I keep an eye on the milblogs, kind of a war nerd myself. The rumors are overlapping but seem to be a combination of means allowing targeted assassinations involving SEAL Team 6, Delta & SAS primarily in Baghdad. And yes, Team 6 was specified to the exclusion of other SEAL teams. The big thing was electronic surveillance combined with, seriously now, invisibility.

I am not kidding on that. Apparently invisibility cloak style tech allowed teams to get close enough to identify targets, observe them, and then drop them.

Who knows if that's for reals, it just what I heard talked about around DangerRoom, abu muqawama and such.

Last edited by orangeplus (2008-09-09 11:16:13)

George Orr wrote:

I'm mostly just amazed (and a bit perturbed) that this administration of incompetents can keep anything "secret" for any length of time.

Maybe it's time to look beyond Jon Steward and the Daily Kos for your news of the war on terror.

You shouldn't on this one. It was a better media play for them to claim "The Surge" was the reason everything chilled out. The real reason was the implosion of Al Queda of Iraq and the "Sunni Awakening". Since they had nothing to do with #2 and #1 sounds suspiciously like the Phoenix Program which generated no end to bad press after Vietnam, it was better for them to go with the simpler "Gen. Patreus cowed the towelheads with his girthy surge" narrative.

Last edited by orangeplus (2008-09-09 11:56:17)

orangeplus wrote:

The big thing was electronic surveillance combined with, seriously now, invisibility.

I am not kidding on that. Apparently invisibility cloak style tech allowed teams to get close enough to identify targets, observe them, and then drop them.

Who knows if that's for reals, it just what I heard talked about around DangerRoom, abu muqawama and such.

The key to invisibility is that it is in the eye of the beholder.

From all that I know about the tech and technique it is not neccesarily that you are invisible in all objective circumstances or enviorments but you fall within the blind spots of your observers.

Do you have any links O+? I would like to see what they were referring to.

As I always explain to clients when working on radar and optical recognition systems: This tech is very good at showing you what it can see. But that is not the same as showing you what is actually there. Woe be to you that are lulled into complacency. It provides scant information on what it cannot discern.

Outside of work I have some naturalist friends who can teach you that invisibility is not an esoteric concept. They distilled various stalking and observation techniques that they teach to hunters, biologists, SAR and others.  They also attract a number of military. Over a period of time I got to know some Seals who work as trainers. They studied under my friends and evaluated the methods for intergration in their programs. While they found some benefits  they said that these stalking methods which require immersion in the local enviorment require time that their missions do not usually afford. 

On the other hand,  at a shooting competitiion in an event in evasion, concealment and stalking attended by combat experienced special ops types, a 17 year old girl, a student intern of ours, beat them all. They were a bit stunned that not only did she outwit them and complete the course, but that she was able to both locate their wherabouts so easily and sneak up on them undetected.

Last edited by Johnny_Rotten (2008-09-09 14:47:38)

I can't find the invisibility stuff (perhaps on Shield of Achilles blog) but here's what DangerRoom is saying today:

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/09/w … .html#more

George Orr wrote:

phreddy wrote:

George Orr wrote:

I'm mostly just amazed (and a bit perturbed) that this administration of incompetents can keep anything "secret" for any length of time.

Maybe it's time to look beyond Jon Steward and the Daily Kos for your news of the war on terror.

I honestly have no idea what you mean by that. 

How it is a response to the statement of mine that you quoted?  Do you mean to say that the Bush Administration can keep secrets?  If so, how would we know that?  Or do you mean that the Administration doesn't keep secrets?  (I'd love to hear your argument in support, if so.)  Or what the hell do you mean?

Sorry Georgi, I've just been amazed at the swill and vitriol that has been spewed lately by the far left.  You are a reasonable person and deserve a more thoughtful reply.  My point is that those of us who believe the Bush/Petraeus approach to this situation has been working for the past year and a half are not at all surprised that they developed a broad set of effective strategy for this war.  Those who listen only to left wing propaganda news about the war are prone to dismiss every move as incompetent and ineffective.  It's the same attitude that leaves them dumbfounded when conservatives win elections.

Georgi wrote:

My loathing for the current administration is well known.

Hopefully this won't get in the way of your judgment regarding our aggressive treatment of terrorism.  Although they were largely ineffective, even Clinton and Carter made military attempts to respond to terrorists acts.

phreddy wrote:

My point is that those of us who believe the Bush/Petraeus approach to this situation has been working for the past year and a half are not at all surprised that they developed a broad set of effective strategy for this war.  Those who listen only to left wing propaganda news about the war are prone to dismiss every move as incompetent and ineffective.  It's the same attitude that leaves them dumbfounded when conservatives win elections.

There are a lot of factors that came into play. 

The "Anbar Awakening" was an organic movement of Sunni tribal leaders that decided to stop Sunni-on-Sunni violence and once they started to organize we started paying them not to fight us.  We're still paying them.

Muqtada al-Sadr's militia was on a self-imposed ceasefire during most of the surge.

There are hundreds of thousands of displaced refugees from Iraq that we're not doing anything about, but a lot of these were part of ethnic cleansing in neighborhoods that had always been mixed Sunni/Shia, and in the end the neighborhoods are now segregated, so that decreased Sunni-on-Shia (and vice versa) by both decreasing the population and increasing the physical distance between them.

Of course the increased troop presence also helped crack down on the violence.

There's just one problem:

The SURGE! wasn't supposed to decrease violence in order to make the streets safer.

The SURGE! was supposed to decrease violence in order to "give them breathing room" in order to make it possible for reconciliation between the different factions in the government to happen.  Only that didn't happen, and there was no reason to believe that it would.  The SURGE! didn't fix anything.  It just delayed the inevitable while straining our military even more.

Do you realize that there's been another outbreak of Cholera in Baghdad this week?  Fucking Cholera!  Nobody gets Cholera.  You know why it's so prevalent in Baghdad?  Because they still don't have drinkable water.  They still don't have electricity a lot of the time, either.

Nothing's fixed.  Iraq is still a clusterfuck.  Face it; the SURGE! failed.


Oh, and FYI after the 8000 troops come home in February we'll still have more troops in Iraq than we had before the SURGE!, so obviously the SURGE! didn't work or it would be over.

Last edited by tojo2000 (2008-09-09 23:35:46)

http://xmb.stuffucanuse.com/xmb/viewthread.php?tid=5537

Scotty wrote:

WRT to in visibility:

There are nanotechnologies exploring defracting light and using camera technology to reflect the environment from all sides being explored.  I wouldn't doubt the government has BDUs employing these fibers/materials/tech already.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080811/ap_ … lity_cloak

Invisibility is a misleading term, camouflage is a must better description.  The point is to mislead the observer.

pALEPHx wrote:

http://www.enter.net.pl/www/pic/02/IntelInside.jpg

What happened to the cross-eyed one on the right?

tojo2000 wrote:

pALEPHx wrote:

http://www.enter.net.pl/www/pic/02/IntelInside.jpg

What happened to the cross-eyed one on the right?

I knew someone would notice her fetching and comely visage.

These are the products of an "intel inside" image search on AllTheWeb.com (a Ya-whore product). Their pure absurdism was meant to disturb the fragile ice of this particular pond. Pay them no mind anymore... (unless you wish to challenge the actual military clearance of various HS members, which--on the surface--appears to either be quite high, or they all have purview to the same internet resources that the average McDonald's employee does)

phreddy wrote:

Georgi wrote:

My loathing for the current administration is well known.

Hopefully this won't get in the way of your judgment regarding our aggressive treatment of terrorism.  Although they were largely ineffective, even Clinton and Carter made military attempts to respond to terrorists acts.

Are we talking about killing killers, or are we talking about casting an indiscriminate net to intercept communications, or what? 

It is interesting that you didn't throw Reagan into your list of ineffectual users of force.  Couldn't be bias, could it? 

I like the combination of threads woven here, assassination, invisibility, strabismus, etc.  By the way, I hear DOD has big r&d money in ghost shirts.

Last edited by Fled (2008-09-11 09:05:23)

.

Last edited by Johnny_Rotten (2008-09-11 07:31:43)

Fled wrote:

phreddy wrote:

Georgi wrote:

My loathing for the current administration is well known.

Hopefully this won't get in the way of your judgment regarding our aggressive treatment of terrorism.  Although they were largely ineffective, even Clinton and Carter made military attempts to respond to terrorists acts.

Are we talking about killing killers, or are we talking about casting an indiscriminate net to intercept communications, or what? 

It is interesting that you didn't throw Reagan into your list of ineffectual users of force.  Couldn't be bias, could it? 

I like the combination of threads woven here, assassination, invisibility, strabismus, etc.  By the way, I hear DOD has big r&d money in ghost shirts.

The point wasn't so much about ineffectiveness, but rather the bi-partisan efforts to kill terrorists.  This should be our goal regardless of whether you love or hate the current commander-in-chief.

I'm looking forward to finding out exactly what secret method we are using to track and kill these animals.  I'm for including assassinations, communications spying, tagging, and torturing their mothers to find out where they are hiding.  I'm not talking about the ragheads who carry the rifles and fight like men.  I'm talking about the ones who make and direct the plans for indiscriminate bombing of innocents.  As for invisibility, what ever happened to John Edwards?

Phred,

Who was that famous leader from history that said "We can not win this war by killing"? Oh yeah it was some guy named Petraeus.

A lot of those ragheads we now consider men and are putting the very rifles in their arms are the same ones who were keen to slay countless numbers of their fellow citizens along with us.

On the other hand, why should these new found BFFs be treated any different from our old friends. Like the ones on first name basis and former co-investors with the President. Like that Saudi ambasador Bandar fellow who's wife sent personal checks for tens of thousands to the good folks in LA helping the 9/11 hijackers while they were living in America preparing a little indiscriminate blow out.

Last edited by Johnny_Rotten (2008-09-11 17:50:01)

phreddy wrote:

Not sure I follow, however this reminds me of one of my favorite military quotes. 

"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."   George Patton

Sometimes even in your black and white, good vs evil world view it has got to be hard to tell "the ragheads who carry the rifles and fight like men" from "the ones who make and direct the plans for indiscriminate bombing of innocents".

Hersh points out that the current situation is much like that during the conflict in Afghanistan in the 1980's – which gave rise to al Qaeda – with the same people involved in both the US and Saudi Arabia and the "same pattern" of the US using jihadists that the Saudis assure us they can control.

Last edited by Johnny_Rotten (2008-09-11 17:47:27)

Johnny_Rotten wrote:

it has got to be hard to tell[/url] "the ragheads who carry the rifles and fight like men" from "the ones who make and direct the plans for indiscriminate bombing of innocents".

Well, of course you want to kill them all, but not the ones on your side, until they turn against you.  The flux of allegiance is part of any war.  If the rifle toters are captured they get treated as prisoners of war.  The ones who strap bombs onto ignorant kids to kill innocent people should receive a special treatment.