Analyst's note: Some of us for years have warned about the dangers associated with an enemy who can operated in the realm of "command and control warfare" - which in time developed into a higher, national level of targeting for something called "information warfare" - later changed to read "Information operations" because of political correctness - those in power at the time even toyed with the concept of knowledge dominance, but eventually it all was changed again to something called "cyber war."
For the sake for those non-military or Intelligence Community types who read this, when I express the terms above, I'm thinking of the application of informational power and knowledge to deter war or limit the extent of war, and to preserve our national independence. I'm thinking about the interdiction, control or exploitation of information and knowledge in war and anti-war situations, to achieve dominance of the information domain to assure superior understanding of the situation, and thus to shape the target's military, political, economic, and social understanding of the situation and his ability to impact or control them -- and applying that knowledge at the decisive point, while denying the target the same opportunity.
Now we see clearly the need for such operations - whatever the title -- and still many world "leaders" and "arm-chair strategist" wring their hands and exclaiming "what can be done." We have seen Interpol going after Assange, who heads WikiLeaks, because his condom broke in one situation and he didn't use one in a second, otherwise "friendly" situation. I have to ask, is this all we've got?
Specific, critical Western targets have been released on the Internet by this "useful idiot" Assange, and thus are available to the Islamist who are not without computer skills to aid their cause in trying to destroy the West. In so doing Assange, through his WikiLeaks operation, has become an "enemy combatant" in the war that is being waged against America. We still have rules for such things in war. Yet our gov't leaders are generally frozen in discussion about what can or should be done to fight this global enemy and those who support them.
All the while we have a number of Assange supporters with websites that still threaten the free world. We can, and must do better than this if we are to survive the seditious and terrible enemy we all now face. United we must stand, or united they will eventually see that we fall to the Islamist devils. As a nation, concerned now with our very survival, we need to stop fiddling with terms and get on with the task at hand -- we are at war and people have and will continue to die and critical targets will be destroyed causing additional national or international havoc as a result .
As recorded in a November 1994 article in ARMY, by Richard H. Sinnreich entitled "The Changing Face of Battlefield Reporting," we find that General Lewis Walt, (U.S. Marine Corps) was right when he said "Reporting has become a weapon, and the question is no longer whether it will affect the battle, but only in whose behalf [...] the media themselves will in the end decide whether reporters are treated as allies or adversaries. But decide they must. On tomorrow's battlefields, there will be no place for neutrals." Although General Walt has long sense past away, his warnings still echo. The battlefield of tomorrow of which he spoke is here today. And as predicted by General Walt, there is "no place for neutrals" in today's wars. Semper Fidelis.
[....] "Twenty-plus year veteran CIA operations officer Charles Faddis, head of the National Counterterrorism Center’s WMD terrorism unit when he retired a few years ago, was trained to appraise targets of attack from a terrorist’s perspective. He was unequivocal about the threat that’s been posed to scores of US critical infrastructure sites around the world that were identified in a classified February 2009 State Department cable made public Sunday by Wikileaks.[....] “Countries are going to refuse to assist us in counterterrorist operations,” Faddis continued, adding “we need to stop wringing our hands and dithering. This website should go down within seconds every time it appears on the Net. All the data they have should be deleted or corrupted. We keep talking about a cyber war. Well here it is.”
[....] However, a top US Defense Department Central Command official early last year told attendees at an oil and gas infrastructure security conference in Houston that there are numerous “nodes” vital to the distribution and transportation of crude from Middle East oil fields that aren’t widely recognized for their importance, and thus are not openly discussed or identified.
"It's a menu for terrorists that is probably one of the most overtly destructive things WikiLeaks has done," Center for Strategic and International Studies national security analyst Anthony Cordesman told the Christian Science Monitor. "This has given a global map – a menu, if not a recipe book – to every extremist group in the world. To me it would be amazing to see how WikiLeaks could rationalize this."
Continuing, Cordesman told the Monitor “you are providing instructions for people who don't intuitively develop it on their own. There's an incredible amount of data in the world today, but most people in the world don't know how to use it. Terrorists aren't economists, infrastructure experts, or planners. They tend to repeat past patterns.[....] many legitmate news organizations that understand there are national security secrets that must be withheld from publication or broadcast for legitimate reasons. But too many news outlets, officials told HSToday.us, eagerly publish and broadcast classified information simply because this information is secret and they can.
