Today the Washington Post has a disturbing update from the war on terror. As many people already figured, many al Qaeda members have set up shop in Pakistan, and are now working with existing Pakistani militant groups. The article reports that al Qaeda members have been involved in every major anti-Western attack this year in Pakistan.
FBI director Robert Mueller admitted yesterday that if the FBI had put all the available clues together, it’s possible that the attacks on 9/11 could possibly have been thwarted. I think that’s an accurate statement, and I think it’s important for the government to acknowledge that fact at all levels, because it says something about what we can do in the future to stop more attacks. It’s important to gather as much information as possible, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that the fundamental problem was not information gathering, nor was it analysis, rather it was a failure of communication between field offices and the headquarters. It seems that every week more and more field reports speculating that Middle Eastern students at flight schools might be terrorists are unearthed. The question is, why wasn’t anyone consolidating all of these reports and assigning people to follow up?
The Most Dangerous Place in the World: Salman Rushdie on the current round of brinkmanship between India and Pakistan.
I just discovered Greplaw, a weblog run by the Berkman Center that covers cyberlaw.
A data point: Palestinian Woman Bomber Bows Out of Suicide Attack.