Elite Troops Get Expanded Role on Intelligence

[Rose Siding]

The military is placing small teams of Special Operations troops in a growing number of American embassies to gather intelligence on terrorists in unstable parts of the world and to prepare for potential missions to disrupt, capture or kill them.

Senior Pentagon officials and military officers say the effort is part of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's two-year drive to give the military a more active intelligence role in the campaign against terrorism. But it has drawn opposition from traditional intelligence agencies like the C.I.A., where some officials have viewed it as a provocative expansion into what has been their turf.
.....
The Department of Defense is very eager to step up its involvement in counterterrorism activities, and it has set its sights on traditional C.I.A. operational responsibilities and authorities," said John O. Brennan, a 25-year C.I.A. officer who headed the National Counterterrorism Center before retiring last year. "Quite unfortunately, the C.I.A.'s important lead role in many of these areas is being steadily eroded, and the current militarization of many of the nation's intelligence functions and responsibilities will be viewed as a major mistake in the very near future.".......

But, he added, "if the planned Socom presence in U.S. embassies abroad is an effort to pave the way for unilateral U.S. military operations or to enable defense elements to engage in covert action activities separate from the C.I.A., U.S. problems abroad will be certain to increase significantly."
....
The Special Operations Command has not publicly disclosed the Military Liaison Element mission, and answered questions about the effort only after it was described by officials in other parts of the government who oppose the program....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/08/international/americas/08forces.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5090&en=20fecac9a871e332&ex=1299474000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

[EuroObserver]

1. Repeat:

..."if the planned Socom presence in U.S. embassies abroad is an effort to pave the way for unilateral U.S. military operations or to enable defense elements to engage in covert action activities separate from the C.I.A., U.S. problems abroad will be certain to increase significantly."

[file83]

2. This "Terrorist" hysteria is starting to sound like....

...the McCarthy era "Communist" hysteria. Yeah, terrorists exist and are a danger - but let's get some proportionality on the issue. The odds of any one person getting killed by a terrorist is SO far down the list that it's practically more dangerous to go golfing.

[Voltaire99]

3. "It's practically more dangerous to go golfing"

That's why special elite teams of SOCOM anti-terrorist gophers are even now tunneling protectively beneath our golf courses, chittering away as they sing their special rodent freedom songs:

Terrorists are everywhere, especially on the tee,
They hate a simple putter in the hands of you or me.
They hate us for our handicaps, our Arnold Palmer shirts,
They want to make us bow to Mecca till our bursitis hurts!
But we brave SOCOM gophers will burrow night and day
To ensure deserving rich white guys are always free to play.
The freedom to golf makes us better than those big bad Islamos
(As do the things the eggheads built that time in Los Alamos)
And that's why you can never, ever stop being afraid
And why we fight in this big buck-toothed Crusade.

[file83]

6. Makes me think of Bill Murray's Character in "Caddy Shack"...

"Carl Spackler"...

I have to laugh, because I've outsmarted even myself. My enemy, my foe, is an animal. In order to conquer the animal, I have to learn to think like an animal. And, whenever possible, to look like one. I've gotta get inside this guy's pelt and crawl around for a few days.

License to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. Man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that's all she wrote.

I smell varmint poontang. And the only good varmint poontang is dead varmint poontang, I think.

[LibertyorDeath]

8. " sing their special rodent freedom songs"

:rofl:

[0007]

4. We are definitely in the new McCarthy era.

Are the sheeple beginning to see the wolf dressed as a goat?

[annabanana]

5. k&r. . . . . . . . . .n/t

[slipslidingaway]

7. K&R!