Is Syria the Target

Quite interesting and should be taken seriously since Israeli intelligence is generally quite good. It may indeed have been al-Qaeda in concert with others without the direct masterminding by bin-Laden.


Just more reason to take out the other major terrorists of the world, IMO, as well as bin-Laden.

Oy... where to start.


Al-Qaeda is not an Afghani, Pakistani, Libyan, Iraqi or any other national organization. Osama bin Laden is from Saudi Arabia, his most likely successor, Ayman Al Zawahiri, is Egyptian. Al-Qaeda has documentable links to training camps or trained personnel from groups ranging from the survivors of Black September to Hezbollah to random groups of barely organized militants in half the Arab nations on the planet.


The Taliban is not a terrorist organization, they are a fundamentalist Islamic political organization who has managed to take power in a nation that is considered by many Arabs to be the sphincter of all of Islam. Providing a coordinated and unified appearance in Afghanistan after the Soviet war was essentially all that was needed to develop a tremendous power base there. The Taliban has connections with as many, if not more, organizations than Al Qaeda. Among them are Libya, Syria and Iraq on a formal governmental basis.


Is Syria the target? Kind of. As are Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, Palestine, Egypt and some areas in south Los Angeles.


Unlike the Gulf War, we don't have accurate intelligence with which to prosecute the war. We can't look at photos from an SR-70 overflight and see that a brigade has moved into a particular valley. We're seeking small groups of dedicated individuals who are capable of living throughout the Arabic speaking world. Afghanistan is a logical first target because we do have adequate intelligence that the Taliban there has provided direct support to Al-Qaeda.


This will be a tactical war driven by an overall consolidating strategy. It will never be a purely strategic war as was the Gulf War. Once the overall theme is set, deal with terrorism, then the war will be fought out in individual combat events throughout the world to achieve that goal. The strategies are completely social and political; they will never be so simple as, "Prevent the North Vietnamese from gaining power in South Vietnam." We have a global environment where our strategic objectives can't be met in a single theater of combat.


It's been said that the best way to fight someone is to, "Hit 'em where they ain't." This is simply wrong. We have to resort to the basic concepts of combat that have existed since man first picked up a rock and smacked his fellow man. We have to find him, we have to fix him and then we have to kill him. Our advantage lies in the last two. If we know where they are, we can keep them from getting away, fix them, this is fairly certain. Once they're fixed, we can kill them, this is definite. Our difficulty lies in finding them.


Let's imagine we get lucky and one of the Delta teams on the ground in Pakistan gets ridiculously lucky. They physically see Osama bin Laden climbing into the back of a truck and drive away. They're in a position to effectively engage and destroy the truck and bring back incontrovertible evidence of bin Laden's death. Now where is Al Zawahiri? What about the lesser known organizations that are likely ready to step into Al-Qaeda's place the moment it becomes destabilized?


Is Syria the target? No, Syria is a very likely location for some of the targets. Many people are making a grave mistake in thinking that we are going to war against Afghanistan and this will solve the problems. Others think dealing with the Syrians will somehow resolve the situation. Still others think that the death of Arafat would do it.


To put it into a poker analogy, we're entering a Hold'em tournament where we're only allowed to see our own cards and chips. Everyone else is hidden by a cloth veil so we're never really sure who they are or how big their stack is. The tables represent the various nations that support the terrorists. Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, etc. The US/NATO/Etc, have the chip lead. Unfortunately we can't see which of the other players have half our chips and which only have 1/20th. Finally, to add a thrill to it all, the players can move between the various tables without notifying the tourney director. And all of the other players are allowed to exchange chips, pool them, hide them or keep them in their pockets until after the tourney is over.


Jeff James

Check it out, if you wanna do business with 'em!..

That's Osama's family, alright, who own one of the biggest conglomerates in the Kingdom. Ignore the English spelling.


The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, that is... Which is, last time I checked, one of the "few, true solid supporters of the United States in the Gulf", per the State Department flunky.


Now, remind me, M, which are the three (sorry, it's now two!) countries in the world that recognize such medieval regimes as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Taliban gov't of Afghanistan? One is Pakistan.