Since both US surgeons and military train extensively online-STRATFOR is, as usual, wrong. B
_____ From: INTELTEK Sent: Friday, December 21, 2007 3:25 AM To: Beowulf Subject: Re: Terrorists cannot train online It is absolutely no exaggeration to say that I only found one report from STRATFOR that I could even nominally agree with. I had a former Navy aircraft carrier skipper send me stuff from them on a regular basis and he finally gave up sending them to me after I sent back a critique virtually ripping them apart in every report. Hopefully, it was because he stopped subscribing to them and not that he just got tired of the rips, but their so-called "intel" really IS that bad. In 1999, shortly before NATO went into Kosovo with the allied air campaign known as Op ALLIED FORCE, they did an order of battle on the Serbs and not only was much of it wrong and outdated, but there was no order or organization to the thing. If I had been on active duty and received garbage like that, I would have tracked down the author of that report and had him or her either re-trained or re-assigned out of intel. It was so bad that, at one point, I sent these guys a resume before reading one of their really hosed reports, and I even went so far as to retract the resume. I didn't want to have any association with these guys at all. As for their assertions below about bomb-making, perhaps they should ask a few teenagers, including the two Columbine killers, about how much you can learn from the internet and from trial and error. No, just reading on the internet is not going to make you a skilled perfectionist but you follow the instructions, do some tests and refine from the results. The key thing that they are missing here is what a dedicated enemy can accomplish when he has to use alternative techniques. STRATFOR seems to be listening to the haughty views of a few EOD types--perhaps among their staff or their circle of associates--who would naturally prefer to assume that the only good skills are those learned in specialized courses in high-tech Western-style training environments. Nobody is as good, so nobody can be proficient unless they go through the elite schools. This elitist, arrogant attitude is precisely why we so often under-estimate our enemies and have in so many conflicts throughout our history. If you don't do it our way, then it just isn't any good and doesn't have any value. It really stings the ego to assume that somebody can be just as good at blowing things up without going through the fancy school that you had to sweat through, so, naturally, you have to sneer at what they might have accomplished or it just might mean that your own credentials aren't so impressive, after all. I once found a search-and-rescue site in a foreign country, at a remote location, using a technique that the book and all of the "experts" said couldn't be done. No, it COULD be done but it hadn't been done before because nobody had the need to do it before. Our enemies often accomplish a lot with a lot less than we have, simply because they need to. STRATFOR still has not awakened to the concept that our enemies are not like us. They do things differently. Until they get that mindset changed, they will never predict what the enemy is going to do or understand how he does it. As for that last laughable assertion that you can track all terrorists online, OK, then why haven't we rounded them all up and shut them all down already? These guys are hopeless. My guess? There entire staff is composed of ex-officers. They're impressed by rank, not skill. Ron ----- Original Message ----- From: Beowulf <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; Intelligence History <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ; [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2007 9:17 AM Subject: Terrorists cannot train online Stratfor is simply short-sided, narrow-minded and wrong. Maybe they can't train on line or learn anything from reading...many others don't suffer such limitations. B http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Emerging_Threats/Briefing/2007/12/ 19 /report_terrorists_cannot_train_online/1464/ Report: Terrorists cannot train online Published: Dec. 19, 2007 at 8:40 AM WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- The Internet is useful to Islamic terror groups for propaganda and recruitment, but it cannot be used for terrorist military training, says a U.S. report. The Austin, Texas-based private sector intelligence company Stratfor says in an analysis that some experts overstate the importance of the Internet. "Although the Internet has been a great enabler for grassroots (terrorist) cells to spread their ideology and recruit new acolytes, some things are incredibly difficult to accomplish online -- namely, absorbing the technical information and tradecraft of terrorism and applying it to a real-world situation, particularly in a hostile environment," reads the analysis, published last week. "The application of technical skills (bomb-making, targeting, and deployment) often requires subtle and complex abilities that one cannot perfect simply by reading about them," says the analysis, adding it is "quite difficult to follow written instructions and build a perfectly functioning improvised explosive device from scratch; as with any scientific endeavor, trial and error and testing in the real world usually are required. "Bomb-making is a talent best learned from an experienced teacher," it concludes. The analysis adds that "tradecraft -- those intuitive skills needed to sustain secrecy and operations in a hostile environment" -- is another set of skills hard to acquire online. It concludes by pointing out that terrorist use of the Internet "is an operational security hazard that can allow counter-terrorism forces to identify potential militants and close in on them." [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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