to do with indictments, the 5th amendment, renouncing citizenship, or any other thin legal wrangling.  It is what it is.  In a time of war, if you choose to help the enemy, you become a combatant.  You are afforded the same protections as any other combatant, namely that you'll be treated well when you surrender, but you don't get extra protection simply because you had the good fortune to be born on American soil.  Once again, World War II provides an example.  There are multiple instances where U.S. citizens of German heritage fought against the United States.  At least eight were killed on the battlefield fighting for the Waffen SS.  None were given special consideration because of their citizenship.  At the furthest extreme of the argument, Lincoln should have been impeached immediately at the conclusion of the Civil War because he had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens.  Not a one of them were afforded "due process" or charged with a crime.

One variation of the "good guy" argument is that al Awlaki was simply proselytizing, and while his statements were harmful to the United States, as an American citizen, his speech was protected by the first amendment.  While I find that argument extremely naïve, once again, there is precedent in WWII.  Mildred Elizabeth Gillars was an American citizen of German descent.  She was known as "Axis Sally", and broadcast propaganda on the radio in the European theater of operations.  She was arrested after the war and convicted of treason.  But why?  Surely she was protected by the first amendment!  Nope.  The court found she had materially aided the enemy, and had become a combatant.  Just like al Awlaki.  It was just her good luck she wasn't killed during the fighting.

One issue that has generated a lot of attention is the so-called "kill list" that exists.  To read Reuters explanation, one would think there's a secret cabal of men, hidden in the shadows deep in a back room of Old Executive Office building, unaccountable to the legislative branch, and selecting targets for execution.  Hey!  It's the Oversight Council!  I knew those bastards existed!  Guess I can't write about them anymore as fiction, since it's now come to light. 

Not really.  In fact, the "targeting list" is simply an extension of the argument above.  Determining combatants in state-on-state violence is fairly easy.  Against a sub-state threat, precisely because the enemy hides within the non-combatant community, using the protections afforded non-combatants, it's much harder to determine.  This is where the "secretive" targeting list comes in.  It's not a "kill" list.  It's simply a collection of designated combatants.  The analysts aren't trying to determine if someone "deserves to die".  They're simply trying to determine if Abu X is a terrorist or not.  When the preponderance of evidence shows he's aiding al Qaida, he becomes a combatant, and is added to the list. 

Far from being a bad thing, the list is a very, very good thing, as its existence shows how far the United States goes to protect non-combatants.  That secretive cabal of men isn't deciding who gets to die.  They're actually there as a check to ensure the guy is a combatant before he's put on the list.  They want to see the proof, even after about 8,000 CIA, FBI, and DIA workers have analyzed it.  If the evidence measures up, the man becomes a legal combatant. As such, he may be attacked in any manner that's legal by international law, including drone strikes.  Make no mistake, however, we would much, much rather capture the terrorist than kill him outright, precisely because the data-base is chock-full of facebook like blank pictures, where we know someone's doing operational work, but we don't know who that is.  A captured terrorist helps fill in the blanks, putting more names against the faces.

In the end, there's no doubt al-Awlaki was materially helping al Qaida, from 9/11 to the underwear bomber.  He was a legal combatant, and he was legally killed.  Would we have preferred to capture him?  Of course, but that was impossible given the operating environment.  The call was a good one, and it was not a precursor of the future "murder" of U.S. citizens.   You don't need to worry about predator drones circling your house, unless your house is a mud-hut in Somalia and your planning on blowing up a U.S. embassy.

Never Forget – Never Again.

            I was watching a 9/11 memorial program yesterday, and found I couldn't stand to see the images.  It just makes me angry and awakens emotions I'd rather leave alone.  Ten years ago today the trajectory of my life changed forever, as did the lives of just about every single person I know.  I'm sure it's the same for anyone reading this post.  I remember that day very well.  I was on alert status and doing some ordinary prep for training.  I remember walking through the squadron bay and seeing a couple guys staring at the TV.  They said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.  I had little time to waste, and went about my day.  The next time I came through the bay, a crowd of thirty had gathered, and I found out that incredibly another plane had hit the second tower of the World Trade Center.  I watched as long as I could, finally pulling myself away to finish preparations for training downrange. 

            A short time later, my radio squawked.  I was told to get back to the squadron immediately—that a third plane had hit the pentagon—and training was over.  At the time, I didn't understand the double entendre of those words, but I would soon. 

            I spent close to a decade in one war zone or another on multiple deployments, missing anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas, school plays and everything else my family was doing.  I've lost friends and had other friends horribly wounded. Through it all, I have never forgotten why we were fighting.

            "Never forget" is often stenciled on anything related to 9/11, and I completely agree, but to me, it's a double-edged sword.  We should remember not only the sacrifice of the innocent civilians who lost their lives that day, but also what factors brought the abomination to American shores, both in the enemy that attacked us and the complacency that allowed the attack to occur.  In my mind, one man's journey encapsulates both.

            FBI special agent, John P. O'Neill, was tasked with bringing the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to justice.  Eventually, he captured the mastermind of the attack, Ramsi Yousef, in Pakistan, bringing him to trial in the United States.  Throughout that case, he began to believe there was a growing strategic threat.  Nobody wanted to listen.  He investigated the Khobar Towers bombing (June 25, 1996), and the attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (August 7, 1998), and became convinced that a group nobody had heard of, known as al Qaeda, was to blame. 

            The government was treating the attacks as random acts of terrorism—disparate actions with no connection to each other.  Nobody listened to special agent O'Neill.  He became a zealot, and while respected for his knowledge, was never taken seriously.  After the USS Cole was attacked in Yemen in 2000, he became shrill, begging anyone to take the threat seriously.  Put in charge of the investigation, he traveled to Yemen, intent on breaking the al Qaeda cell that conducted the attack.  He was rebuffed by the state department and eventually recalled because of his "insensitivity" to the relations with the Yemeni government.  Nobody believed a sub-state organization had the ability to conduct such synchronized attacks. 

            Convinced al Qaeda had both the will and the capability to attack the U.S. homeland – convinced that not only did they want to do so, but were actively planning the event – he did his best to get the giant U.S. bureaucracy on board, but failed. Sick of beating his head against the wall, he decided to retire from the FBI.  At the end of August, 2001, he took a cush job as the head of security for two large skyscrapers in New York City, known collectively as the World Trade Center.  Shortly after he began his new job, on September 11, 2001, he was killed evacuating civilians from Tower II. 

            His journey had come full circle.  Ramsi Yousef, the architect of the first WTC attack whom he had tracked down and captured, has an uncle.  His name is Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and he is the architect of 9/11.

            The term "never forget" means more to me than the memory of the sacrifice of that day.  It means remembering the complacency that allowed the attack to occur, and the hubris of our own strength and security. 

            Make no mistake; the threat is still out there. Ten years later, there are plenty of people who scoff at the thought of terrorists attacking the United States again.  Who like nothing more than to castigate any attempt at protecting American lives, but most have little to no understanding of the tragedy that is 9/11.  Charles Baudelaire said, "The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist."  And that's exactly what those blind people try to press on the rest of us, complaining of costs both real and imagined in dollars and civil liberties.

            The civil liberties of a Pakistani green-card holder who shouts allahu ahkbar in a radical mosque would not be the top agenda had they been clinging on the outside of the North Tower, the flames licking out, the metal getting hotter and hotter until it begins to blister their hands.  Looking left and right desperately searching for some means of rescue, some miracle.  Finally looking down from the dizzying height—and letting go. 

            The idealists, like the bureaucracy before 9/11, want to believe Islamic fanaticism is dead with Osama bin Laden, but wanting it doesn't make it so.

            In my heart, I believe that if you could talk to any of the nearly 3,000 innocent people who died that day, their fervent wish would be "Don't let this happen again."  I know that's what John P. O'Neill would say. 

            Memorializing the lives of those in the WTC, the Pentagon, and on Flight 93 is important, and something that should occur every single day, but coupled with those thoughts should be the determination to prevent such tragedies in the future.  

            In my mind, the slogan should be "Never Forget.  Never Again."

Five fallacies of Oslo

   It's been five days since the horrific attacks in Oslo, Norway, and I've been amazed at the speculation and misinformation being reported on the tragedy.  After reading yet another article full of poor terrorism analysis, I decided to write a blog on the top five fallacies being reported by the media, either out of ignorance or because they want to advance a particular agenda.  I'll leave it up to you to decide which.

   First, though, a caveat:  I wasn't in Oslo on that day, have never met the killer, and am forced to use the very news reports I'm chastising as my source of information.  Thus, some of these fallacies may shift over time as more information becomes available.  For instance, first reports were that 16 people had been killed. This jumped to 93 within two days, then settled back to 68 after four days.

1.  Anders Behring Breivik is a European Timothy McVeigh – a Christian Terrorist.  This comparison is all over the news, and flat out wrong.  "Experts" take the circumstantial similarities, then make the logical fallacy that they're the same.  Saying Breivik is like McVeigh because they both used a fertilizer bomb is the same as saying an obstetrician is like Charles Manson because they both use knives on pregnant women.  Terrorism is defined by the intent, not the method.  Or the religion, for that matter. 

McVeigh, while coincidentally having been born into a Christian family like Breivik, in no way used religion for any impetus in his attack.  The only religious connection in the Oklahoma bombing was the fact that McVeigh was angered at how the federal government had "slaughtered" the people in Waco, Texas at the Branch Davidian compound– a religious cult.  Conversely, Breivik expressly claimed to be a member of a new "Knights Templar", a reference to the Christian warriors tasked with reclaiming and defending the holy land during the crusades – and the target of his rage was specifically another religion: Islam.  Breivik and McVeigh are not the same animal at all.  And yet the "experts" will continue to beat this dead comparison forever.

2.  This wasn't an act of terrorism. It was just the action of a deranged lone wolf lunatic.  Whether or not Breivik was a lone wolf remains to be seen, but make no mistake, he IS a terrorist. Brian Jenkins, a true terrorism expert, once said, "Terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead."  This pretty much sums up Breivik's motivations. He wanted the press from the attack as a springboard to publicize his views on Muslim immigration. Exactly like the PLO hijacking of aircraft in the 1960s. In fact, his manifesto is remarkably similar to Osama bin Laden's 1996 fatwa against the United States, the primary difference being that his is about a thousand times longer.  Replace "Muslim" with "Infidel" in his diatribe, and you have a picture perfect al Qaida propaganda tool.  Al Qaida wants western "infidels" out of the Middle East – and Breivik wants Muslim immigrants out of Europe.  In truth, Breivik is more like OBL than McVeigh. 

Honestly, I can't say whether he's insane or not, but I find it actually racially insensitive to call him so.  Why is it when a Caucasian westerner conducts a heinous act, he's automatically insane, but when an Arab conducts the same act, it's just expected?  I don't think I've ever heard a single person claim that Osama bin Laden was certifiably insane, or that Zawahiri is a genuine psychopath, yet Breivik MUST be one.  If I were Arabic, I'd take affront at the statement.

3.  We're focusing on the wrong problem.  We need to forget about Islamic terrorism and start focusing on domestic right-wing threats.  While there is a threat from domestic groups, it in no way eclipses the threat posed by Islamic terrorism.  To say this is to completely ignore the facts. The National Counterterrorist Center report on Terrorism (2009, the latest report available) shows that Islamic Terrorism accounts for the overwhelming majority of deaths, worldwide. 

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People with their head in the sand gleefully excoriated news organizations who originally stated Oslo was perpetrated by an Islamic terrorist while missing the very reason they thought it: Historically that's exactly who committed such actions.  It's not islamophobia that causes the press and public to jump to this conclusion.  It's simply past history. Yes, domestic threats do exist, and should be addressed, but in context with their potential for occurring.  Islamic terrorism is still the number one threat, and a single attack in Oslo shouldn't change our counter-terrorism focus no matter how good it would make us feel.

4.  The right-wing bloggers caused Breivik to explode.  Like the insanity argument, I find this a little racially insensitive.  When people discuss the roots of Islamic terrorism, it's usually because of poverty, repressive governments, or a lack of opportunity.  But when we discuss Oslo, it can't be because of any concrete problem set.  It must be because of brain-washing propaganda.  While Breivik's actions were monstrous, they came from a real concern:  The encroachment of one culture on another.  IN NO WAY am I taking a stand on this issue one way or the other, but it IS an issue.  So much so that I actually included it in ONE ROUGH MAN when Bakr and Sayyid flee to Oslo, which was written over three years ago. I didn't write that because I frequent right-wing blogs, but because I had seen the issue first-hand while traveling around Europe.

In 1993, Samuel Huntington wrote an article called "Clash of Civilizations" in which he stated that future conflict won't be based on the nation-state, but on the boundaries of civilizations.  This is proving true in Europe.  You can say it's all hysteria fanned by loons on the internet, but that doesn't alter the facts.  The problem set is real, as France found out in 2005, and we shouldn't use right-wing bloggers as a foil to hide that fact.

5.  Breviek used explosive bullets.  This one doesn't have a lot of heavy implications, but it aggravates me nonetheless. Why is it that a sports reporter can know every little fact about football, but nobody that reports on terrorism knows a damn thing about weapons or explosives?  It's ridiculous.  The following is a quote straight from the Associated Press

"Ballistics experts say the so-called "dum-dum" bullets also are lighter in weight and can be fired with greater accuracy over varying distances. They commonly are used by air marshals and hunters of small animals. Such characteristics potentially would have allowed the gunman to carry more ammunition and fire his weapons at varying targets without adjusting his sights."

They don't explode, you jackass!  They're common, ordinary hollowpoints!  The microscopic amount of weight saved would allow the guy to carry maybe one extra bullet, and the "dum-dum" characteristic has nothing to do with the ability to "fire his weapon at varying targets without adjusting his sights".  Spare me.  I have neither the time nor energy to discuss how ignorant this paragraph is, but it does show a complete lack of understanding about basic ballistics, which in turn shows absolute laziness on the part of journalists covering a topic that deserves a little expertise.  And I didn't single out a specific report.  Just Google "Oslo Dum Dum bullets" and you'll get a plethora of idiotic articles.  If the sports reporter can spontaneously tell you all there is to know about a baseball player's equipment, the terrorism reporter should be able to do the same.