Why is the DoD Making it Available to Insurgents,Terrorists?
Your IraqSlogger editors are stunned that the Pentagon has released to the entire world and posted on the Web the U.S. military’s new 282-page counterinsurgency war-fighting manual.
This is the first post-9/11 “war on terror” U.S. military counterinsurgency manual – the long-awaited doctrine meant in part to help turn the tide for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The counterinsurgency field manual's cover reads in part, "Distribution Restriction: Approved for Public Release; Distribution is unlimited."
Why?
Now you and everyone, including Al Qaeda terrorists and insurgents, can read the entire 282-page manual.
It's posted on multiple military Web sites.
While the manual doesn’t contain classified secrets, it contains an astounding amount of seemingly sensitive military doctrine, with subject headings including:
-- INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE OPERATIONS
-- HUMAN INTELLIGENCE AND OPERATIONAL REPORTING
-- COUNTERINTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERRECONNAISSANCE
-- INTELLIGENCE COLLABORATION
-- INTELLIGENCE CELLS AND WORKING GROUPS
-- PROTECTING SOURCES
-- EXECUTING COUNTERINSURGENCY OPERATIONS
-- TARGETING
Should such sensitive and detailed information be dished up to the U.S.’s enemies, especially via Pentagon Web sites?
In the manual's foreword, Lt. Generals David Petreaus and James Amos write in part, "With our Soldiers and Marines fighting insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is essential that we give them a manual that provides principles and guidelines for counterinsurgency operations."
How would a U.S. soldier or Marine now in Iraq or Afghanistan feel knowing the hot-off-the-presses counterinsurgency manual is available to the “bad guys” at the same time it is available to the “good guys”?
Granted, the Pentagon posts a lot on the Web, but it seems fair to ask whether this entire 282-page document (surely, there are additional classified components) should be made available to all.
Will the manual be of value to Al Qaeda terrorists, Iraqi insurgents, and the Taliban?
Would the U.S. think it had scored an intelligence coup if it got its hands on the insurgents' 282-page field manual?
How would the American people feel if asked in a poll whether the U.S. military's counterinsurgency manual should be shared with the insurgents?
One can imagine that if the entire manual had been leaked to and was published by a newspaper rather than by the Pentagon itself, U.S. officials would condemn the media for putting U.S. military forces at risk and multiple investigations would be underway to nail the leaker.
Your IraqSlogger team will keep an eye out on terrorist and insurgent Web sites to see whether they provide links to Pentagon Web sites providing the counterinsurgency manual -- or whether they go so far as to translate the manual into Arabic and other languages.
Stay tuned.
Stay tuned indeed...
IRAQSlogger
7 comments:
See. We've outsmarted them again.
We can't read Arabic. So. That must mean they can't read US English.
I’m thinking this has got to be a ruse. You know, like a football team allowing a dummy playbook to fall into the hands of the opposing team. It has to be, right? The Pentagon couldn’t be this inept, right? Please tell me I’m right...
And we all know the Axis of Weevils actually bothered to learn our language. How else could they be expected to defeat the Infidels? No one in their right mind would start a war and not be able to understand the enemy.
Come on, Alex, get a grip.
Very few of our Field Manuals are restricted circulation. However, even if it were, Global Security, Federation of American Scientists, or someone would quickly publish it on the web, so same-same as a practical matter.
But that's really irrelevant. Our doctrine hasn't really changed. Very little in this that's new. It's primary utility is that it gathers all the pertinent information in one place.
And it shows a publication date since 1968, which is comforting to many.
Finally, it's long been observed that the United States writes the best military doctrine in the world, which it then ignores. Read it, memorize it. It's still unlikely to tell you about how we are going to do things.
Comes back to initiative and "commander's intent" in military thinking and operations. Our doctrine isn't a blueprint. We don't train to doctrine. We train to the mission. Doctrine is simply a jumping off point, a plcae to start, for operations--a set of suggestions and a guide for the free thinker who may not be enough of an expert on every subject.
Read, memorize, ignore. Reminds me of half the stuff I learned in high school.
So what would be the purpose of even putting it online?
In US usage (learned from the French via the Germans in th 19th Century and blended with our tradition of battlefield improvisation) Doctrine is the beginning of operational thought. The extreme opposite is Soviet doctrine--as still practiced by Hussein's Iraq, Iran, Egypt---where doctrine is the same as operations. initiative and improvisation are even punished sometimes ans always discouraged in these organizations.
As pure theory, it makes some sense--fog of war is reduced when everyone knows exactly what everyone else in the organization is doing. Save for never having a true test: US v. USSR in the Fulda Gap, their system
Any one ever consider that this might be dis-information?
Yeah, I thought the same thing, like it HAD to be; we just can’t be that nonchalant with our intelligence…could we?
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