TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18. Once again file under, did the US really want to eliminate bin Laden?
ADD: James Bamford's new book, Body of Secrets, about the NSA, contains an interesting tidbit about that agency's spying on bin Laden LONG before the WTC attack.
ADD: "...NSA regularly listens to unencrypted calls from suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden, in hiding in Afghanistan. Bin Laden uses a portable INMARSAT phone that transmits and receives calls over spacecraft owned by the International Maritime Satellite Organization. This is the same system used by most ships and some people who travel to remote locations, such as oil explorers. According to intelligence officials, bin Laden is aware that the United States can eavesdrop on his international communications, but he doesn't seem to care. To impress cleared visitors, NSA analysts occasionally play audiotapes of bin Laden talking to his mother over an INMARSAT connection."
ADD: So the question is, can a person's physical location be pinpointed from an intercepted INMARSAT phone call?
ADD: I've learned the answer to that question. INMARSAT uses very high satellites, so the attempt to track the caller would leave you with a very wide area of speculation as to his whereabouts.
ADD: However, it should be possible to put a lower satellite in orbit OR perhaps an AWACS interceptor plane at, say, 45,000 feet, so that it would catch that phone call in progress, and then you would get a much smaller area on the ground to deal with.
ADD: You might even use a commercial jet for that job.
ADD: If I and a few other people can figure this out, the CIA/NSA/FBI complex can also conceive of such an operation.
ADD: More evidence that bin Laden was NOT a heavily sought after person.
ADD: He was quite useful to people whose underlings, like the CIA, were tasked to "get him."
ADD: This is a con game. Arm the enemy, train the enemy, help the enemy, employ the enemy, use the enemy, pretend to attack the enemy.
ADD: Hundreds of cheap novels describe crime situations in which the big cheese uses an underling to carry out a mission with a promise of rewards--and then after the mission is complete the big cheese turns around and kills the underling.
ADD: After bin Laden had served his purpose in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets, he could have been taken out. Easily. But he wasn't.
ADD: Maybe now he has outlived his usefulness. If people he set in motion recently, or long ago, really did attack the WTC, it's just a little late.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18. PRAGMATIC. WORKABLE. CAN DO. Ideas used to describe America. "If it pays off we'll go for it." Keeping that in mind--forget morality entirely for a moment--just read over this list of countries the US has bombed since 1946, and see if you think enough practical benefit came out of it all to justify the incredible amount of hatred against (along with the admiration for) the US that resulted. Hatred which is one of those little things that spawns terrorism. I'm not saying that all of these actions were wrong or unnecessary. Just think about the overall LOAD.
ADD: China (1945-6), Korea and China (1950-3), Guatemala (1954), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1950-61), Guatemala (1960), Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969), Guatemala (1967-69), Grenada (1983), Lebanon (1983-4, Lebanese and Syrian targets), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), Iran (1987), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-2000), Kuwait (1991), Somalia (1993), Bosnia (1994-5), Sudan (1998), Afghanistan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999). List from William Blum's Rogue State.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18. Back burner. That's where VERY uncomfortable news is shoved during a crisis such as this one. In this case, it involves a situation which will be covered up with double force, because the Dept. of Defense, which is leading America at War, is itself sitting on the very uncomfortable news, the scandal, the boiling mess.
go to the site for more.. pretty informative id say... corrupt corrupt corrupt:disgust:
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)
Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread
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