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November 23, 2004
No One Seems to Understand Security
Note: this is a post recovered from my old blog, before it died of an insufficient backup. Any comments/trackbacks on it have not been brought over, but can be seen with the original. The date is that of the original posting.
\"\;In this case, the security lapse is good for us, since it was on our enemy's part. Winds of Change points to a slideshow on some of the things we found in Falluja during and after the recent battle there.
This slide in particular interested me. In one of the IED factories, we found a GPS unit that had clearly been used to guide enemy fighters from Western Syria (a whole other topic in and of itself!) through Iraq to Falluja. The GPS had not had its waypoints cleared (which is how we know where they went). How much do you want to bet that those waypoints are mostly safe houses?
Well, they're burned now, and that route is under surveillance. Best part is, since there are likely multiple routes, and the enemy doesn't know which route we've burned, they'll likely keep using them. If not, they have to get a whole new set of safe houses - not trivial in the first place, and particularly not now, with the Iraqi and US troops on the offensive throughout the Sunni Triangle. So we can surveil this route (and others we've uncovered) and begin to take apart the networks using it in ways that don't give away what routes we might have discovered.
This makes me very, very happy.
Would we have the technology to plant programmed GPS units as a trap, I wonder?
Posted by: kate on November 26, 2004 07:44 AMIt's not technology but trust that's at issue. I suspect that the terrorists would not just accept any random GPS device with pre-programmed waypoints, but would have to get it from someone they trust. If we have human agents in the upstream organization (which I hope we are at least trying to develop), we might be able to do so.
That kinda reaks of PR BS to me. I mean every discovery was made by 'Iraqi Security Forces supported by Multi-National Forces'.
Who were the multi-national forces operating in Faluja, afaik it was only the US. How did the US fail to find ANYTHING? And if it is a PR stunt what makes you think any of the other text would be anymore accurate?
Of course there's a certain BS factor: it's called politics. After all, we are fighting an insurgency of the old Ba'athists in combination with foreign terrorists, which is an inherently political act. The enemy is certainly using the media as a weapon, and we have to at least be prepared to not give them any extra advantage in that arena.
That said, the British were also involved in Falluja (though not within the city itself). Also, MNF is the umbrella term for the coalition, and it is coalition troops (or MNF troops) operating even if only one country's troops are involved. Any time the MNF troops are operating with Iraqis, the wording seems to be that the MNF troops are supporting the Iraqis, which is politically pleasant (and strategically correct, in that we are trying to turn over control of their country to them after all) if not tactically accurate.
Then again, there's also this: http://instalawyer.blogspot.com/2004_11_28_instalawyer_archive.html#110176644284663469
The Iraqi forces were doing the exploitation after US Marines and soldiers had passed through killing the enemy, so the Iraqis would have actually searched and catalogued most of the sites.