Pentagon Hones Its Strategy on Terrorism
5 Feb. NY Times - Pentagon Hones Its Strategy on Terrorism.
Quote:
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has completed a new, classified counterterrorism strategy that for the first time orders the military to focus on nine areas identified as necessary for any terrorist network to operate, senior Pentagon officials say, and warns that ill-conceived military operations could add to terrorists' ranks.
Dated Feb. 1, signed by Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and endorsed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the strategy document orders the Defense Department to undertake a broad campaign to find and attack or neutralize terrorist leaders, their havens, financial networks, methods of communication and ability to move around the globe. It also orders the military to focus on terrorist information-gathering systems, personnel and ideology...
A military officer said that among the classified parts were the specific terrorist networks and leadership to be targets, and projected timelines for those missions. Success will be achieved, the document states, when "violent extremist ideology and terrorist attacks" are "eliminated as a threat to the way of life of free and open societies," and with the establishment of "a global environment that is inhospitable to violent extremism, wherein countries have the capacity to govern their own territories" and "have in place laws, information sharing and other arrangements that allow them to defeat terrorists as they emerge."...
