In warfare, nothing is what it seems...

It's always something else.

Are you wondering if there's more than meets the eye in the current ground conflict in Iraq?

I know I am.

Why are so many foreign fighters filtering into the country to become cannon fodder? Are they so stupid that they actually believe in jihad? Granted, some do, but there's more going on there than misplaced duty to Allah and attempts to cast out the infidels. AQ and the rest are not idiots.

No, there may well be something else on their minds, and it involves a defensive tactic rather than an offensive strategy.

I'll say at the outset that I remain convinced there are weapons of mass destruction still in country. Aside from the huge caches of conventional arms, which indeed are of value to the jihadists, it defies wisdom to believe everything was a dream, everything was spirited out to Syria, or everything was a piece of an elaborate ruse to scare local enemies.

As they said in "X-Files," something's out there.

It can be postulated that the jihadists' real strategy has several long term missions. First, they want to engage on soil that has easy access to sympathetic nations. They want to hit and run, use local maleable, gullible talent as pawns to keep foreign eyes off other playing fields. Facing off the U.S. and allies is not a primary goal, but it is effective in keeping the cause alive on international television.

Second, the enemy needs time to fortify in other prospective battle theaters. This is probably being done, but it is only a continuation of existing policy. Nothing new here. The Phillipines, Indonesia, Iran, Turkey, even Spain, have become staging areas for future conflagration. But this plan was born over a decade ago.

Third, the jihadists are leveraging everything they have to spread their influence in Palestine. Far from current thinking, the death of Arafat is not an opening for peace overtures. It is the opposite. The nasty little murderer's passing only sharpened the appetite of the PLO and its offshoots for the destruction of Israel.

So, what has all this got to do with the astounding "defense of Fallujah, Tikrit, et al" in Iraq? As far as AQ is concerned, not much, because what they fight for is far more precious to them than the other issues above described.

They are fighting for the teeny-tiny little bunkers that contain the weapons which make them very large in the world arena.

An aide to Bibi Netanyahu, Dore (wish I could remember his whole name), showed up on CSPAN yesterday talking about weapons being developed by Saddam, and he coughed up some truly disturbing information about a chemical/biological weapon that has no immediate symptom when released, but it produced liver cancer in the target population as many as seven years down the road. He said they were producing it in Iraq for years.

How much storage space does it occupy? About the same volume as a '65 VW Bug. And it could take out a city the size of Des Moines. One lab the size of a furnitue warehouse could produce enough to equip 100 under cover agents for a year. If they brought it in Thermos bottles, in six months there would be adequate supply to launch a concerted attack in a year.

Remember, theses people are patient, methodical, and cunning. With our open borders, this tactic is literally a walk in the desert. (I intend a column on the border issue within a week.)

To return to the defensive manuevering of AQ in Iraq, it is almost a no brainer if you consider the real facts in country. There is simply no reason for the AQ to waste so much physical capital unless there were quantifiable assets to protect. None. Remember, they are patient, methodical, and cunning.

If one grants that, indeed, the weapons are there in Iraq, then how can they be found? Here is where the enemy made a mistake and continues to make it as days pass. They mass and defend near the point of entry.

We see today the re-infiltration of "insurgents" into Fallujah. The same goes for other areas where the enemy can ill afford casuaties, but they sacrifice many.

How do we find the bunkers short of a nuclear hole in the world?

To be sure, somebody's already thought of this, but let's say for the purposes of this column, they haven't, so there can be some over the top discussion.

We haven't yet found the right answer because no one's asked the right question. What's the right question? How do we find bunkers made before the advent of hi-rez satellite cameras?

The United States leads the world in its oil exploration technology. It's actually pretty neat. There is a process of sending a pulse into the ground, picking up its echo on geophones, feeding the data back into a computer thereby producing a three dimensional image of what exists far below the surface. They used to use it, probably still do, for spotting repository domes of crude as far down as two miles.

The technology exists, and the hardware can fit into a C133 hold with room to spare. Said hardware consists of a pulse truck and a data retrieval vehicle. The pulse truck houses a Mercury filled foot that taps the ground, creating the vibration that penetrates the crust to an enormous depth. It also carries the hundreds of geophones that listen for the bounce-back vibration apres surge.

The second truck houses the computer and printers that analyze the data from the pickups. It produces a solid geometry image of what's out of sight.

My view of this is ten or more years' old, so I am positive the engineering has jumped forward, but it existed before, why wouldn't it now?

There would be tremendous tactical implications, but the results would surely produce ancillary intelligence we need. Like, if the equipment got really close, it would be subject to interventional assault which is, of itself, good intelligence.

Discovery of weapons of mass destruction would show the world just how dangerous Saddam was, and it would put the lie to the efficacy of Islamic jihad.

Coming soon:
A border policy solution that would actually work in the current framework of political reality.
Is a contract a contract when applied to the National Guard and the Reserve?

Rethinker

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