Terrorists will no longer be able to hide in Azeroth

We all love DARPA, the Defense science madhouse that has given us the internet, GPS, carnivorous flesh eating robots, and robot cars that can drive themselves through the desert and will rule any Mad Max post-apocalyptic type situation. Soon they'll probably have a self driving car that eats human flesh. They do wonderful work.

But, one might ask, is the intelligence community's equivalent? I know the government is coming up with better ways for robots to dominate and subjugate me, but how are they coming up with better ways to spy on me and, ostensibly, foreign enemies, but mostly me? Ask no further, IARPA has been created.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, said that IARPA's task was to be "an intellectual ferment or primordial stew out of which great things will come." He wants Porter's researchers to "generate revolutionary capabilities that will surprise our adversaries and help us avoid being surprised."
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One program, Reynard, for example, has signed contracts with five research teams, mostly from major universities, to develop systems to observe "avatars" — animated computer images — that take part in popular "virtual world" games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft.
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Another IARPA project, named ICARUS, will attempt to model the way human brains make sense of a bewildering mass of data. The ALADDIN project is meant to pick out key items in the tsunami of video images that spy agencies collect. A program called TRUST will try to help intelligence officers determine who can be trusted and who can't.

There's also ACRONYM, a top secret program to help wean the government off it's addiction to creating arcane word grouping to create a third rate acronym that explains what the project does.

But that's it? A program to analyze whether terrorists are chaining enchantments for peak mana burn in their spell casting and better lie detectors? No mind reading robots? How about a way for Dick Cheney to completely subvert the legal process in order to listen in on people's phone calls? Creating a super-soldier that not only knows Farsi, but isn't gay so the army doesn't have to discharge them? A Aston-Martin with missiles behind the headlights for spies to drive? C'mon, give us something cool to work with, here. DARPA is going to have engineered giant bugs and fusion power suits so humans can fight the giant bugs any week now.

It's OK, you're a new organization and you're just feeling things out. But pick it up, if you aren't coming up with things that bewilder and terrify the populace and have a practical home or consumer electronics application, we'll be very disappointed. Robots that feast on humans and you counter with World of Warcraft? For shame.

Why don't I trust these quotes?

From an AP article on how our government is trying to find new and better ways to question brown people:

An elite US interrogation unit will conduct "scientific research" to find better ways of questioning top suspected terrorists, US intelligence director Dennis Blair said Wednesday.

"It is going to do scientific research on that long-neglected area," Blair told the House Intelligence Committee, without elaborating on the nature of the techniques being tested.

Why doesn't that "scientific research" part fill me with a lot of hope? Sure sure, they say that their charter requires them to abide by the US Army Field Manual, but... US interrogators haven't exactly inspired the most confidence in their.. let's say... humanitarian concerns with people we deem to be bad Muslims. Plus, I'm not sure I'd say that research into interrogation has been a "long-neglected area." I'm pretty sure we've just done almost a decade's worth of research into the field.

Still, I must applaud them. This is a much better policy than their previous "Did the Spanish Inquisition or Khmer Rouge do it? Yes? Good. But did they do it to elicit false confessions? Yes? Even better." line of interrogation based scientific research. Baby steps.

OH SHIT, THE NUKES ARE IN THE AIR! RUN FOR COVER!!!

Today the Washington Times has a lovely new article up giving us all a new sneak preview of our new serious, adult foreign policy discussion that will soon grip our elected and media betters: oh sweet fuck, Iran lied and has been working on THE BOMB and those fuckers are going to be able to nuke us any second now, KILL KILL KILL, BOMB BOMB BOMB, WAR WAR WAR.

But before we start ramping up the scholarly articles that will soon arrive talking about how to save the Iranian people and support the nascent Iranian protest movement we must bomb the everliving fuck out of them and lamentations that our un-negro dialected Muslim President is insufficiently willing to start a new war and protect the homeland, those gentile souls at the Cato Institute point out that there always seems to be a theme in intelligence estimates of Iran's nuclear capabilities.

“Late 1991: In congressional reports and CIA assessments, the United States estimates that there is a ‘high degree of certainty that the government of Iran has acquired all or virtually all of the components required for the construction of two to three nuclear weapons.’ A February 1992 report by the U.S. House of Representatives suggests that these two or three nuclear weapons will be operational between February and April 1992.”

“February 24, 1993: CIA director James Woolsey says that Iran is still 8 to 10 years away from being able to produce its own nuclear weapon, but with assistance from abroad it could become a nuclear power earlier.”

“January 1995: The director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, John Holum, testifies that Iran could have the bomb by 2003.”

“January 5, 1995: U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry says that Iran may be less than five years from building an atomic bomb, although ‘how soon…depends how they go about getting it.’”

“April 29, 1996: Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres says ‘he believes that in four years, they [Iran] may reach nuclear weapons.’”

“October 21, 1998: General Anthony Zinni, head of U.S. Central Command, says Iran could have the capacity to deliver nuclear weapons within five years. ‘If I were a betting man,’ he said, ‘I would say they are on track within five years, they would have the capability.’”

“January 17, 2000: A new CIA assessment on Iran’s nuclear capabilities says that the CIA cannot rule out the possibility that Iran may possess nuclear weapons. The assessment is based on the CIA’s admission that it cannot monitor Iran’s nuclear activities with any precision and hence cannot exclude the prospect that Iran may have nuclear weapons.”

And on and on and on. Iran is perennially one year away from gaining the bomb! Hell, even the new season of 24 has President Goodarab of the Islamic Republic of Genericstan *wink**wink*Iran*wink**wink**wink* one year away from the bomb and engaged in negotiations with the US to halt their program. It somehow all involves Jack Bauer caving a dude's chest in with a axe, Starbuck, and Freddie Prinze Jr., but they are negotiations nonetheless.

So before you whip yourself into a total war froth, just remember: Iran is one year away from the bomb, because Iran will always be one year away from the bomb. Two decades from now Iran will be one year away from the bomb. I know it'll feel really good to do a couple of bombing runs on Tehran in order to support Mousavi, or whatever reason it is our political betters will be advocating for, but let's remember that.

Things that don't sound good

The why's and how's of how a terrorist was able to pack his Jockey's with exploding groin candy and was only stopped through a combination of incompetence and passengers noting that a man trying to light his sack on fire isn't normal already don't look very good. But as we get deeper and deeper into investigations into what was and wasn't done, well, the specifics don't sound any better. Take for instance this USA Today interview with crotchety old National Security Adviser/Dip-set rapper Jim Jones.

White House national security adviser James Jones says Americans will feel "a certain shock" when they read an account being released Thursday of the missed clues that could have prevented the alleged Christmas Day bomber from ever boarding the plane.

President Obama "is legitimately and correctly alarmed that things that were available, bits of information that were available, patterns of behavior that were available, were not acted on," Jones said in an interview Wednesday with USA TODAY.

"That's two strikes,"

Well, unless it involves some revelation about Michael Jackson's death or an additional dozen mistresses for Tiger Woods, I doubt America will even stifle a disinterested yawn, let alone get "shocked". But it is a tad disturbing when your national security adviser looks at all the facts and decides that should be the reaction the American public and would be... if we had an adult country or a functioning political system.

But what would theoretically shock Americans? I don't know, something like this maybe?

U.S. border security officials learned of the alleged extremist links of the suspect in the Christmas Day jetliner bombing attempt as he was airborne from Amsterdam to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed, officials disclosed Wednesday.
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"The people in Detroit were prepared to look at him in secondary inspection," a senior law enforcement official said. "The decision had been made. The [database] had picked up the State Department concern about this guy -- that this guy may have been involved with extremist elements in Yemen."

If the intelligence had been detected sooner, it could have resulted in the interrogation and search of Abdulmutallab at the airport in Amsterdam

Ahh, your information told you that this man should not be allowed to board a plane without first going through an interrogation and search, but not only is this database watch list information not work quickly enough, when you do get the word that he's a terrorist super-freak you decide to let the man complete the flight he shouldn't be allowed on in order to question him at the completion of it. But don't worry, security types in the article will assure you that's wasn't where the mistake was made. No, the mistake was made when the father called the government to warn them about his son and, despite having enough evidence to put him on a 'no fly' list, he was allowed to get on a plane. Well, that does make me feel better.

Actually the scary thing is that we still might not be able to address this stuff because our national security and terrorism policies are more focused around exploiting the politics of the situation instead of fixing things. So it's 50/50 on whether or not we can fix things like "not letting the guy on our watch list get on the plane". Let's just put in the work to make our security lapses go from "shocking" to merely "mildly surprising". Baby steps.

Airport security is serious business

The whole underwear bomber has got people understandably a little rattled and more questioning of their safety and security at an airport, despite the fact that air travel is still quite safe. But it's also got airport security on higher alert for shady figures, not wanting to be the one who lets another guy with Semtex in his shorts or perhaps a cable knit cardigan made out of C4 onto a plane. So what does this mean? It means we can't let obvious national security threat Joan Rivers back into this country because she's too fucking suspicious.

Rivers wasn’t allowed on her Newark-bound flight in Costa Rica this past weekend by a “jittery Continental Airlines gate agent” who thought the two names on her passport, which reads “Joan Rosenberg AKA Joan Rivers,” seemed “fishy.”

Yes, because when you want to avoid any suspicion you pick a Jewish name and write it as your alias on your passport. On the other hand, Rivers has had so much facial surgery that at this point anyone in a wig could be wheeled out in front of us and as long as they talked shit on what celebrities were wearing we'd believe it was her. So clearly this could have been any number of terrorists trying to use the name of a famous comedienne to rage destruction on the American mainland. Thankfully, Costa Rican security was thinking laterally and had foreseen this very chain of events.

So, for those of you playing at home, let's recap here. A Nigerian man whose father had warned intelligence agencies that he was being radicalized in the known terrorist breeding ground of Yemen, who had already made it onto watch lists, and bought a one way ticket, in cash, and checked no bags: not suspicious. Comedy legend: very suspicious. I'm just glad that we seem to have our best and brightest on the front lines defending us from former Tonight Show guest hosts. Someone start tailing Gary Shandling and Jay Leno, they could be planning something big.

I'm not sure I like the sound of this

When you've just committed to a policy to escalate the manpower, diplomatic force, aid, and money to Afghanistan in a last ditch effort to salvage something out of an eight year neglected clusterfuck, what's the one thing you don't wan to hear about the intel capabilities of US agencies that are supposed to provide an understanding and framework to help you execute the diplomatic and counter-insurgent plans that the whole effort hinges upon? Is it this?

Flynn’s report — which was prepared for public release by the Center for a New American Security – begins with a stunning admission. “Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy,” the report states. “Having focused the overwhelming majority of its collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, the vast intelligence apparatus is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which U.S. and allied forces operate and the people they seek to persuade.”

I should mention that's the nice paragraph in the article, it actually gets a bit more scathing after that. But what would this Flynn character know anyway? I mean he's only the top intelligence aide to International Security Assistance Force Commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal and a Major General in the US army.

Ah well, I'm sure we'll be able to win their hearts and minds even if we don't know what those hearts and minds want or even where on the Afghan body the heart or mind is located. What's understanding a populace got to do with getting them to do what we want forever? I'm sure this will all work out splendidly.