Thor’s Hall

There are a lot of actions that people take in this world that are often considered inappropriate.  They range from politically incorrect, to insulting, to just plain criminal.

This morning I read a headline “U.S. Orders Covert Military Action in Middle East”.  Admittedly it is a wire article from AP which by definition slants their reports in mysterious ways.  For reference, The Associated Press has often been renamed The Associate With Terrorists Press for many of their reports from the Middle East.  In fairness though, the story was initially published by the fine folks <gag> at the  NY Times.

Reading through the article I come to see that this is pretty much old news.  Perusing the details you find pre-positioning of Reapers on the Horn of Africa (check), SF work in Somalia (check), covert reconnaissance and disruption goals in Iran and Yeman (no surprise).  Pretty much the standard things that you would expect to be occurring in our current world state.

Here is my thought.  If the NYT reporter(s) had been out in the countryside of Iran, or Yeman or in the Horn of Africa and ran across these teams that is good journalism.  You went in search of activity and ran across an interesting story.

But, that is not the case.  In this case we have “Anonymous U.S. officials” saying things to a reporter.  I am thinking that someone needs to be arrested, and tried for violations of various secrecy acts.

In order to receive a security clearance you have to jump through significant hoops.  Somewhere along the line, the “Anonymous U.S. officials” have forgotten what security means, and the repercussions that can occur when security is breached.

People taking inappropriate actions, that in this case have the potential to cost warriors their lives and cripple our ability to gather intelligence in the area.

My friend the Watch Cat always winds up putting up thought provoking posts.  In this case she points out a clear effort on the part of Sadam Hussein’s Intelligence services to sway US policy by targeting individuals in the United State Congress.  Clearly we are reliant upon our counter-intelligence teams to detect and halt actions like the one described.  Just as clearly, they have a very difficult job to do and expecting them to halt 100% of the covert operations that take place within the US is unreasonable.

I do think that it is reasonable though for them to use a system that would alert them to individuals or facilities that would be likely targets for foreign services.   I think that I may ponder this issue for a while and see if there is a more thought out post to be had.  In the interim go read Watch Cat’s post.