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Tuesday, March 23, 2004 |
 Off to London tomorrow. Light posting until I get set up again. I have a post for tomorrow (Wednesday) that will show up in Global Guerrillas entitled, "What is the optimum size of a Terrorist Organization?" It has some interesting findings.
4:54:25 PM 
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The Guardian: Domestic terrorism worries heat up again:
Krar and Bruey will soon be sentenced to lengthy jail terms, but their capture has revealed a gaping hole in America's war on terror: the home front. The FBI fears that other chemical bombs, built by Krar, may already be in circulation. The case has now sparked the biggest domestic terror investigation since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
The FBI only found out about Krar by accident. He had mailed five fake ID cards, including one for the Pentagon and the UN, to a member of the New Jersey Militia. The cards included a note from Krar with the words: 'We would hate to have this fall into the wrong hands.' But it did, misdelivered to a man in New York who called the police.
(via Matt).
3:08:30 PM
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Question. Someone just asked me this, and it is great idea. Is there software that will help you turn a weblog into a book (at a least a PDF)? Some weblogs are closely covering specific events/topics with great detail and original thought. Being able to turn them into books -- with the chronological order intact, an indexe of images, a table of contents, etc. -- would be very useful.
2:12:10 PM
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WP. This is a great article on the changing nature of the guerrilla war in Iraq. First, it has shifted from Baathist to Islamic radicals:
In the intelligence operations room at the 1st Armored Division's headquarters, wall-mounted charts identifying and linking insurgents depict the changing battlefield. Last fall, the organizational chart of Baathist fighters and leaders stretched for 10 feet, while charts listing known Islamic radicals took up a few pieces of paper. Now, the chart of Iraqi religious extremists dominates the room, while the poster depicting Baathist activity has shrunk to half of its previous size. Smaller diagrams identify what is known about foreign Islamic extremists who have set up operations in the capital. Military officials said evidence and intelligence from informers and interrogations suggest that foreign fighters still constitute a relatively small component of the insurgency.
Second, it appears that these foreign fighters are acting as trusted advisors to the locally grown Islamic guerrilla forces:
The officials believe the foreigners are bringing money, technical expertise and encouragement to get hundreds of Iraqis to plant roadside bombs, assassinate people collaborating with occupation forces and detonate explosive-packed vehicles.
Third, al Qaeda's direct impact is potentially much less than the media/administration is depicting it:
"To think that Zarqawi is organizing all of these car bombings is a little much," said one U.S. intelligence officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He is probably just one of several ringleaders. There is no single organization that's behind all this. It's far more decentralized than that." Another intelligence officer also cast doubt on the role of Zarqawi or bin Laden lieutenants as the chief organizers of the violence. "Are al Qaeda operatives here? Certainly. But are the remnants of al Qaeda directing the attacks here? We don't have clear evidence to suggest that is the case," the officer said. Devan, the 1st Armored's intelligence director, also said the presence of al Qaeda operatives in Iraq was small.
A final point. The distributed network-centric structure of the Islamic radicals in Iraq is much more effective than the hierarchical Baathist guerrilla organization. See more in Global Guerrillas on "Destabilizing Terrorist Networks."
"The Baathists had a clearer structure," he said. "It was easier to know who was in charge. But now, it's a whole new structure -- and it's much tougher to determine who the enemy is."
9:45:23 AM
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AIR Worldwide (PDF whitepaper describing their Web tool) assigns risk metrics to terrorist attacks. This tool appears to be based on assigning probabilities of different types of attacks (conventional to nuclear) on landmark structures (symbolic attacks). For corporate clients, it calculates the potential spill over impact of these attacks on their physical infrastructure (as well as that of their clients and partners). Time magazine contrasts this commercial analysis with the government's politically motivated allocation of anti-terror funds to rural states.
I have provided a little introductory analysis of a different type of attack -- an attack on systems and networks -- in today's Global Guerrillas, the "Economic Impact of Infrastructure Disruption."
9:14:20 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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