Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
What happens when the folks in DC do not do their homework...Realize that you aren't going to defeat AQ? That would be a good start. You can marginalize them, reduce their damage ability to a bearable level and it would help if everyone would realize they are not a military problem and they are not going to be defeated -- indeed, by upping their threat appearance and wrongly using military effort we merely enhanced their appeal temporarily.

Neither is Pakistan a military problem. Afghanistan is only one because we made it so...
That is exactly right, the Ends,Ways and Means strategic framework will not work with criminal/terrorist groups like that because there is no end! LE is a process and as long as we have people it will continue forever. AQ can be suppressed through proper techniques to where they are a manageable threat and it would be a heck of lot cheaper then a military option. Through proper asset seizure it would almost be self funding. Evey once in awhile the History Chanel runs programs about Pablo Escabar and they have a lot of interviews with DEA agents that created the plan. And yes they attacked him with a 5 rings analysis and figured out which COG's they needed to attack. They new it would work but even they were shocked how well and how fast it worked. It would have been over in a matter of months it wasn't for interference by the Columbian government, which finally changed their tune.