Do they breed like rabbits in those Afghan hills?

"Being #3 in Al-queda is like being a "creative vice president" at a Hollywood studio. There are dozens of them ... and they are expendable."

No, but they have a really good cloning lab in one of the caves. ;)

Haven't the PR guys in DC figured out yet that people are catching on to this trick?

One wonders what is being covered up by the announcement.

Also, one wonders if the break in the undersea cables providing phone and internet service to the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia is for the purpose of putting in a tap.

Is one, perhaps, a tad paranoid?

God I wish I could be half as witty and succinct.

Jen, I added your link to the front-page post.

ADMedievalist, you should have seen how much fun I had with "America has lost its innocence" in the wake of 9/11.

Haven't you forgotten one?

We've turned the corner at last! In six months, tops, we'll be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Phil, I know it's in the same spirit, but I can only use that story if its headline says "Top Al Qaeda Leader Killed."

Fragano: Well, now we're *both* paranoid. Damn.

Teresa: all glory to Kung Fu Monkey! (and, you know, the Hypnotoad.)

Kip W: Oh, is it time for us to turn our friedmanglasses over and watch the sand run down again?

Fragano, for some reason your question about excessive paranoia reminds me that a year ago this very day, Boston was attacked by Mooninites. (Had fun with that one, too.)

Teresa #11; agreed, there's all the difference in the world between what's baldly announced and what is conveyed with winks and codewords. (BTW, your post was laugh out loud funny and I hope it gets linked everywhere.) I wonder how far up the AQ organisation you have to be to get a white cat.

(TTTO I'll Take You Home again Kathleen)

We kill you dead again top guy,
Another leader will sprout up, though
We kill you dead again top guy,
Recruiting brings in thousands more.

We kill you dead again top guy,
The jerks in Washington aren't clueless,
For clueless is too kind a word,
For what those vermin have all wrought.

We kill you dead again top guy,
But your legions they are endless
Until there's DC regime change,
The terrorists will have their way.

=========================

Are you dead yet
Are you dead yet
Bin Laden, Bin Laden?
Cheney doesn't care 'bout
Cheney doesn't care 'bout
What you do, what you do.

Are you gone yet,
Are you gone yet
Al-Aqaida, Al-Qaida
Cheney helps recruit for
Cheney helps recruit for
Terrorists, terrorists.

Fragano @ 5... Is one, perhaps, a tad paranoid?

If you were from Eastern Europe, I'd ask if one is a tad pole, but you're not, so I won't.

Who was it who said that #3 slots in al Qaeda are like being the drummer in Spinal Tap?

How many organizational layers below the Eddorians have they worked through now?

Jen, #2: Thanks for that link! I've seen it before, but the line, "I am not spotting him 800 million Hindus! I call shenanigans!" never fails to reduce me to helpless giggles for at least 5 minutes.

Tsk. You people. Can't you see that this is proof that the War on Terror Against Us is working?

Another four years for Bush and the whole problem should be licked. Write your congressman!
[/snark]

#8: Or I, with may sound like science fiction.

So, the arrival of this data coincided with the arrival of Office 2008 on my computer. I decided to see if it was all that good. I went to all of the stories, got the exact date, and put it in a table. I had Excel calculate the TTL for each #3, throwing out the gag one from May.

Not knowing shite about statistics, I boldly added a trendline, decided the data looked like a 3rd order polynomial, and extrapolated the next three dates that looked good on the chart.

I can tell you will all the confidence I have in this data set that we should get Al Qaeda's #3 on April 20th, August 10th, and February 26th (assuming we haven't changed tactics by then).

See? The surge is working!™

Westley: [as he is unsuccessfully fighting Fezzik] Look, are you just fiddling around with me or what?
Fezzik: I just want you to feel you're doing well. I hate for people to die embarrassed.

My first thought was to compare them to red-shirted ensigns on away missions. (Or is that too obvious?)

"Top Al Qaeda Leader Killed" quasi-scans, with some effort, to the William Tell Overture. Just saying.

Also "Will Ye No Come Back Again?", and "Camptown Ladies". I got my money on the Baghdad Mayor, somebody bet on the Bey.

Maybe the problem is that Al Qaeda has an organizational structure such that there are 10,000 #3 slots, sort of like sargeants in the army?

Call it the Spartacus Effect.

Teresa #13: The dangers of attack by LED are clearly underexplored.

Serge #16: I'm not going to touch that one with an eleven-foot Ukranian.

Connie H@26

No, no. Actually they're all the same person. They just keep rerunning the story...

:-)

Overheard in the office of the CIA Resident, Islamabad.

"Hey, boss, there#s the ayrab wants to talk to you. Say he wants to work for us."

"So what's his story this time? Another Osama sighting?"

"Well, he's a really old guy, and he says he's spent a few years up in the Himalaya. And he says his parents were English. Well, one of them was Irish. Sounds like hippies who went native."

"Doesn't sound any good."

"Anyway, he says his enemies are trying to make him number three in Al Qaeda, and he figures that we might not kill him if he's working for us."

"And he expects us to believe that. You have his name for the file?"

"Kimball O'Hara...."

29: or they're all one person and he cannot be killed. Like Blofeld or something.

30: ...their number 3, a swarthy thug in the poshteen coat of a Peshwari, glanced at me for a moment with piercing blue eyes. In a flash, I noticed the Old Etonian tiepin on his turban.
'Good God!' I choked. 'Sandy Arbuthnot, you old fox! What are you doing here?'
'Hush, Dick! Not a word!' he whispered, with the delighted grin of a schoolboy...

Avram, that one's mine -- but I can't be the only one who's said it.

The way I imagine it is in a high-level meeting within the army. Another large military installation was suicide-blown-up by another of the horde of Al-queda creative vice presidents this afternoon. A bunch of generals are urgently debating the least damaging way of spinning the story to the media.

Young general: "Military installation gone to great snafu in the sky at 2pm today"?
Another young general: Ummm... "Military installation losses down 100% since 2pm today?"
Old general: *clears throat* (room falls silent)
Old general: Ahem. "A top Al-queda leader was killed at 2pm today."
Young general: *awe*
Old general: That's the way we spin it here, son. You'll learn.

Dave Bell #30: O Very Old Friend of All the World...

I wonder if they have to share classes with the nameless henchmen at the super secret Nameless Henchman University or does someone tap them on the shoulder and say, "You know, we just lost, Mustafa. So, you're our top Al Qaeda leader now. Be careful out there."?

It just occurred to me--clearly what's happening here is that there's some TV show none of us have ever heard of, called Al Qaeda's Next Top Leader, and for some reason, people keep competing on it even though the prize is being killed. Considering that America's Next Top Model has gone through nine "cycles" since 2003, I'm guessing they have roughly similar production schedules.

Al Qaeda seems to have as many Number Threes as The Prisoner's Village had Twos.

The champ is still the newspaper in New England which carefully saved the Pentagon's weekly body count press releases through the Viet Nam War, and announced that the war was over when the body count equaled the total population.

The champ is still the newspaper in New England which carefully saved the Pentagon's weekly body count press releases through the Viet Nam War, and announced that the war was over when the body count equaled the total population.

It's obvious -- Al Qaeda's #3 is required to wear a red shirt.

Surely this is the reason we are at war with Al Qaeda. They perfected cloning technology and won't share it with anyone.

JackV #33- have you worked for them or something? I am in awe of the spin you just suggested there. What makes it worse is that it matches the spin that has been used in real life...

ethan #36: It's probably on Al Jazeera. Though maybe each time a candidate gets removed from the running, they *become* the next #3, don the obligatory bullseye shirt, and go hang out in places frequented by US soldiers and quislings, hoping the end will be quick.

Teresa #8: Didn't we lose our innocence after Katrina, too? This is reminding me of an article I read once, describing an apparently real plastic surgery that gets a certain amount of (mostly non-US-origin) business, restoring womens' virginity. Apparently, the US gets this surgery once every generation or so.

Joel Polowin @ 18

LOL, that's a good one. We haven't even gotten to Helmuth yet. If US intelligence ever bounces off what passes for a Plooran in AQ land, they won't have a clue.

Lee @19: it has that effect on me as well. Truly one of the Great Blog Posts of Our Time.

ethan @ #36

Brilliant!

And BBC News has Top al-Qaeda commander 'killed'

An odd quirk with BBC News headlines is that they often use quotes to note a reference from a source text. However, that kind of quote can also be read with a quotey-fingers I-don't-believe-it meaning.

Also, we had tha added bonus of invading Pakistan's borders without permission in a military strike that will serve to make Pervez Musharraf look ineffectual

Go team Bush!

I arrive here via a link from a two-year old post on Neil Gaiman's blog in which he quoted you at length about finding an agent. I'm a student getting my MFA in fiction, working on a novel, so naturally I am hearing things about getting an agent and about getting published. So your letter to him, which started with this: "1. If you're writing fiction, the True Secret Answer is "get an offer." If you've got an offer, you can get an agent. If you don't have an offer, you don't want the kind of agent you're likely to get," gave me pause.

I wonder if you would mind explaining how one goes about getting an offer without an agent. Not to sound like a noob, but as I'm OBVIOUSLY A NOOB, are you saying send your work to publishers without an agant? Query publishers without an agent? Sit in a cafe next door to the publisher's headquarters wearing a beret and an artistic expression, scribbling on a large, impossible to miss notepad with a flamboyant quill pen until someone from the publisher' s office notices you and asks what you are writing? Climb to the top of the publisher's building (possibly wearing a gorilla suit or a fairy costume) and refuse to leave until someone reads your manuscript?

Wouldn't it be easier to just get an agent? I'm terribly confused and would appreciate the additional information.

Respectfully yours,

A. Buonarroti

ajay @ 31: r they're all one person and he cannot be killed. Like Blofeld or something.

Maybe they need to try the "stake through the heart, then cut off head, stuff mouth with garlic and bury it at a crossroads" method to keep him from coming back?

ajay @ 31: Maybe #3 in al-Queda is Kenny McCormick's day job.

Maybe this is too obvious, but aside from the issue of "is this doing any good?" it's perfectly reasonable for us to be killing the #3 guy repeatedly. There's *always* "a top AQ official" guy, by definition. We off one, and a new guy takes his place. Would you be surprised by the following set of headlines?

Top plate removed at cafeteria salad line!
Top plate removed at cafeteria salad line!
Top plate removed at cafeteria salad line!
Top plate removed at cafeteria salad line!
Top plate removed at cafeteria salad line!
Top plate removed at cafeteria salad line!
Top plate removed at cafeteria salad line!
Top plate removed at cafeteria salad line!

Now, why they are so easy to pick off may just be natural selection. Clearly, the #2 and #1 guys are good. They know what they're doing. But #3 and down not so much. And it just gets worse as we move down the seniority scale to replace the #3 last shot.

Via /.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/third-undersea-cable-reportedly-cut/story.aspx?guid=%7B1AAB2A79-E983-4E0E-BC39-68A120DC16D9%7D

Third undersea cable reportedly cut between Sri Lanka, Suez

DUBAI (Zawya Dow Jones)--A third undersea fibre optic cable running through the Suez to Sri Lanka was cut Friday, said a Flag official.
Two other fiber optic cables owned by Flag Telecom and consortium SEA-ME-WE 4 located near Alexandria, Egypt, were damaged Wednesday leading to a slowdown in Internet and telephone services in the Middle East and South Asia.
"We had another cut today between Dubai and Muscat three hours back. The cable was about 80G capacity, it had telephone, Internet data, everything," one Flag official, who declined to be named, told Zawya Dow Jones.
The cable, known as Falcon, delivers services to countries in the Mediterranean and Gulf region, he added.
"It may take sometime to fix the cut but we are rerouting the traffic to another cable in the U.K. and U.S., the bandwidth utilization will go down," the official said.
There are conflicting reports of how the two Alexandria cables were cut. Oman's largest telecom, Omantel, said a tropical storm caused the damage while the United Arab Emirates' second largest telecom, said the cables were cut due to ships dragging their anchors.
"It's ship anchoring," said the Flag official.

--------

Internet traffic report says 100% packet loss to Iran.

http://www.internettrafficreport.com/asia.htm

--------

...and on the Friday afternoon, before Superbowl weekend, when everyone's TV will be tuned to Fox (and away from the other networks), too. I really, really hope this all an unfortunate coincidence.

A. Buonarroti at #49:

You'll want to read this: "On the getting of agents."

Then come back and ask further thoughtful questions. I recommend you find the most recent "Open Thread" on Making Light and post there (since any topic is fair game). The local hangers-out are usually eager to discuss such issues at length.

I'm not an editor, publisher, or book author, just a physicist, but I believe the answers to today's questions are:

Yes, submit your writing without an agent;

No, submitting a whole manuscript is better than a query if you are an unpublished fiction writer;

Maybe on the beret and quill, but don't say I encouraged you;

The gorilla suit ploy is frowned upon, except perhaps on National Gorilla Suit Day, which, I am sad to report, you missed, as it occurred yesterday.

George Smiley #53: Okay, my paranoia level went up about three notches when I saw that report this morning. Now, will someone explain to me either that this is just one of those screw ups that happen in series or that I really do have reason to be paranoid?

Who benefits from the cut cables and reduced Internet coverage to parts of the Middle East?

Earl #55: Who benefited when "patriotic hackers" (that was what the administration PR folks said) shut down the Al Jazeera website during the Iraq invasion?

The obvious guess is that something big and unpleasant is about to go down in Iran, and someone would like to avoid inconvenient footage showing up on YouTube, realtime discussions of what's happening, messages for sleeper agents coming out over the net, or some such thing. Alternatively, this might be some kind of terrorist attack, blackmail scheme (how much can you demand from the telecom companies if you can threaten to take out their cables?), installation of tapping equipment (I don't know much about undersea cables, but this doesn't sound real plausible to me), etc.

The fact that Our Government is so on top of things that it knows both the names of the top members of the Al Qa'eda Organization and the names of the people killed in miscellaneous bombing raids makes me feel more confident of our omniscience, of course, but I do have to wonder why we can't find out where Osama bin Ladin is and kill _him_, assuming that we still want to do that.

If I were being paranoid...

The reason to cut it now is because we suspect something, and this lets us sniff all the data which gets re-routed.

Don Fitch... yeah, that always gets me. We know who the number 2/3 guys are, and where to find them, but we can't follow that up to locate the number 1 guy; the one we say this is all about catching.

Don #57: Unfortunately, we can know either Osama Bin Laden's position or his momentum, but not both.

It seems that Iran is not cut off from the internet, just that one server is down. This comment thread on Reddit has links to various websites in Iran that are (as of right now) still working.

We have top men working on it now....Top. Men. - Raiders of the Lost Ark

All together, now...

Once is happenstance....

There's just two Al-Qaeda leaders
And I just became the third.
Don't know why I got this big promotion
Or what's doing with the Kurds.
Spent my whole life just digging up Osama's shallow grave
For the two Al-Qaeda leaders
And the third one they just made.

A rich man once told me,
"Hey, life's a funny thing."
A poor man once told me,
That he can't afford to speak.
Now I'm just in the middle like a bird without a beak,
'Cause there's two Al-Qaeda leaders...

So I went to the President,
And I asked old What's-His-Name,
If he'd ever done insurgence,
or something like the same.
He just started talking like he was on TV:
"If there's just two Al-Qaeda leaders,
What do you want from me?"

So I bought myself a dynamite vest
And a silver Koran.
And I'll gladly tell the ladies to bugger off to Amman.
'Cause I have to keep my self-respect,
I'll never be a star,
Since there's just two Al-Qaeda leaders,
And I am...Number Three.

The headline I'd really like to see might read something like this:

"Top Al-Qaeda Leader Defects To the U.S., Bemoans Lack Of Saudi Funding"

Weak al-Ibi: "You don't understand! I'm 'Al Qaeda Number Three'! I'm expendable! I'm the guy who dies in the attack just to show how effective the 'War on Terror' is!"

Reminds me of a particular Girl Genius comic, only without the Jaegers.

TomB, #59: *snork!*

David, #63: Not bad! Was there any particular tune you had in mind? My brain keeps wanting to scan it to something C&W-ish, loosely related to "The Preacher and the Bear".

Lee@67: I was going specifically off of a song from They Might Be Giants' first album, entitled "Number Three". It does have a C&W sort of sound to it. If you don't know it, you may be giving me too much credit....

Here's a link to the lyrics.

And here's a YouTube video using it.

Maybe he regenerates in a different body!

Lee @68: It's Number Three by They Might Be Giants (with great new lyrics!)

Well, a fourth internet cable connecting the Middle East has been cut, and it's been reported that two earlier cables turn out not to have been cut by ship anchors after all.

Dave Bell @ 63 + Earl Cooley II @ 72

And if 3 times is enemy action, then 4 times must be a declaration of war.

There have been cases when an underwater event has cut most, or all, cables serving a region. I think there was an incident on the Grand Banks that messed up Trans-Atlantic cables, and there was a similar event a year or two back affecting Taiwan and Japan.

But these were georgraphically localised, and this batch of cable breaks affecting the Middle East isnn't.

I recall another common-failure event, where supposedly independent circuits in the USA went over the same bridge, and floods took it out. Different owners for the cable, but they'd taken the same route (I think this was back in the late Nineties).

It's not clear whether there were three or four events--two breaks seem closely linked--but it's still worth watching.

I doubt it's possible to isolate any large region from the rest of the world anymore, short of shooting down a large number of geosynchronous satellites, something that's very difficult and has not to my knowledge ever been attempted even as a test against a single target at a time.* There are just too many alternative circuits available everywhere.** Terry may be right that it's a ploy to get better access to traffic for signal intelligence; it might also be a message to the governments of the region from some insurgent group that their access could be cut (even if that's not possible, politicians might not realize or believe that).

* Hitting something in geosync is much harder to do than taking out a target in LEO, something that only 3 nations have ever done even in testing. It also takes quite a bit longer to get the missle to the target, so it's much more likely to be detected and backtracked.
** I was in Facilities Control at the primary military comm center in Vietnam the morning the main cable from the Phillipines was cut. That took out about 90% of the operating capacity of the eastbound traffic from that part of Asia to the US; we had restored more than half of that bandwidth within less than 3 hours IIRC, mostly using westbound circuits and partly-idle radio links. At the time, all our satellite capability was one voice link or 16 teletype channels, between us and Australia. Capacity now almost anywhere is orders of magnitudes more.

guthrie @ 42: God no! I'm a 26-year-old mostly liberal semi-pacifist software engineer in the UK :) But it's the kind of thing PartiallyClips or XKCD would do and I've become attuned to seeing the MOST spin that could possibly be imparted, just sometimes.

Jonathan Birge @ 52: That interpretation also occurred to me, obviously, indeed, you ideally keep *on* killing the #3 guy. However it didn't seem initially plausible to me that the organisation is centralised enough that there is always an identifiable #3 guy, yet decentralised enough that even if the #3 guy is killed fifteen times it doesn't start falling apart.

Of course, there could be many leaders of cells in large areas, or important but non-hierarchical guys, and it is likely most of them would get killed in an ongoing campaign, so the quotes would be accurate in that sense -- but I think it supports the point that the original list was making, that this is at best a bit of a stretch, even if not actually a distortion.

Jack V: part of this is that there is (and I assume it's intended to happen on the part of the Administration) conflation of groups like, "Al Qaeda in Iraq" with Al Qaeda.

Am I the only one who keeps picturing some guy in a coffee shop in Pakistan hearing the news, widening his eyes, shouting "Then I'm king o' the cats!" and high-tailing it out the door?

Re: internet outage in Middle East. Here in Egypt, where the incident actually happened in the first place, we were told the cable was hit (not cut, just roughly hit) by a ship anchor; the ship had been denied entry into the Alexandria Port, and thus turned around and took a wrong turn into an area it was never supposed to enter. No news of subsequent incidents have been relayed by the local media.

It sounds like the whole thing is being covered up, so that sets my tinhat-bells off, too.

The internet has been back here for two days, now, by the way. If Iran is still cut off (or majorly slowed down, as we were), this'd be very suspicious.

Xopher @78: Thank you. I needed that laugh.

All,

Is it a bad thing for these people to be removed? (Notwithstanding armchair online sub-urban experts saying these people are a dime a dozen). I mean, no matter which way you vote, how is this bad? Unless Theresa's post is merely a commentary on unimaginative journalism?

Does me asking these questions make you guys think I prefer Robert Heinlein to Samuel R. Delaney?

All good questions, people.

S.W.E

81: not sure I entirely care for the tone you're taking there, old boy.
But, assuming you are being serious:

1) we've seen an awful lot of people captured who were announced as 'a senior AQ official' and later turned out to be, say, limo drivers or footsoldiers or innocent bystanders. So it's rational to be suspicious that the ones we kill are of similarly varying quality.

2) the continued stream of 'top AQ leaders' killed is accompanied by the continuation in rude health of the two top AQ leaders that anyone had ever actually heard of: Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. We don't seem able to reach any top AQ leaders who are actually, you know, at the top of AQ.

3) it's generally better to capture than to kill, for intelligence reasons; Terry Karney can, I am sure, give more detail on this than I can.

4) if we're killing fifteen civilians to get at one supposed "top AQ leader", then, yes, that might indeed be a bad thing.

5) Just for your information, I actually do prefer Robert Heinlein to Samuel Delany. I wasn't aware that was a mark of seriousness; if it is, I will now undo its effects by announcing that I prefer Ken MacLeod to SM Stirling.

I prefer H.P. Lovecraft to Edgar Allan Poe.

I prefer trials to assassinations, effort spent in capturing bin Laden to killing people we've never heard of till they're dead, and Clark Ashton Smith to HP Lovecraft.

Tone?

1) We know this for a fact?

2) AQ is franchised now. You're talking about the symbolic or aspirational leadership as opposed to regional emirs. The reason those guys ain't been got is... wait for it... it's hard. It's not Hollywood out there people.

3) Obviously. That's why these people make attempts at capturing them a life-threatening endeavor for the regular and SF soldiers given the job.

4) Agreed. Unless doing so stops that person killing 150 or 300, or...

5) Actually I haven't read Delaney in years. I'm more of an Ian M. Banks or Alistair Reynolds type.

Toodle-pip!

ethan @ 83... I prefer H.P. Lovecraft to Edgar Allan Poe... Abi @ 84... I prefer (...) Clark Ashton Smith to HP Lovecraft

Poe vs Lovecraft? That reminds me of a novel by John Morressy where religion wars are going on about that. I don't remember if there was a splinter faction involving Smith though.

SW Erdnase @85:

I can't answer to ethan's view of your tone, but I find the "kill all; God will know his own" pretty unconvincing, myself.

1) We do. For instance, this report (pdf), based on the DoD's own documentation of the prisoners at Guantanamo, concludes that:

Only 8% of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40% have no definitive connection with al Qaeda at all and 18% are have no definitive affiliation with either al Qaeda or the Taliban.

Remember, this is the case for the prosecution they're summarizing (or as much of it as is publicly available). The defense may feel that the above numbers are substantially off. And connection is defined very loosely:

Al-Qaeda leaders could dispatch one of their own -- someone who is not top tier...to recruit someone and to tell them, I have been given a mandate to do this on behalf of senior al-Qaeda leaders... even though perhaps this individual has never sworn an official oath and this person has never been to an al-Quaeda training camp, nor have they actually met, say, Osama bin Ladin.*

That's "my mate knows a fella..." levels of association. Not very convincing.

The White House, meanwhile, characterises the people sent to Gurantanamo thusly:

These aren't common criminals, or bystanders accidentally swept up on the battlefield -- we have in place a rigorous process to ensure those held at Guantanamo Bay belong at Guantanamo. Those held at Guantanamo include suspected bomb makers, terrorist trainers, recruiters and facilitators, and potential suicide bombers.

In a nation, and a judicial tradition built on the idea that someone is innocent until proven guilty, this is the best we can do? No sale.

2) Oh, yes, the it's hard. It's not Hollywood out there people meme. That's worth 10 points on troll bingo, you know. But I do find that the genuine soldiers and former military who post here tend not to take that line. It's the wannabes that always go for the "war is hard, so we do bad things" approach. And it is Hollywood. It's Rambo.

3) vide supra

4) Ah yes, the unprovable hypothetical. Why don't you come back with some evidence and try that one again? Because until then, I reserve the right to prefer to count the real costs, not the imaginary ones.

5) Banks is very good; Reynolds has never lit my fire.

Tattie byes!

-----
* elisions in the original

85: Yes, tone. Saying things like "online suburban armchair experts" and "whichever way you vote". People here use words for a living - we notice these things.

(Also: Delany. Teresa. Iain M Banks.)

One picked nit, abi, which is that it was ajay who brought up the "tone" issue, not me. Which is not to say that I don't feel the same way.

Otherwise: what abi said.

ethan, a thousand apologies*.

-----
* Even if you are a Lovecraftian. I'm sure you just fell in with a bad crowd at an impressionable age.

I'm sure you just fell in with a bad crowd at an impressionable age.

Yeah. This crowd, and I haven't had a birthday since, so this age, too.

You do remind me, though, that I've been meaning to read some of Klarkash-Ton's work.

ethan @91:
This crowd.

Oh dearohdearohdear. The very worst, then.

I'd have a holy war about it, but there's this strange thing on my head, like a turban, or a headdress...

abi @92 I'd have a holy war about it, but there's this strange thing on my head, like a turban, or a headdress...

...but probably not one of these?

Debbie @93:

Infidel! Heretic! Don't accuse me of wearing Cthulhu gear.

I am, of course, referring to a Clark Ashton Smith story. *dignified sniff*

abi --

Perish the thought! Make that "...probably definitely not one of these." (Not even for Karneval?)

abi @ 94... What is Chtulhu gear? Pentacles or tentacles? No matter what, you should take it easy and let calamari heads prevail.

..hmm. "Pentacle" rhymes with "tentacle".

*makes mental note of fact in advance of next inevitable outbreak of Cthulhu poetry*

ichor/biker
famous/squamous
Nyarlotep: dammit.

ajay @97:
pentacle/tentacle?

That sounds like the start of a mnemonic for making the Eldrich Sign of Cthulhu.

Pentacle, tentacle, wattles and watch, perhaps?

Or would it be longer?

Pentacle, tentacle, squamous old squid,
Fragmented sanity, ego and id

Tattle, unspeakable...

If Cthulhu in rhyme is inevitable,
Then Osama bin Laden's expendable.
Alas for the thread!
Just look where this led!
It's all really very regrettable.

abi -- catchy!

Debbi @ 100 Then Osama bin Laden's expendable.

Considering how many Number Threes he has, shouldn't he be expandable?

David Goldfarb @ 69

That would probably explain why the tune my mind leapt to wasn't fitting it. I got to
A rich man once told me,
"Hey, life's a funny thing."
A poor man once told me,
That he can't afford to speak.
and immediately started trying to make it fit "Bird on a Wire".

SW #81:

My take on this is that I'm pretty skeptical that we're really getting very high ranking folks in AQ as often as is being claimed. This is like the way police spokesmen announce some moderately successful drug raid as netting eighteen gazillion dollars worth of cocaine, or the way the introduction of an obscure paper on an insanely impractical cryptographic protocol to do some oddball thing will talk about important implications for electronic voting, digital cash, and privacy-protecting databases.

Organizations routinely puff up the importance of their accomplishments. This isn't news.

S.W. Erdnase:
Tone? I’ll address tone.
1) We know this for a fact?
2) AQ is franchised now. You're talking about the symbolic or aspirational leadership as opposed to regional emirs. The reason those guys ain't been got is... wait for it... it's hard. It's not Hollywood out there people.
3) Obviously. That's why these people make attempts at capturing them a life-threatening endeavor for the regular and SF soldiers given the job.

We don’t know any of those for facts, and number one is false on its face.

Al Qaeda is branded. Anyone who has a grudge against the US, and wants a mantle of authority/sense of dread can call himself, Al Qaeda in “x”.

Your second statement is true, insofar as it goes, but since a number of those, “Number Three”s on that list. Since some were identified from the rubble of destroyed buildings (including the Number 3, who was Number 1 of Al Qaeda in Iraq, a guy I’d really like to have seen across the table) it seems killing them has taken higher priority than capturing them.

From PsyOp standpoint that’s also bad. It would be far better to have people kicking in the doors of these guys, and making them nervous every time they set up shop. If we know where they are enough to bomb them, we can go after them. I think, if they are that high in the power structure, we ought to take the risk. We haven’t. That tells me either they aren’t that important, or we are doing it stupidly. Take your pick; both are bad.

4) Agreed. Unless doing so stops that person killing 150 or 300, or...

Objection: Assumes facts not in evidence. 1: That each of these guys is actually in Al Qaeda, 2: That killing them, instead of capturing them is going to save more people. If they know of plans in motion, killing them won’t stop them; additionally it fails to take into account the effect of the deaths of the other people on the hostility to the US/West.

So the tone of your comments it, at best, snarky, at worst it presumes an understanding of events that subsequent explanation shows to be less than complete, and in many ways counterproductive/wrong.

In short, you are repeating propaganda, and daring people to disagree with the a priori assumptions packed into the questions. Since those assumptions are flawed, the questions are as well. To impute that those who disagree with our are; because of those assumptions wrong, well it’s not polite. Mocking them with glib one-liners (...wait for it... it’s not Hollywood out there people) implies either a lack of appreciation for effective persuasion, or a desire to offend.

As for what I know/think/vote... the last is immaterial, not worthy of being brought up by reasonable people in a conversation which isn’t about politics. I’m not an armchair strategist. I’m an Army interrogator, OIF-1 vet, instructor of the art and tolerably versed in the subject. You are... no one I’ve ever heard of, which; on its face, means nothing, but to challenge the credentials of people you don’t know, while failing to provide any bona fides of your own, well again it’s not polite.

The closest we have to any such from you are comments about having just gotten back from a stint in the Middle East. That’s thin broth to hang the rest on.

If you want to discuss the merits of getting (even killing, if it comes down to that) the upper echelons of Al Qaeda, have at.

I can say, for myself, that doing so strikes me as a good idea. If, however, you are looking at the atual discussion (which is wondering if 1: that's what's going on, and 2: if we are actually trying to best effect the capture of the people we say we are killing).

I don't think you'll get much disagreement, if that's what you want to talk about.

My point was to challenge the default position, which appears to be cynicism about anything reported on this matter. It was an honest question with, I thought, enough clues to show that I am not a troll - but instead a long time lurker on this page.

I had forgotten I mentioned coming back from the ME. That's irrelevant. I'm not trying to assert any expertise on the subject - I'm just interested in it. Even if it was relevant, I wouldn't fly that flag here.

Next time I'll leave out the sarcastic comments. People are surely sensitive around here. My apologies.

SW Erdnase @105:

I think there are good grounds for cynicism. There is plenty of evidence that official channels are, to mix a metaphor, unreliable narrators. These are the people who told me there were WMD's in Iraq, for instance. They also told me the war was over years ago.

I'd want to see more that talking points disguised as sarcastic and needling questions before I rethink my default position. Next time try evidence.

People are surely sensitive around here.

Excellent. I'll add that to the list.

Okay then.

S.W.Erdnase, it's not that people are sensitive, it's that we have to use the cues of your tone to decide whether you're interested in discussion or in making yourself feel TOTALLY AWESOME by getting people riled up. Based on your first post, you seemed borderline to ajay and others, hence the serious responses to your question and the notes about your tone. This makes sense, yesno?

So, for future reference: if you're interested in seriously discussing an issue, leave out the jokey sarcasm, and if you're interested in trolling, intensify it. That way, your intentions will be clearer.

To add to ethan's comment, another thing you could do to convince us that you're interested in a discussion rather than just stirring the pot would be to do some actual research, and maybe even cite some facts.

Google. Read things. Primary evidence is good, reliable commentary can be useful too. State a view and support it with facts. Bring links.

Just asking idle questions and expecting us to do the legwork isn't really the mark of someone interested in a real discussion. At best, you're saying "spoon-feed me". At worst, "jump through my hoops."

S. W. Erdnase (#105): I'm not trying to be contentious. I'm going to explain what about how you said it got me thinking you were trying to be snarky, and claim expertise.

Saying those who were skeptical were suburban armchair strategists implies you think they don't know what they are talking about, and that you do, esp. when coupled to the comment about this not being Hollywood.

That says, when combined, that the people here haven't thought about it. Haven't weighed what the administration has said (often) against what it has done.

If those sorts of things were left out, the actual question would have been much better receieved, at least by me.

Thanks, all.

Good advice, I think. Though I note many exceptions to the rules you impose within this thread in the sense of similar sarcastic or non-sequitur comments that don't provoke reactions like the ones I've received. I suppose familiarity has it's benefits. Just saying, is all. The last gasp of a chap clobbered by an unforeseen zeitgeist.

Anyway, I'll take all comments on board for future excursions and apologies if I came on too glib/strong.

Terry Karney, especially, you're points are well taken. That was lame of me. Apologies.

S.W.E

So... back to Cthulhu, everyone?

Do stick around and join in the mindless unholy gibbering, SWE, by the way. Everyone gets smacked down by the others here from time to time, even the regulars. Don't take it to heart. Anyone who reads Banks and Reynolds can't be all bad.

#112 ajay:

It's a strange conversation in which "So, back to Cthulu" is a tension-relieving thing to say....

It's a strange conversation in which "So, back to Cthulu" is a tension-relieving thing to say....

You're new here, aren't you. I can tell.

By stunning coincidence, I was thinking about the Cthulhu mythos today.

I think the loss of the undersea Internet cables is the first move in a war between Cthulhu and his ilk and the FSM. Put simply, I think the cables looked too much like pasta to be let to lie.

Next step: civil war in the pasta calamari.

(As a Klarkash-Ton disciple myself, well, we're the flowers on the table. We're flowers with faces, of course, and we drink blood, but we're not involved in this one.)

115: that wouldn't be a stunning coincidence for me. A day without squamousness is like a day without sunshine.

Actually, it reminds me more of the opening of "The Kraken Wakes". Next, strange reddish meteors. Then ships start disappearing. After that, Teh 1950s British Squamous Horror kicks off Hammer-style.

abi, ajay -- you aren't the only ones who've noticed connections among various elements of this thread....

Now, to me, that makes perfect sense. Where's my d10?

SW Erdnase @118:
Where's my d10?

For this game, you need one of those dice whose shape varies depending on which angle you look at it from, assuming you can look at it for long without going slightly mad.

It's carven from bone, but it feels slightly slick, a little greasy, in the hand. Touching it, you feel the impulse to wipe your hand on something, though when you do no residue is left.

The symbols on the faces are etched in silver, and are in no known writing system.

It's the kind of die that gives a flat, toneless clack as it hits the table, rolls once or twice in a desultory fashion, like a recalcitrant child determined to give you the worst result, then sits menacingly, waiting to be read.

Here, borrow mine.

abi @ 119... it feels slightly slick, a little greasy, in the hand. Touching it, you feel the impulse to wipe your hand on something, though when you do no residue is left

That sounds eeriely like the reaction of a woman I know whenever she sees Tim Curry on TV.

abi: is that the squamous model or the glabrous one? The glabrous roll better. Might be your problem right there.

"...then sits menacingly waiting to be read."

I hate that. But I hate it more when it sits for a while then flips and settles on a baaaaad number just as you're about to pick it up. Random number generator my ass.

See, the glabrous may roll better, but the squamous ones stop better. Particularly on my rugose table top.

And dice are stupid, and have never heard of reverse psychology.

#122 abi:

It's not that they're stupid. They just seem that way, because they have no memory....

The Laser Sharks have been busy again: a fifth middle east internet cable has been cut.

Damn laser sharks!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to an overseas URL.

SWE, I haven't seen abi ask, so I'll fill in. How's your poetry?

Rusty. It's a long time since I was a mawkish college student in the English Lit faculty. Is that a serious question?

I do love poetry through. Wallace Stevens is a favorite.

As an aside to the Cthulhu tangent and now that you mention poetry, interesting how squamous in Middle English meant "Squeamish" rather than "covered in scales". As in "Of fartynge he was squamous". Or not, I suppose.

Just me?

Did I mention I also enjoy Chaucer?

119: I ran into dice like that once. I should have known; everyone told me it was the Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game in New York. I just didn't know exactly how old that made it. Or that "floating" wasn't quite as accurate a description as "recently-surfaced".
I'm still not sure how much I lost that evening...

I'm still not sure how much I lost that evening...

You think there may have been some intangibles lost/taken/consumed or contractually committed?

Random comment related to AQ #3s being killed: Apparently, the administration says it may still need to do some water torture[1] from time to time. BBC story

[1] Calling it waterboarding is a good PR technique for the bad guys, because it sounds kinda harmless. Water torture is what it was called back when the Inquisition or did it.

130: all I know is that it's a lot more dicey cycling to work when you don't show up in rear-view mirrors.

Didn't realise it when I wrote 129, but of course "Guys and Dolls" is all about someone playing dice for human souls.
That's creepy as hell when you think about it.