Phi Beta Iota: Although we assume there must be some isolated success stories, we have not heard any. The Human Terrain Team (HTT) is nothing more than Civil Affairs done properly, and from all accounts, from the most vicious to direct observation, HTT is a badly managed, badly conceptualized, badly staffed program that is a cancer on the good name of Civil Affairs. The program should be terminated at the same time that the Army Civil Affairs Brigade is made OpCon to a new Stabilization & Reconstruction (S&R) Field Activity with a brigadier general in command and a ban on all lawyers and security officers–both S&R and Civil Affairs should be honest enterprises in which those in touch with the public do not need clearances.
Misappropriated without Attrribution–Free Online, March 4, 2010
One Star for lack of ethics on the part of the publisher. Beyond five stars for content, free online as with all of Jack Davis's stuff. Upgraded to 3 stars for proper pricing (after Amazon's cut, publisher only makes roughly 3 dollars per book, which is totally fair).
This product was misappropriated from Jack Davis, dean of the intelligence analysis scholar-practitioners. While materials created within the US Government by US Government employees are generally not copyrighted because the taxpayer funded their creation, they are a) available free online; and b) generally considered off-limits to sleaze-bag publishers that troll for stuff (this happens to all of us, in my case with my monographs for the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), all free online).
It's nice that Jack's work is respected and made available on Amazon, a truly global service.
It is very troubling that Jack Davis, who just asked me to find out who did this, has not been contacted by the publisher and offered both courtesy copies of his own work, and some modest recognition.
The cover story in the February 2010 edition of Middle East Magazine, “Hunting Bin Laden“, leads with the statement that time may be running out for Osama bin Laden. It goes on to say.
“Over the last two years or so, the elusive leader of Al Qaeda has seen dozens of his lieutenants and allies assassinated one after the other in Afghanistan and Pakistan in a whirlwind of attacks, often in the dead of night, by remote-controlled unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The stealthy craft, operated by the Central Intelligence Agency and the US air force, have become a weapon that has revolutionised warfare.”
Full Story Online
Anyone studying military history could not agree more. The technological advances developed by the U.S. military since the first Gulf War have been staggering. The combination of global positioning systems, laser guidance, detailed maps, radar, J-Stars, and moving target indicators made the delivery of bombs by piloted aircraft extremely accurate. Now, with unmanned aircraft, tactical and strategic bomb delivery is ever more a major force multiplier. Make a note here, however, that accurate and timely intelligence is the difference maker between bombing mistakes and successful air strikes.
The article alleges that American intelligence has improved over the last two to three years because of improved cooperation from Pashtun tribes.
“As the US braces for a major escalation in the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is engaged in a new drive to kill or capture Bin Laden, declaring that he is the key to defeating Al Qaeda as a global threat.”
“That may be a rather fanciful rationale, but eight years after the Americans let him slip through their fingers at his Afghan mountain redoubt of Tora Bora, his last confirmed location on or about 16 December, 2001, they admit they haven’t a clue where he is now. The best guess is that he’s holed up in the lawless Waziristan tribal belt that runs along the rugged border with Afghanistan.”
Misappropriated without Attrribution–Free Online, March 4, 2010
