Category: Counterterrorism

Putin is taking center Stage in the Middle East but what is his real agenda?

Early on the morning of Sept. 30, a Russian three-star general approached the American embassy in Baghdad, walked past a wall of well-armed Marines, to deliver face-to-face a diplomatic demarche to the United States. His statement was blunt: The Russia military would begin air strikes in neighboring Syria within the hour — and the American military should clear the area immediately. That and other questions about Russian military capabilities and objectives are taking center stage as Putin shows a relentless willingness to use military force in a heavy-handed foreign policy aimed at restoring his nation's stature as a world power. In that quest, he has raised the specter of resurgent Russian military might — from Ukraine to the Baltics, from Syria to the broader Middle East. VLADIMIR Putin is preparing to send 150,000 troops to Syria in a bid to wipe out the evil Islamic State once and for all. Has ISIS become its own worst enemy with its campaign of terror against the West, which has prompted an international backlash? He told the BBC the Russians were “backing the butcher Assad, which is a terrible mistake for them and for the world. It is going to make the region more unstable. It will lead to further radicalization and increase terrorism. Is Putin’s actions game-changing? Obama seemed less impressed—or less willing to congratulate the Kremlin on its cunning, at least in public. All this was done out of a position not of strength but of “weakness,” he said at a White House news conference in early October. "This is not a smart strategic move on Russia’s part.” Despite a still-grim economy in Russia, Putin remains popular in his country. Most of what he does to show that Moscow is a serious player on the world stage only buttresses that good opinion. But the public appetite for a war against anti-Assad rebels in Syria appears limited, to say the least. But that’s not why Russian troops are now fighting in Syria. They are there to prop up Assad by helping him destroy “terrorists”—defined as anyone fighting against his regime. It’s been about four and a half years since Syria’s civil war commenced—since it became a "geopolitical Chernobyl.” The meltdown may have only just begun.

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El Salvador gang violence making Latin America murder Capital.

Gang violence is soaring in El Salvador. The country's murder rate is one of the highest in the world. Now, amid criticism, the government is debating whether it should deploy the military. Authorities in El Salvador have registered closer to 4,000 homicides in the past year. If the death toll continues to rise at the same pace, one in every thousand of its 6.3 million Salvadorans will have been murdered by the end of the year. Outside war zones, only Honduras has a comparable homicide rate. But now, the killing is on the rise again: the death toll reached over 3,900 in 2014. If the current daily murder rate stays at 16 homicides per day, then last year's total will be surpassed by the end of August 2015. Organized crime in North and South America is continuing to spiral out of control and resulting in more violence and more deaths. They say, "The retaliatory nature together with the rhetoric is telling." But this is nothing new, either is the escalation of government corruption.

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Operation Greystone

CIA operatives entered at least a dozen different countries, including Afghanistan who joined up with the Northern alliance, a resistance force made up of rebels and from the shadows effectively began tracking down insurgents and terrorists who were paid to hunt down, fight and kill. These operations operated in the shadows effectively dismantling the Taliban which led to numerous victories and dubbed as the “War on Terror”. Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld began a program called Joint Special Operations Command, which singles out terrorist leaders and kills them one by one. They don’t call themselves a covert operation but instead military operation to avoid needing approval of president and effectively doing as they please. JSOC operates with CIA special activities division. About 1.5 trillion dollars has been spent so far, and yet the only notable achievement is the death of Osama bin Laden. Perhaps instead of all this need to keep all actions secret, the government updates the public so it can realize if a search such as for WMD’s is hopeless and stop activity on it, and then try to refocus on other good leads on terrorist groups. The CIA uses drones to conduct targeted killings of Taliban members and other militant groups. In effect, it targets and eliminates insurgents on the ground without the implementation of need of excessive boots on the ground and unnecessary loss of ground troops. In turn, it also saves the lives of thousands of victims at the hands of the very growing numbers of extremists looking to dominate the world. If drones are extremely effective is waging the war on terror, we cannot ignore it. We must not only continue the effective campaign but escalate it without mercy and conduct a "search and destroy" ground attack with "boots on the ground" giving us maximum exposure to eliminate any threat.

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