1ncCovert ops declining nowMiller and DeYoung 6/12

(Karen DeYoung is associate editor and senior national security correspondent for the Washington Post. ,Greg Miller covers the intelligence beat for The Washington Post. He is a winner of an Overseas Press Club award for his contribution to a series of stories on the war in Afghanistan.https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/lawmakers-move-to-curb-1-billion-cia-program-to-train-syrian-rebels/2015/06/12/b0f45a9e-1114-11e5-adec-e82f8395c032_story.html )

Key lawmakers have moved to slash funding of a secret CIA operation to train and arm rebels in Syria, a move

that U.S. officials said reflects rising skepticism of the effectiveness of the agency program and the Obama

administration’s strategy in the Middle East. The House Intelligence Committee recently voted unanimously to cut as much

as 20 percent of the classified funds flowing into a CIA program that U.S. officials said has become one the agency’s largest

covert operations, with a budget approaching $1 billion a year.

Drawdowns in military presence increase covert warfare. Marshall’13

(Andrew Gavin Marshall is a 26-year old independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada. He has written for a number of publications, including AlterNet, Truthout, CounterPunch, Roarmag, and Occupy,)

Obama's global terror campaign is not only dependent upon his drone assassination program, but increasingly it has come to rely

upon the deployment of Special Operations forces in countries all over the world, reportedly between 70 and 120 countries at any one time. As Obama has sought to draw down the large-scale ground invasions of countries (as Bush pursued in Afghanistan and

Iraq), he has escalated the world of 'covert warfare,' largely outside the oversight of Congress and the public. One of the most important agencies in this global "secret war" is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC for short.

Covert operations cause a self-fulfilling prophecy of terrorism. The DA turns the case because it means the impact claims of the AFF are only recreated. Amhed’14

(Nafeez Ahmed is a bestselling author, investigative journalist and international security scholar. He has contributed to two major terrorism investigations in the US and UK, the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest, and has advised the Royal Military Academy Sandhust, British Foreign Office and US State Department, among government agencies.,http://www.mintpressnews.com/west-created-isis/196488/http://www.mintpressnews.com/west-created-isis/196488/)

Missing from the chorus of outrage, however, has been any acknowledgement of the integral role of covert US and British regional military intelligence strategy in empowering and even directly sponsoring the

very same virulent Islamist militants in Iraq, Syria and beyond, that went on to break away from al-Qaeda and form ‘ISIS’, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or now simply, the Islamic State (IS). Since 2003, Anglo-American power has secretly and openly coordinated direct and indirect support for Islamist terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda across the Middle East and North Africa. This ill-conceived patchwork geostrategy is a legacy of the persistent influence of neoconservative ideology, motivated by longstanding but often contradictory ambitions to dominate regional oil resources, defend an expansionist Israel, and in pursuit of these, re-draw the map of the Middle East. Now despite Pentagon denials that there will be boots on the ground – and Obama’s insistence that this would not be another “Iraq war” – local Kurdish military and intelligence sources confirm that US and German special operations forces are already “on the ground here. They are helping to support us in the attack.” US airstrikes on ISIS positions and arms supplies to the Kurds have also been accompanied by British RAF reconnaissance flights over the region and UK weapons shipments to Kurdish peshmerga forces.

Nuclear terror threat is high—increasing availability of nuclear weapons/materials, globalizationChristopher C. Joyner, Professor, International Law, Georgetown Unviersity and Alexander Ian Parkhouse, “Nuclear Terrorism in a Globalizing World: Assessing the Threat and the Emerging Management Regime,” STANFORD JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW v. 45, Summer 2009, p. 205.

The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. remain a stark reminder of the vulnerability of the United States to foreign terrorist strikes. Those events also raise serious concern over the prospect that terrorists might acquire and detonate nuclear weapons in order to achieve their radical aspirations. The reality of this threat is magnified today by the increasing availability of nuclear weapons, the inadequate security of nuclear materials, and magnified by the enhanced capability that globalization affords terrorist groups to plan, coordinate and launch transnational assaults on a large scale. n4 While an array of multilateral legal instruments and other international initiatives have emerged since 9/11, the ability to counter the threat of nuclear terrorism requires wider and closer cooperation among governments - circumstances that still appear to be lacking.

Nuclear terrorism escalates to global nuclear war, ensures extinction via nuclear winterDennis Ray Morgan, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Yangin Campus, South Korea, “World on Fire: Two Scenarios of the Destruction of Human Civilization and Possible Extinction of the Human Race,” FUTURES v. 41, 2009, pp. 683-93, ScienceDirect.

In a remarkable website on nuclear war, Carol Moore asks the question ‘‘Is Nuclear War Inevitable??’’ [10].4 In Section 1, Moore points out what most terrorists obviously already know about the nuclear tensions between powerful countries. No doubt, they’ve figured out that the best way to escalate these tensions into nuclear war is to set off a nuclear exchang e. As Moore points out, all that militant terrorists would have to do is get their hands on one small nuclear bomb and explode it on either Moscow or Israel. Because of the Russian ‘‘dead hand’’ system, ‘‘where regional nuclear commanders would be given full powers should Moscow be destroyed,’’ it is likely that any attack would be blamed on the U nited S tates’’ [10]. Israeli leaders and Zionist supporters have, likewise, stated for years that if Israel were to suffer a nuclear attack , whether from terrorists or a nation state, it would retaliate with the suicidal ‘‘Samson option’’ against all major Muslim cities in the Middle East. Furthermore, the Israeli Samson option would also include attacks on Russia and even ‘‘anti-Semitic’’ European cities [10]. In that case, of course, Russia would retaliate, and the U.S. would then retaliate against Russia. China would probably be involved as well, as thousands, if not tens of thousands, of nuclear warheads , many of them much more powerful than those used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would rain upon most of the major cities in the Northern Hemisphere . Afterwards, for years to come, massive radioactive clouds would drift throughout the Earth in the nuclear fallout, bringing death or else radiation disease that would be genetically transmitted to future generations in a nuclear winter that could last as long as a 100 years , taking a savage toll upon the environment and fragile ecosphere as well.

Links

GenericIraq and Afghanistan drawdowns prove Obama increases covert ops to compensateGoodman 13 [Melvin, veteran of the intelligence services, including twenty four years at the CIA, American Militarism: Costs and Consequences, http://www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/14926-american-militarism-costs-and-consequences]

Since the 9/11 attacks of 2001, the United States, using the pretense of a global war on terror, has gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan and has used military force in Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. It is no surprise that we now find ourselves overcommitted in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southwest Asia, which has become an "arc of crisis" for the United

States. President George W. Bush helped to create this arc with his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although President Obama has undertaken military disengagement in both countries, he has widened covert action throughout the

area as the Pentagon and the CIA conduct assassination programs against insurgents and terrorists. The United States may be closing down the arrogantly named "Camp Victory" in Iraq, but it is building secret facilities in Ethiopia, Djibouti, the Seychelles, and the Arabia Peninsula (presumably in Yemen or the

United Arab Emirates) as bases for Predator and Reaper drone aircraft. These drones have been used against targets in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, according to State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks, an anti-secrecy group.

Reductions in military presence are replaced by covert ops. Covert ops cause exacerbating tensions and more animosity.Bishara’10

(Marwan Bishara is Al Jazeera English's senior political analyst and the editor,http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/imperium/2010/08/2558.html)

While the Obama administration continues to affirm its intention to withdraw US troops from Iraq and

Afghanistan, the US' military presence in the Muslim world is actually expanding and this is exacerbating tensions and inflaming animosities. Barack Obama's promise to open a new page with the Muslim world on the basis of mutual respect and interests - supplemented and enforced by the use of soft rather than hard power - now rings hollow. This is most evident in the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq and the corresponding surge in Afghanistan - an exercise in redeploying military forces, not extracting them. As the gap between words and deeds declarations and policies public diplomacy and military strategy deepens, so the political and strategic crisis facing the Obama administration continues to deepen. Enduring presence There are now more than 140,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan - from the 100,000 Americans to the three Austrians - in an estimated 400 bases. But, almost a decade after it invaded and a year after the adoption of a new AfPak strategy, the escalation of fighting there serves to underline the failure of the US to implement an effective counter-insurgency strategy. The complete military and political failure in places such as Marjah, in Helmand province - which was presented as a prototype for future operations - has further complicated the military mission in the country. But Robert Gates, the US secretary of defence, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, have been unequivocal in insisting that their priority is to 'get the job done' - which places a big question mark over previous presidential commitments to draw troops down by the end of next year. The US generals are adamant and are lobbying their Nato allies to also expand their presence in the country. [ibimage==3445==blogpostFeaturedImage==none==self==null] And in Iraq ... US and Iraqi generals question the wisdom of a total US troop withdrawal by the end of next year, with some like Lieutenant-General Babaker Zebari, going as far as to speak of another decade of US deployment in the country. Moreover, the US state department's decision to hire and deploy a private army of some 7,000 additional mercenaries in Iraq - to add to the estimated 200,000 private contractors already deployed there and in Afghanistan, is further militarising its diplomatic presence in the region. As of next month, there will still be some 50,000 US soldiers in more than 100 military bases in Iraq. As former US Colonel Andrew Bacevich, the author of an insightful new book called Washington Rules and whose son was killed in Iraq, told EMPIRE: If it looks and sounds like an occupation, the US presence in Iraq will still be just that. The political paralysis in the country and recent escalation of violence aren't making matters any easier. The wider region A new report show that the Obama administration is

intensifying its secret war and covert operations in the Muslim world, including assassinations through the use of drones. Much of this is

being executed by the CIA, turning the intelligence agency into, in the words of The New York Times, a "paramilitary organisation". Other covert operations are being carried out by unaccountable private contractors who are complicating US missions and rules of engagement.

Obama policy makes the link likelyObama has expanded SOF activities immensely – his administration policy makes an expansion of covert ops incredibly likely in the wake of the planTurse 15 [Nick, managing editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at The Nation Institute, US Special Forces Are Operating in More Countries Than You Can Imagine, The Nation, http://www.thenation.com/article/us-special-forces-are-operating-more-countries-you-can-imagine/]

Deployments to African nations have, however, been just a part of the rapid growth of the Special Operations Command’s overseas reach. In the waning days of the Bush presidency, under then–SOCOM chief

Admiral Eric Olson, Special Operations forces were reportedly deployed in about 60 countries around the world. By 2010, that number had swelled to 75, according to Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post. In 2011, SOCOM spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told TomDispatch that the total would reach 120 by the end of the year. With Admiral William McRaven in charge in 2013, then-Major Robert Bockholt told TomDispatch that the number had jumped to 134. Under the command of McRaven and Votel in 2014,

according to Bockholt, the total slipped ever-so-slightly to 133. Outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel noted, however, that under McRaven’s command—which lasted from August 2011 to August 2014—special ops forces deployed to more than 150 different countries. “In fact, SOCOM and the entire US military are more engaged internationally than ever before—in more places and with a wider variety of missions,” he said in an August 2014 speech.

TerrorismThreats of terrorism mean there will be huge pressure to increase covert ops after the plan – turns the caseDavis 14 [Daniel, Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army and has deployed into combat zones four times, The Failure of Military Might, US News, http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/08/01/us-military-might-has-only-created-more-enemies-and-chaos]

Terrorism has now risen to become a major national and global problem. Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Libya – where we conducted overt military operations – continue to suffer under civil war-like conditions or in near-anarchy. Millions have been made homeless and hundreds of thousands killed. Violent extremist groups have spilled over the border

from Afghanistan and threaten the viability of nuclear-armed Pakistan . In response to the reported increase of terrorism in Africa, the U.S. has deployed both conventional and special operations troops. Perhaps encouraged by America’s expanding use of force to bend others to our will, Russia allegedly instigated internal dissent in the Ukraine and then in the political chaos that followed annexed the Crimea. There remains the possibility Russia will try to take eastern Ukraine by force. China, moreover, has adopted an increasingly muscular posture in support of its territorial claims in the Asia Pacific, and threatens many countries there. In every measurable way, despite the enormous use of lethal military force, the national and global security environment for the United States

continues deteriorating, increasing the risk to our country. And yet there is a large cohort of pundits and opinion leaders who argue that the solution to this deteriorating security condition is the application of yet more violence. Many are advocating airstrikes, increased drone activity , deployment of more US military

advisors, and the expanded use of covert operations in locations around the world. That is akin to proposing the best way to put out a raging house fire is to douse it with kerosene.

Yemen/ME

Reduction of troops just leads to more covert air strikes and operations especially in the middle east. Schmitt’15

(Eric Schmitt is a senior writer who covers terrorism and national security issues for The New York Times. Since 2007, he has reported on terrorism issues, including assignments to Pakistan, Afghanistan, North Africa and Southeast Asia. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/23/us/politics/out-of-yemen-us-is-hobbled-in-terror-fight.html?_r=0)

Even after the withdrawal of American troops, the Central Intelligence Agency will still maintain some covert Yemeni agents in the country. Armed drones will carry out some airstrikes from bases in nearby Saudi Arabia or Djibouti in the Horn of

Africa, as was done most recently on Feb. 20. Spy satellites will still lurk overhead and eavesdropping planes will try to suck up electronic communications.

ME/IRAQYour aff is not the chi-raq but it is the new Iraq, Iraq proves that when we “withdraw troops” we really mean insert covert operatives. Hayden’10

(Tom Hayden is a former state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles.,https://www.laprogressive.com/iraq-covert-operations/)

The State Department is expanding a militarized “civilian” intervention to fill the gap as Pentagon troops depart. Thousands of military contractors will conduct Iraqi police training, protect Iraq’s airspace, and possibly

conduct continued counterterrorism operations. State Department operatives will be protected in mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles [MRAPS], armored vehicles, helicopters and its own planes.The immediate future is uncertain. US soldiers currently being sent to Iraq are told their mission is “to shut it down.” But the real story is being hidden by the Obama administration’s insistence that its promise to end the war is being kept. The notion of a continued military presence, according to the Times, “has been all but banished from public discussion.” According to one official, “the administration does not want to touch this question right now.”

Iraq/ cause Iran containmentWithdrawal in the middle east leads to fears about Iranian aggression that is met with covert operations. Barnes et al ‘11

(Julian E. Barnes covers the Department of Defense and national security issues from The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau.,Reporter, The Wall Street Journal. Adam Entous is a national security correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.,Wall Street Journal intelligence correspondent Siobhan Gorman is leaving the paper and joining Brunswick,http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903895904576547233284967482)

Military commanders and intelligence officers are pushing for greater authority to conduct covert operations to thwart Iranian influence in neighboring Iraq, according to U.S. officials.The move comes amid growing concern in the Obama administration about Iran's attempts in recent months to expand its influence in Iraq and the broader Middle East and what it says is Tehran's increased arms smuggling to its allies. Compounding the urgency is the planned reduction in the U.S. military presence in Iraq by the end of the year, a development that many fear will open up the country to more influence from Iran, which also has a majority Shiite population. If the request is approved by the

White House, the authorization for the covert activity in Iraq likely would take the form of a classified presidential

"finding." But unlike the secret order that authorized the Central Intelligence Agency's campaign against al Qaeda in 2001, the current

proposal is limited in scope, officials said. Still, such a step would reflect the U.S.'s effort to contain Iranian activities in the region. Ending the U.S.'s involvement in the Iraqi conflict was a central promise of President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, and the administration wants to ensure it doesn't withdraw troops only to see its main regional nemesis, Iran, raise its influence there.

Africa LinksUS committed to covert ops in Africa – they’re looking for any excuse to expand the programsWhitlock 12 [Craig, WP staff who covers the Pentagon and national security, U.S. expands secret intelligence operations in Africa, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-expands-secret-intelligence-operations-in-africa/2012/06/13/gJQAHyvAbV_story.html]

The U.S. military has largely kept details of its spy flights in Africa secret. The Post pieced together descriptions of the surveillance network by examining references to it in unclassified military reports, U.S. government contracting documents and diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy

group. Further details were provided by interviews with American and African officials, as well as military contractors. In addition to Burkina Faso, U.S. surveillance planes have operated periodically out of nearby Mauritania. In

Central Africa, the main hub is in Uganda, though there are plans to open a base in South Sudan. In East Africa, U.S. aircraft fly out of bases in Ethi o pia, Djibouti, Kenya and the Indian Ocean archipelago of the Seychelles . Army Gen. Carter

F. Ham, the head of U.S. Africa Command, which is responsible for military operations on the continent, hinted at the importance and extent of the air bases while testifying before Congress in March. Without divulging locations,

he made clear that, in Africa, he wanted to expand “ISR,” the military’s acronym for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

“Without operating locations on the continent, ISR capabilities would be curtailed, potentially endangering U.S. security,” Ham said in a statement submitted to the House Armed Services Committee. “Given the vast geographic space and diversity in threats, the command requires increased ISR assets to adequately address the security challenges on the continent.” Some of the U.S. air bases, including ones in Djibouti, Ethiopia and the Seychelles, fly Predator and Reaper drones, the original and upgraded models, respectively, of the remotely piloted aircraft that the Obama

administration has used to kill al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and Yemen. “We don’t have remotely piloted aircraft in many places other than East Africa, but we could,” said a senior U.S. military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. “If there was a need to do so and those assets were available, I’m certain we could get the access and the overflight [permission] that is necessary to do that.”

If we withdraw troops from Camp Lemonnier, we’ll just rely more on covert ops like we do in the rest of AfricaWhitlock 12 [Craig, WP staff who covers the Pentagon and national security, U.S. expands secret intelligence operations in Africa, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-expands-secret-intelligence-operations-in-africa/2012/06/13/gJQAHyvAbV_story.html]

Because of its strategic location on the Horn of Africa, Camp Lemonnier is a hub for spy flights in the region. It is about 500 miles from southern Somalia, an area largely controlled by the al-Shabab militia. Lemonnier is even closer — less than 100 miles — to Yemen, where another al-Qaeda franchise has expanded its influence and plotted attacks against the United States.Elsewhere in Africa, the U.S. military is relying on private contractors to provide and operate PC-12 spy planes in the search for Kony, the fugitive leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a group known for mutilating victims, committing mass rape and enslaving children as soldiers.

Asia link (also general)The plan results in Obama deploying Special Forces in AsiaPhillips 15 [Michael, staff reporter in the Washington, D.C., bureau of The Wall Street Journal. He has covered the U.S. ground war in Afghanistan since 2001, embedding with American forces in the field on two-dozen occasions. He rode with a front-line Marine infantry squad from Kuwait to Baghdad during the 2003 Iraq invasion and returned to cover the same battalion four other times between 2003 and 2006, New Way the U.S. Projects Power Around the Globe: Commandos, The Wall Street Journal, http://www.wsj.com/articles/sun-never-sets-on-u-s-commandos-1429887473]

Such scenes play out around the world, evidence of how the U.S. has come to rely on elite military units to maintain its global dominance. These days, the sun never sets on America’s special-operations forces. Over the past year, they have landed in 81 countries, most of them training local commandos to fight so American troops don’t have to. From Honduras to Mongolia, Estonia to Djibouti, U.S. special operators teach local soldiers diplomatic skills to shield their countries against

extremist ideologies, as well as combat skills to fight militants who break through. President Barack Obama, as part of his plan to shrink U.S. reliance on traditional warfare , has promised to piece together a web of such alliances

from South Asia to the Sahel . Faced with mobile enemies working independently of foreign governments, the U.S. military has scattered small, nimble teams in many places, rather than just maintaining large forces in a few.

A2: Fiat solves the linkAfghanistan proves that drawdowns don’t remove Special ForcesTurse 15 [Nick, managing editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at The Nation Institute, US Special Forces Are Operating in More Countries Than You Can Imagine, The Nation, http://www.thenation.com/article/us-special-forces-are-operating-more-countries-you-can-imagine/]

There will, however, be fewer US special ops troops available for tactical missions. According to then Rear-, now Vice-Admiral Sean

Pybus, SOCOM’s Deputy Commander, about half the SEAL platoons deployed in Afghanistan were, by the end of last month, to be withdrawn and redeployed to support “the pivot in Asia, or work the Mediterranean, or the Gulf of

Guinea, or into the Persian Gulf.” Still, Colonel Christopher Riga, commander of the 7th Special Forces Group, whose troops served with the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan near Kandahar last year, vowed to soldier on. “There’s a lot of fighting that is still going on in Afghanistan that is going to continue,” he said at an awards ceremony late last year. “We’re still going to continue to kill the enemy, until we are told to leave.”

Internals

Radicalizes AQAPUS covert operations provide AQAP with more recruits and lock in perpetual conflict in the region. Bowie’14

(Nile Bowie is a political analyst and photographer currently residing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.,http://www.rt.com/op-edge/154572-obama-yemen-drone-program-killings/)

Obama’s speech marked the first formal public acknowledgement of a US citizen’s death in a drone strike. Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric of Yemeni descent and a US citizen, was killed by a drone strike in Yemen in May 2011. In describing his criteria for an extrajudicial targeted strike, Obama claims there is no difference between a foreign terrorist and a terrorist with US citizenship. Al-Awlaki’s assassination and the subsequent killing of his 16-year-old son, also an American national, sets an alarming precedent. At one time, Anwar al-Awlaki was known to be a moderate cleric who denounced terrorism and violence. At some stage between the events of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Anwar al-Awlaki underwent a profound change in his political orientation and began to preach jihad, in response to what he viewed as the United States engaging in a war against Islam and Muslim civilians. Just as Anwar al-Awlaki’s views morphed toward the violent fringe as a

reaction to US policy, the radicalization of communities and traumatized survivors of drone strikes throughout Yemen provides AQAP with a steady flow of militants seeking to avenge their families' deaths by harming the United States. The Obama administration and the Yemeni political elite may view drone strikes as a short-term fix, but the radicalization of growing swathes of society will prove to be a major liability for any future government in power. Washington has assured the public that the American role in Yemen is highly

constrained, and held in accordance with a mandate to target members of Al-Qaeda approved by Congress after 9/11. The scope and breadth of covert operations undertaken by the CIA and secretive paramilitary unit Joint Special Operations Command

(JSOC) are impossible to ascertain, but Washington’s role in Yemen’s civil wars are much deeper than what the public imagines.

The inhumanity of this war comes to the fore in incidents such as the US bombing of a wedding convoy in

December 2013, killing 12 civilians. Consider the vile injustice meted out in 2009 to the people of al-Majalah, a Bedouin village that

became the target of US cluster-bombing, killing 41 civilians, including nine women and 21 children. Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a Yemeni journalist who exposed the American slaughter at al-Majala, was jailed by authorities and framed as an Al-Qaeda collaborator. His original release from prison was blocked by the personal intervention of President Obama, who phoned former Yemeni President Saleh and lobbied for Shaye to remain in custody. Contrary to claims that drones only target those high-level figures who pose an imminent threat to the US homeland, reports indicate that low-level fighters, local commanders, and even figures in Yemen’s own military have been targeted by US drones – not because they present any risk to US national security, but because they are political opponents of the current US-backed regime in

Sanaa. The Obama administration’s dirty wars and covert operations in Yemen represent a glaring evasion of justice and

accountability that will continue to sow wanton killing and perpetual conflict if left unchecked.

Yemen is on the brink of state failure—AQAP will be able to consolidate its powerEmker 13 (Stacey, Master’s candidate at the Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations, 1-14-13, “Analyzing the US Counterterrorism Strategy in Yemen” Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations) http://blogs.shu.edu/diplomacy/2013/01/analyzing-the-us-counterterrorism-strategy-in-yemen/

The U nited S tates has placed great emphasis on fighting the militant Islamic group based in Yemen, Al Qaeda in the

Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) because it has been characterized as one of the most dangerous Al-Qaeda affiliates worldwide. AQAP has demonstrated its intent to carry out attacks within U.S. borders , and against U.S. interests in Yemen. Replacing the long established Al-Qaeda threats emanating from South Asia and North Africa, the Obama Administration has identified AQAP as the most immediate threat to the U.S. homeland . Since

the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in February 2012, the transitional government of President Abd Rabbu

Mansour Hadi remains weak outside the capital of Sana’a. Overall, Yemen is on the verge of becoming a failed state with economic, social, and political challenges that AQAP is attempting to exploit in order to consolidate its power within the country.

AQAP is a major threat—White House reassurances are wrongGordon 13 (Sasha, Critical Threats Project Analyst at American Enterprise Institute, 2-8-13, “The threat from Yemen” American Enterprise Institute) http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/02/the-threat-from-yemen/

Protestations from the White House notwithstanding, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), al Qaeda’s Yemen-

based affiliate, remains a threat to the U nited S tates. The reason is simple: al Qaeda plans when it has the operational latitude to do so. So it’s not rocket science to figure out that the objective of U.S. policy should be to deprive AQAP of the operating room in Yemen it desires to plan and execute transnational attacks. To achieve that goal, however, we need a reliable partner who can combat AQAP on the ground, where the quest for space is fought out. And it is becoming painfully clear that the Yemeni government is not that partner.

Power projectionCovert operations reduce oversight and erode the tenets of democracy. This reduction in congressional control leads to Presidential discretion in military deployment that results in entrapment. Foster’13

(Gregory D. Foster is a professor of national security studies at the National Defense University’s Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy,http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2013/07/why-founding-fathers-would-object-todays-military/66668/)

These enumerated congressional powers and the designation of the president as commander in chief

of the armed forces were designed to ensure civilian control of the military — ultimate direction, oversight, and decision-

making authority over the military in the hands of properly elected and appointed civilian officials — a concept that has become a cardinal precept and precondition for democracies everywhere. And it was this fear of standing armies that led the founders to prefer the citizen-soldier to the professional. “When we assumed the Soldier,” said Washington, “we did not lay aside the Citizen.” And from Jefferson: “Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.” They were not anti-military; far from it. Rather, they were anti-militaristic and anti-interventionist, preferring active, regular commercial and

diplomatic engagement, not military involvement, with the rest of the world. Today, we have much of what the founders would have feared most: a totally professional force, largely unrepresentative of American society, increasingly alienated from the public it is supposed to serve, huge in size, gluttonously expensive, more heavily and lethally armed than any other force in the world, deployed all across the globe all of the time, a source of recurring provocation and adventurism, principally prepared for a preferred American way of war that is no longer relevant, continuously guilty over time of socially and politically irresponsible behaviors (from combat atrocities to internal sexual assault), and singularly at the forefront of both global and domestic militarization (not least by virtue of America’s place as the world’s leading arms dealer). Notwithstanding the expanded use (and abuse) of the Reserves to further enlarge its capabilities and expand its involvements, it is a force not

of citizen-soldiers but of self-described “warfighters” and “warriors” whose job it is to prepare for and wage war. Civilian control of the military has given way to civilian subjugation to the military, a condition born in important measure of the growing lack of military experience of public officials, their enduring strategic illiteracy and their fear of being labeled weak on defense. Add to this the dramatically expanded use of special operations forces and covert operations, which threaten civilian control, undermine accountability and blur proper lines of demarcation between military, security, law enforcement and intelligence activities.

CyberwarfareUS Covert operations like cyber war trample on other foreign governments in attempts to bring them under US control. Gellman and Nakashima’13

(Barton Gellman and Ellen Nakashima are long time reporters for the Washington Post. They have been working for the Washington post for years. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-spy-agencies-mounted-231-offensive-cyber-operations-in-2011-documents-show/2013/08/30/d090a6ae-119e-11e3-b4cb-fd7ce041d814_story.html)

U.S. intelligence services carried out 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, the leading edge of a clandestine campaign that embraces the Internet as a theater of spying, sabotage and war, according to top-secret documents obtained by The Washington Post. That disclosure, in a classified intelligence budget provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, provides new evidence that the Obama administration’s growing ranks of cyberwarriors infiltrate and disrupt foreign computer networks. Additionally, under an extensive effort code-named GENIE, U.S. computer specialists break into foreign networks so that they can be put under surreptitious U.S. control. Budget documents say the $652 million project has placed “covert implants,” sophisticated malware transmitted from far away, in computers, routers and firewalls on tens of thousands of machines every year, with plans to expand those numbers into the millions.

IranContainment pushes towards a war with Iran. Heightening Iranian insecurity risks nuclear annihilation. Simakovsky 2013 , Mark Simakovsky Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University Trevor Monroe Editor, Reassessing Regime Change: U.S. National Security Strategy towards Iran, The Journal of IPS International Policy Solutions, UCSD Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, irps.ucsd.edu/assets/004/5375.pdf

Political and Security Tools – To avert Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons and to create the conditions necessary for Iran to operate as a stabilizing force in the region, the United States must

attempt to alleviate Iran’s sense of insecurity . As long as Iran complies with its obligations under the NonProliferation

Treaty and the International Atomic Energy Association requirements, t he U.S. should make a commitment to refrain

from threats of force against the country. Additionally, the U.S should support the creation of a high-level security forum

that includes states in the region. Bringing Iran into regional security arrangements and ending the menacing threats of regime change could slowly allay the significance Tehran places on acquiring nuclear weapons. Finally, the U.S. should strongly consider trading leading members of the MEK (Mujahideen-e Khalq)27 in Iraq for al-Qaida prisoners currently being held in Iran. Although Iran has showed interest in this prisoner swap, it has been stymied by the desire of some in the administration to keep the MEK intact

as a valid source of leverage over Iran in any future intervention. Iran’s active civil society, media and fledgling

democratic system could enhance U.S. efforts to promote democratic development in the region . Engaging Iran and supporting its entrance into regional and international organizations, such as the WTO, will solidify the country’s political economy. Bringing Iran more openly into international institutions will intensify internal pressure for change among the conservative theocracy . However, U.S. policymaker’s vision of rapid

democratic change in the Middle East should be tempered by the political realities in Iran. Due to Iran’s active nuclear program, U.S. interests in reducing Iran’s support to terrorist groups and the struggle for human rights liberty in Iran should be considered in a longterm strategic framework. Just as the Shanghai Communiqué between China and the

U.S. in 1972 placed contentious issues between the two countries and democratic development in China on the backburner, U.S. engagement of Iran should proceed with the acceptance that democratic development in Iran is a long-term process that cannot be started without engaging the legitimate government of the country. The United States must vigorously support European initiatives to decrease Iran’s offensive weapons capability through negotiation. Creating a step-by-step process of rewards for compliance would be helpful. For example, each step, such as supporting stability in Iraq and Afghanistan or refraining from supporting terrorist group, will be rewarded by concessions. This can be accomplished through the following policy levers: 1) Supplement the European Trade and Cooperation Agreement with an American agreement that lists certain graduated concessions that will keep the Iranians at the bargaining table. 2) Support Iranian membership into the WTO, allowing selective participation of U.S. energy firms inside Iran, and review the gradual lifting of sanctions on Iran. 3) Offer the Iranians access to civilian sources of nuclear fuel and technology in exchange for increased inspections and a final end to its nuclear weapons program. 4) Improve the current Trans-Atlantic Strategy by leveraging U.S./European economic concessions and sanctions. By employing carrots and sticks in a coordinated fashion the Iranians will see

the potential benefits and costs of their ultimate decision on the utility of nuclear weapons. Conclusion The lack of good will between the United States and Iran continues to plague negotiations on the future of Iran’s nuclear program. Selective engagement may not be the perfect solution, but it may provide the incentives and warming of relations that could create a breakthrough in negotiations. Planning for selective engagement, however, should be matched by preparatory steps towards pressuring Iran to comply. Policymakers have to be prepared for the increasing possibility that Iran will restart uranium enrichment in the near future. If this occurs, a united approach towards punishing Iran

through the UN Security Council must be undertaken. If U . S. policymakers continue to threaten Iran and view the nuclear issue as an isolated security concern that is disconnected from the larger economic, political, and security challenges facing Iran, then it is likely that difficult and dangerous years lie ahead for Mid- East security. An effective policy course should instead rely on political dialogue that discusses mutual interests of security, energy transit routes, the location of U.S. forces in the region, and the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Again, the new strategic landscape of the region involves the presence of the U.S. military in Iran’s neighborhood. By placing the nuclear issue in a long-term strategic framework that seeks to address Iran’s sense of insecurity, one can hope to establish a long-range vision that puts U.S.- Iranian relations back on the path of pragmatic interaction. Without this interaction, chances are the Middle East will never be a region of peace and prosperity.

Africa specificThe covert operations in Africa are creating backlash and developing sympathy for al qaeda. Whitlock’12

(Craig Michael Whitlock is a journalist working for The Washington Post where he is responsible for covering the Pentagon and national security.,https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-expands-secret-intelligence-operations-in-africa/2012/06/13/gJQAHyvAbV_story.html)

The results of the American surveillance missions are shrouded in secrecy. Although the U.S. military has launched airstrikes and raids in Somalia, commanders said that in other places, they generally limit their involvement to sharing intelligence with allied African forces so they can attack terrorist camps on their own territory. The creeping U.S. military involvement in long-simmering African conflicts, however, carries risks. Some State Department officials have expressed reservations about the militarization of U.S. foreign policy on the continent. They have argued that most terrorist cells in Africa are pursuing local aims, not global ones, and do not present a direct threat to the United States.The potential for creating a popular backlash can be seen across the Red Sea, where an escalating campaign of U.S. drone strikes in Yemen is angering tribesmen and generating sympathy for an al-Qaeda franchise there.

Impacts

Systemic deathsCovert operations cause an American Holocaust. The use of covert operations has killed many and causes more terrorism, this turns case. Kangas’97

(Steve Kangas was a journalist, political activist and chess teacher known for his website Liberalism Resurgent and highly political usenet postings. Until 1986 he worked for military intelligence,http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-timeline-of-cia-atrocities/5348804)

This scenario has been repeated so many times that the CIA actually teaches it in a special school, the notorious “School of the Americas.” (It opened in Panama but later moved to Fort Benning, Georgia.) Critics have nicknamed it the “School of the Dictators” and “School of the Assassins.” Here, the CIA trains Latin American military officers how to conduct coups, including the use of

interrogation, torture and murder. The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, 6 million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations. (2) Former State Department official William Blum correctly calls this an “American Holocaust.” The CIA justifies these actions as part of its war against communism. But most coups do not involve a communist threat.

Unlucky nations are targeted for a wide variety of reasons: not only threats to American business interests abroad, but also liberal or even moderate social reforms, political instability, the unwillingness of a leader to carry out Washington’s dictates, and declarations of neutrality in the Cold War. Indeed,

nothing has infuriated CIA Directors quite like a nation’s desire to stay out of the Cold War. The ironic thing about all this intervention is that it frequently fails to achieve American objectives. Often the newly installed dictator grows comfortable with the security apparatus the CIA has built for him. He becomes an expert at running a police state.

And because the dictator knows he cannot be overthrown, he becomes independent and defiant of Washington’s will. The CIA then finds it cannot overthrow him, because the police and military are under the dictator’s control, afraid to cooperate with American spies for fear of torture and execution. The only two options for the U.S at this

point are impotence or war. Examples of this “boomerang effect” include the Shah of Iran, General Noriega and Saddam Hussein. The boomerang effect also explains why the CIA has proven highly successful at overthrowing democracies, but a wretched failure at overthrowing dictatorships.

Power projectionPresidential discretion results in miscalc and war Adler, 2011 (David, Director of the Andrus Center for Public Policy at Boise State University, where he holds an appointment as the Cecil Andrus Professor of Public Affairs; “Presidential Ascendancy in Foreign Affairs and the Subversion of the Constitution”, Presented to the German-American Conference on “Comparisons of Parliamentary and Coordinated Power (Presidential) Systems, March 4-8, 2011, Bloomington, Indiana; http://www.civiced.org/pdfs/GermanAmericanConf2011/Adler.pdf)

A considerable literature urges executive supremacy, and extols the supposed virtues of presidential assertion, domination

and control; yet this body of work often ignores the dimensions of executive flaws, foibles, and frailties .

The electoral process is not infallible; a n elected president may lack the wisdom , temperament and

judgment , not to mention perception , expertise and emotional intelligence to produce success in matters

of war and peace. Those qualities which, to be sure, are attributes of the occupant and not of the office, cannot be conferred by election. 104

Champions of a unilateral executive war power have ignored and, perhaps, forgotten the institutional safeguards of separation of powers, checks and balances and collective decision making urged by the Framers as protection from the flaws of unilateral judgment and the temptations of power. Among those who have lost their memory of the virtues and values of those

institutional safeguards, apparently, are those many members of Congress and dozens of judges over the years, who have acquiesced in the face of presidential usurpation in the realm of national security. Perhaps seduced by the allure of swift, bold military action under the banner of nationalism, patriotism and ideological and political certainty,

these representatives, some elected and others appointed, have forgotten their institutional duties and

responsibilities. It is not probable, but certain , that the Imperial Presidency would be brought to heel if

the other branches duly exercised their powers and responsibilities, but they have lost their way. No less a personage than

the late Senator Sam Ervin questioned, in the course of hearings in 1973 on the unchecked executive practice of impoundment, whether the Congress of the United States will remain a viable institution or whether the current trend toward the executive use of legislative power is to continue unabated until we have arrived at a presidential form of government.” Senator Ervin justly criticized executive aggrandizement of

legislative authority, but he also found Congress culpable for the rise of presidential dominance: “The executive branch has been able to seize power so brazenly only because the Congress has lacked the courage and foresight to maintain its constitutional position.” 105 What was true of impoundment, is true of the war power. Only “Congress itself,” to

borrow from Justice Robert H. Jackson, “can prevent power from slipping through its fingers.”106 The siren song of unilateral presidential war making ignores the tragedies of Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, and the cost to America of its precious

blood and treasure as well as denied and stolen. The American constitutional system is grounded in the conviction, as

James Iredell explained it, that there is “nothing more fallible than human judgment.” 107 It is sometimes observed that the intentions of the Framers are outdated and irrelevant. But before we too readily acquiesce in that verdict, we might do well to recall the

policy considerations that underlay the decision to vest the war power in Congress and not the president. Painfully aware of the horror

and destructive consequences of warfare, the Framers wisely determined that before the very fate of the nation were put to risk that there ought to be some discussion, some deliberation by Congress , the people’s

representatives. The Founders did not , as James Wilson explained it, want “one man to hurry us into war.” 108 As

things stand in the United States today, however, the president has been exercising that power. The “accretion of dangerous power,” Justice Frankfurter has reminded us, occurs when power is freed from institutional restraints, checks and safeguards. The eminently sound rationales that convinced the Framers to vest the war power 21 exclusively in Congress, however, have been ignored and abandoned in recent decades. There is a cost in that, too. It was the artist, Goya, who in one of his etchings, graphically portrayed the consequences of ignoring reason with the inscription: “The sleep of reason brings forth monsters.”109 There is no comfort to be found in a practice which permits unilateral executive war making, particularly in the age of nuclear weapons, when war might lead to the incineration of

the planet. When it comes to the constitutional design for war making, it is clear that the Framers’ policy concerns are even more compelling today than they were two centuries ago.

Power projection is a controlling impact – the alternative risks global hotspot escalationThayer, 2006 (Bradley A., Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, The National Interest, November -December, “In Defense of Primacy”, lexis)

A remarkable fact about international politics today--in a world where American primacy is clearly and unambiguously on display--is that countries want to align themselves with the United States. Of course, this is not out of any sense of altruism, in most cases, but because doing so allows them to use the power of the United States for their own purposes--their own protection, or to

gain greater influence. Of 192 countries, 84 are allied with America--their security is tied to the United States through treaties and other informal arrangements--and they include almost all of the major economic and military powers. That is a ratio of almost 17 to one (85 to five), and a big change from the Cold War when the ratio was about 1.8 to one of states aligned with the United States versus the Soviet Union. Never before in its history has this

country, or any country, had so many allies. U.S. primacy--and the bandwagoning effect--has also given us extensive influence in international politics, allowing the United States to shape the behavior of states and international institutions. Such influence comes in many forms, one of which is America's ability to create coalitions of like-minded states to free Kosovo, stabilize Afghanistan, invade Iraq or to stop proliferation through the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI).

Doing so allows the United States to operate with allies outside of the UN, where it can be stymied by opponents. American-led wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq stand in contrast to the UN's inability to save the people of Darfur or even to conduct any military campaign to realize the goals of its charter. The quiet effectiveness of the PSI in dismantling Libya's WMD programs and unraveling the A. Q. Khan proliferation network are in sharp relief to

the typically toothless attempts by the UN to halt proliferation. You can count with one hand countries opposed to the United States . They are the

"Gang of Five": China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. Of course, countries like India, for example, do not agree with all policy choices made by the United States, such as toward Iran, but New Delhi is friendly to

Washington. Only the "Gang of Five" may be expected to consistently resist the agenda and actions of the United States. China is clearly the most important of these states because it is a rising great power. But even Beijing is intimidated by the United States and refrains from openly challenging U.S. power. China proclaims that it will, if necessary,

resort to other mechanisms of challenging the United States, including asymmetric strategies such as targeting communication and intelligence satellites upon which the United States depends. But China may not be confident those strategies would work, and so it is likely to refrain from testing the United States directly for the foreseeable future because China's power benefits, as we shall see, from the international order U.S. primacy creates. The other states are far weaker than China. For three of the "Gang of Five" cases--Venezuela, Iran, Cuba--it is an anti-U.S. regime that is the source of the problem; the country itself is not intrinsically anti-American. Indeed, a change of regime in Caracas, Tehran or Havana could very well reorient relations. THROUGHOUT HISTORY, peace and stability have been great benefits of an era where there was a dominant power--Rome, Britain or the United States today.

Scholars and statesmen have long recognized the irenic effect of power on the anarchic world of international politics. Everything we think of when we consider the current international order--free trade, a robust monetary regime, increasing respect for human rights, growing democratization--is directly linked to U.S. power. Retrenchment proponents seem to think that the current system can be maintained without the

current amount of U.S. power behind it. In that they are dead wrong and need to be reminded of one of history's most significant lessons: Appalling things happen when international orders collapse. The Dark Ages followed Rome's collapse. Hitler succeeded the order established at Versailles. Without U.S. power, the liberal order created by the United States will end just as assuredly. As country and western great Ral Donner sang: "You don't know what you've got (until you lose it)." Consequently, it is important to note what those good things are. In addition to ensuring the security

of the United States and its allies, American primacy within the international system causes many positive outcomes for Washington and the world. The first has been a more peaceful world. During the Cold War, U.S. leadership reduced friction among many states that were historical antagonists , most notably France and West Germany. Today,

American primacy helps keep a number of complicated relationships aligned --between Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, South Korea

and Japan, India and Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia. This is not to say it fulfills Woodrow Wilson's vision of ending all war. Wars still occur where Washington's interests are not seriously threatened, such as in Darfur, but a Pax Americana does reduce war's likelihood, particularly war's worst form: great power wars. Second,

American power gives the United States the ability to spread democracy and other elements of its ideology of liberalism. Doing so is a source of much good for the countries concerned as well as the United States because, as John Owen noted on these pages in the Spring 2006 issue, liberal democracies

are more likely to align with the United States and be sympathetic to the American worldview.3 So, spreading democracy helps maintain U.S. primacy. In addition, once states are governed democratically, the likelihood of any type of conflict is significantly reduced. This is not because democracies do not have clashing interests.

Indeed they do. Rather, it is because they are more open, more transparent and more likely to want to resolve things amicably in concurrence with U.S. leadership. And so, in general, democratic states are good for their citizens as well as for advancing the interests of the United States. Critics have faulted the Bush Administration for attempting to spread democracy in the Middle East, labeling such an effort a modern form of tilting at windmills. It is the obligation of Bush's critics to explain why democracy is good enough for Western states but not for the rest, and, one gathers from the argument, should not even be attempted. Of course, whether democracy in the Middle East will have a peaceful or stabilizing influence on America's interests in the short run is open to question. Perhaps democratic Arab states would be more opposed to Israel, but nonetheless, their people would be better off. The United States has brought democracy to Afghanistan, where 8.5 million Afghans, 40 percent of them women, voted in a critical October 2004 election, even though remnant Taliban forces threatened them. The first free elections were held in Iraq in January 2005. It was the military power of the United States that put Iraq on the path to democracy. Washington fostered democratic governments in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Caucasus. Now even the Middle East is increasingly democratic. They may not yet look like Western-style democracies, but democratic progress has been made in Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. By all

accounts, the march of democracy has been impressive. Third, along with the growth in the number of democratic states around the world has been the growth of the global economy. With its allies, the United States has labored to create an economically liberal worldwide network characterized by free trade and commerce, respect for

international property rights, and mobility of capital and labor markets. The economic stability and prosperity that stems from this economic order is a global public good from which all states benefit, particularly the poorest states in the Third World. The United States created this network not out of altruism but for the benefit and the economic well-being of America. This economic order forces American industries to be competitive, maximizes efficiencies and

growth, and benefits defense as well because the size of the economy makes the defense burden manageable. Economic spin-offs foster the development of military technology, helping to ensure military prowess. Perhaps the greatest testament to the benefits of the economic network comes from Deepak Lal, a former Indian foreign service diplomat and researcher at the World Bank, who started his career confident in the socialist ideology of post-independence India. Abandoning the positions of his youth, Lal now recognizes that the only way to bring relief to desperately poor countries of the Third World is through the adoption of free market economic policies and globalization, which are facilitated through American primacy.4 As a witness to the failed alternative economic systems, Lal is one of the strongest academic proponents of American primacy due to the economic prosperity it

provides. Fourth and finally, the United States, in seeking primacy, has been willing to use its power not only to advance its interests but to promote the welfare of people all over the globe. The United States is the earth's leading source of positive externalities for the world. The U.S. military has participated in over fifty operations

since the end of the Cold War--and most of those missions have been humanitarian in nature. Indeed, the U.S. military is the earth's "911 force"-- it serves, de facto, as the world's

police, the global paramedic and the planet's fire department. Whenever there is a natural disaster, earthquake, flood, drought, volcanic eruption, typhoon or tsunami, the United States assists the countries in need. On the day after Christmas in 2004, a tremendous earthquake and tsunami occurred in the Indian Ocean near Sumatra, killing some 300,000 people. The United States was the first to respond with aid. Washington followed up with a large contribution of aid and deployed the U.S. military to South and Southeast Asia for many months to help with the aftermath of the disaster. About 20,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines responded by providing water, food, medical aid, disease treatment and prevention as well as forensic assistance to help identify the bodies of those killed. Only the U.S. military could have accomplished this Herculean effort. No other force possesses the

communications capabilities or global logistical reach of the U.S. military. In fact, UN peacekeeping operations depend on the United States to supply UN forces. American generosity has done more to help the United States fight the War on Terror than almost any other measure. Before the tsunami, 80 percent of

Indonesian public opinion was opposed to the United States; after it, 80 percent had a favorable opinion of America. Two years after the disaster, and in poll after poll, Indonesians still have overwhelmingly positive views of the United States. In October 2005, an enormous earthquake struck Kashmir, killing about 74,000 people and leaving three million homeless. The U.S. military responded immediately, diverting helicopters fighting the War on Terror in nearby Afghanistan to bring relief as soon as possible. To help those in need, the United States also provided financial aid to Pakistan; and, as one might expect from those witnessing the munificence of the United States, it left a lasting impression about America. For the first time since 9/11, polls of Pakistani opinion have found that more people are favorable toward the United States than unfavorable, while support for Al-Qaeda dropped to its lowest level. Whether in Indonesia or Kashmir, the money was well-spent because it helped people in the wake of disasters, but it also had a real impact on the War on Terror. When people in the Muslim world witness the U.S. military

conducting a humanitarian mission, there is a clearly positive impact on Muslim opinion of the United States. As the War on Terror is a war of ideas and opinion as much as military action, for the United States humanitarian missions are the equivalent of a blitzkrieg.

THERE IS no other state, group of states or international organization that can provide these global benefits. None even comes close. The United Nations cannot because it is riven with conflicts and major cleavages that divide the international body time and again on matters great and

trivial. Thus it lacks the ability to speak with one voice on salient issues and to act as a unified force once a decision is reached. The EU has similar problems. Does anyone expect Russia or China to take up these responsibilities? They may have the desire, but they do not have the capabilities. Let's face it: for the time being, American primacy remains humanity's only practical hope of solving the world's ills.

Cyber WarfareCyber-attack causes world war 3

Rothopf 2011, Garten Rothkopf, visiting scholar, CEIP, “When Fukushima Meets Stuxnet: The Growing Threat of Cyberwar,” NPR, 3—18—11, http://www.npr.org/2011/03/18/134651428/foreign-policy-where-fukushima-meets-cyber-wars, accessed 9-17-11

The Japanese nuclear crisis, though still unfolding, may, in a way, already be yesterday's news. For a peek at tomorrow's, review the testimony of General Keith Alexander, head of U.S. Cyber Command. Testifying before Congress this week and seeking support to

pump up his agency budget, the general argued that all future conflicts would involve cyber warfare tactics and that the U.S. was ill-equipped to defend itself against them. Alexander said, "We are finding that we do not have the capacity to do everything we need to accomplish. To put it bluntly, we are very thin, and a crisis would quickly stress our cyber forces. ... This is not a hypothetical danger." The way to look at this story is to link in your mind the Stuxnet revelations about the reportedly U.S. and Israeli-led cyber attacks on the Iranian nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz and the calamities at the Fukushima power facilities over the past week. While seemingly unconnected, the stories together speak to the before and after of what cyber conflict may

look like. Enemies will be able to target one another's critical infrastructure as was done by the U.S. and Israeli team (likely

working with British and German assistance) targeting the Iranian program and burrowing into their operating systems, they will seek to produce malfunctions that bring economies to their knees, put societies in the dark, or undercut national defenses. Those infrastructures might well be nuclear power systems and the results could be akin to what we are seeing in Japan. (Although one power company executive yesterday joked to me that many plants in the U.S. would be safe because the technology they use is so old that software hardly plays any role in it at all. This hints at a bit of a blessing and a curse in the fractured U.S. power system: it's decentralized which makes it hard to target overall but security is left to many power companies that lack the sophistication or resources to anticipate, prepare for or manage the growing threats.) Importantly, not only does the apparent success of the Stuxnet worm demonstrate that such approaches are now in play but it may just be the tip of the iceberg. I remember over a decade ago speaking to one of the top U.S. cyber defenders who noted that even during the late 90s banks were losing millions and millions every year to cyber theft -- only they didn't want to report it because they felt it would spook customers. (Yes.) Recently, we have seen significant market glitches worldwide that could easily have been caused by interventions rather than just malfunctions. A couple years back I participated in a scenario at Davos in which just such a manipulation of market data was simulated and the conclusion was it wouldn't take much to undermine confidence in the markets and perhaps even force traders to move to paper trading or other venues until it was restored. It wouldn't even have to be a real cyber intrusion -- just the perception

that one might have happened. What makes the nuclear threat so unsettling to many is that it is invisible. It shares this with the cyber threat. But the cyber attacks have other dimensions that suggest that General Alexander is not just trying to beef up his agency's bank accounts with his description of how future warfare will always

involve a cyber component. Not only are they invisible but it is hard to detect who has launched them, so hard, in fact, that one can imagine future tense international relationships in which opposing sides were constantly,

quietly, engaging in an undeclared but damaging "non-war," something cooler than a Cold War because it is stripped of rhetoric and cloaked in deniability, but which might be much more damaging. While there is still ongoing debate about the exact definition of cyber warfare there is a growing consensus that the threats posed by both state-sponsored and non-state actors to power grids, telecom systems, water supplies, transport systems and computer networks are reaching critical levels. This is the deeply unsettling situation effectively framed by General Alexander in his testimony and rather than having been obscured by this week's news it should only have been amplified by it.

Iran prolifIran proliferation causes a cascade of proliferation throughout the Middle East and will collapse the NPT and cause nuclear war

Albright Et Al 2013, David Albright President, Institute for Science and International Security Mark Dubowitz Executive Director, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Orde Kittrie Professor of Law, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University Leonard Spector Deputy Director, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies Michael Yaffe Professor, Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense University, U.S. Nonproliferation Strategy for the changing Middle East, The Project on U.S. Middle East Nonproliferation Strategy january 2013, Washington, D.C. isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/FinalReport.pdf

iii. Iranian nuclear arsenal could spur further proliferation in Middle East The third major danger of Iran acquiring a nuclear arsenal is that several of its neighbors in the Middle East could feel compelled to acquire their own nuclear weapons in response. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has explicitly warned the United States that if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, his nation will seek to do so as well. “If they get nuclear weapons, we will get nuclear weapons,” Abdullah told Dennis Ross, then a U.S government official, during a meeting between the two in April 2009.219 It might take Saudi Arabia only a relatively short time to acquire nuclear weapons , as there are persistent reports that Saudi Arabia financed Pakistan’s nuclear program on condition Pakistan be prepared to transfer bombs to Saudi Arabia (or the capability to make them) if and when the Saudis

request them.220 Other Middle Eastern states could follow.221 A cascade of proliferation in the Middle East

could lead to the worldwide collapse of the already tottering NPT regime . In addition, the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East tinderbox , with its border disputes, religious fanaticism, ethnic hatreds, unstable governments , terrorist groups, and tendency for conflicts to spiral out of control , seems likely to result in

a devastating nuclear wa r . While a proliferation cascade may not be the inevitable response to an Iranian nuclear arsenal, Iran

should expect that its neighbors will react by adopting a number of measures to shore up their security, including obtaining security assurances,

investing in nuclear technologies, enhancing their conventional military capabilities, and, possibly, acquiring nuclear arsenals of their own. All of these measures will cause instability and escalate tensions in an already tense region.

AFF Answers

Non-unique, drone strikes nowThis was kind of predictable, Covert strikes nowBureau of investigative journalism 7/15

(The bureau of investigative journalism is one of the foremost sources for information regarding covert US operations. The article for the bureau are written by many of the foremost foreign poltical analysts, https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/22/get-the-data-somalias-hidden-war/)

At least five US drone strikes hit in the space of three days killing an undisclosed number of people. They were reportedly carried out in support of African Union troops who were advancing on Baardheere, a Shabaab stronghold since 2009. The Bureau has yet to be able to disentangle these five attacks into individual entries on this timeline. However the SOM026 entry in our database will count five attacks in the running totals at the top of this page. The strikes reportedly hit between the attack reported on July 15 and July 18 when President Obama arrived in Kenya for an official visit. The attacks were reported in the LA Times, citing anonymous US officials. They were confirmed by a US spokesman who said in a statement: “Over the past week, US forces conducted a series of strikes against al Shabaab, an al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group in Somalia, in defense of Amisom forces under imminent threat of attack.” Previous US air attacks in Somalia had been focused on decapitating al Shabaab, taking out its senior leaders. These attacks were more focused on directly supporting and protecting African Union troops on the ground. “The strikes prevented attacks by militants, which posed a significant threat to friendly forces. We are still assessing the results of the operation and will provide additional information if and when appropriate,” the spokesman said. One US military official echoed this, telling the LA Times: “It’s a change in how we’re providing support… Up until now, we’ve focused strikes on high-value targets. These strikes were launched to defend forces on the ground.” An unnamed senior US official told the paper al Shabaab were “massing,” and “massing provides targets, and targets get struck.”

US covert ops spreading globally nowGlobal covert ops spread in the SQ will trigger all their impactsTurse 15 [Nick, managing editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at The Nation Institute, US Special Forces Are Operating in More Countries Than You Can Imagine, The Nation, http://www.thenation.com/article/us-special-forces-are-operating-more-countries-you-can-imagine/]

During the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2014, US Special Operations forces (SOF) deployed to 133 countries—

roughly 70 percent of the nations on the planet—according to Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bockholt, a public affairs officer

with US Special Operations Command (SOCOM). This capped a three-year span in which the country’s most elite forces were active in more than 150 different countries around the world, conducting missions ranging from

kill/capture night raids to training exercises. And this year could be a record-breaker. Only a day before the failed raid that

ended Luke Somers life—just 66 days into fiscal 2015—America’s most elite troops had already set foot in 105 nations, approximately 80% of 2014’s total. Despite its massive scale and scope, this secret global war across much of the planet is unknown to most Americans. Unlike the December debacle in Yemen, the vast majority of special ops missions remain completely in the shadows, hidden from external oversight or press scrutiny. In fact, aside from modest amounts of information disclosed through highly-selective coverage by military media, official White House leaks, SEALs with something to sell and a few cherry-picked journalists reporting on

cherry-picked opportunities, much of what America’s special operators do is never subjected to meaningful examination, which only increases the chances of unforeseen blowback and catastrophic consequences.

Covert ops buildup in Africa demonstrates US Special Forces operate globally nowWhitlock 12 [Craig, WP staff who covers the Pentagon and national security, U.S. expands secret intelligence operations in Africa, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-expands-secret-intelligence-operations-in-africa/2012/06/13/gJQAHyvAbV_story.html]

The U.S. military is expanding its secret intelligence operations across Africa, establishing a network of small air bases to spy on terrorist hideouts from the fringes of the Sahara to jungle terrain along the equator, according to documents and people involved in the project. At the heart of the surveillance operations are small, unarmed turboprop aircraft disguised as private planes. Equipped with hidden sensors that can record full-motion video, track infrared heat patterns, and vacuum up radio and cellphone signals, the planes refuel on isolated airstrips favored by African bush pilots, extending their effective flight range by thousands of miles. About a dozen air bases have been established in Africa since 2007, according to a former senior U.S. commander involved in setting up the network. Most are small operations run out of secluded hangars at African military bases or civilian airports. The nature and extent of the missions, as well as many of the bases being used, have not been previously reported but are partially documented in public Defense Department contracts. The operations have intensified in recent months, part of a growing shadow war against al-Qaeda affiliates and other

militant groups. The surveillance is overseen by U.S. Special Operations forces but relies heavily on private military contractors and support from African troops. The surveillance underscores how Special Operations forces, which have played an outsize role in the Obama administration’s national security strategy, are working clandestinely all over the globe , not just in war zones. The lightly equipped commando

units train foreign security forces and perform aid missions, but they also include teams dedicated to tracking and killing terrorism suspects. The establishment of the Africa missions also highlights the ways in which Special Operations forces are blurring the lines that govern the secret world of intelligence, moving aggressively into spheres once reserved for the CIA. The CIA has expanded its counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering operations in Africa, but its manpower and resources pale in comparison with those of the military.

Non-unique, covert ops nowCovert operations in Africa nowSamwagik’14

(We are taking the lead in the paradigm shift. We are clearly a cut above the rest and in a league where besides us there is no other. This blog is uniquely tailored to go against the current while at the same time meeting your expectations.)

The US military has its secret intelligence operations across Africa, establishing a network of small air bases to spy on terrorist hideouts from the fringes of the Sahara to jungle terrain along the equator, according to documents and people involved in the project. At the heart of the surveillance operations are small, unarmed turboprop aircraft disguised as private planes, and bear no military markings or government insignia. Equipped with hidden sensors that can record full-motion video, track infrared heat patterns, and vacuum up radio and cellphone signals, the planes refuel on isolated airstrips favoured by African bush pilots, extending their flight range by thousands of kilometres. In reality, however, they carry sophisticated electronic equipment designed to collect signals intelligence, while some are used to transport US Special Forces troops during capture or kill missions.

Covert ops are up now, being covered upWashingtonsblog’13

(Washington’s Blog strives to provide real-time, well-researched and actionable information. We at Washington’s Blog have an insatiable curiosity for new discoveries, new information and new insights.,http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/05/u-s-currently-fighting-74-different-wars-that-it-publicly-admits.html)

Gosztola notes that the covert operations are uncountable: Beyond that, there are Special Operations forces in countries. Jeremy Scahill in Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, writes, “By mid-2010, the Obama administration had increased the presence of Special Operations forces from sixty countries to seventy-five countries. *** Scahill also reports, based on his own “well-placed special operations sources”: …[A]mong the countries where [Joint Special Operations Command] teams had been deployed under the Obama administration were: Iran, Georgia, Ukraine, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, Yemen, Pakistan (including in Baluchistan) and the Philippines. These teams also at times deployed in Turkey, Belgium, France and Spain. JSOC was also supporting US Drug Enforcement Agency operations in Colombia and Mexico… Since President Barack Obama has been willing to give the go ahead to operations that President George W. Bush would not have approved, operations have been much more aggressive and, presumably, JSOC has been able to fan out and work in way more countries than ever expected.

Turn – the plan ends covert opsWithdrawal of military presence will end clandestine operations – Iraq provesUPI 11 [Iraq pullout blinds U.S. intel operations, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2011/11/09/Iraq-pullout-blinds-US-intel-operations/90721320860479/]

BAGHDAD, Nov. 9 (UPI) -- The U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq is cutting off vital intelligence bases and listening posts that have played a key role in clandestine operations that have scored major successes in the global counter-terrorism

campaign. The Central Intelligence Agency, which until recently operated outside the military establishment, is expected to stay on in various guises within the 17,000 U.S. personnel who will remain under State Department jurisdiction. The CIA has become increasingly militarized since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and most of its establishment -- including a heavily enlarged paramilitary division -- is engaged in the counter-terrorism battle to one degree or another. And with Gen. David Petraeus, the former military commander in Iraq and Afghanistan who wrote the army's counter-insurgency manual, now the director of the CIA, the agency

can be expected to maintain some covert operations. Even so, the loss of clandestine facilities means "there will be a considerable lapse in and degradation of the U.S. intelligence-gathering and situational awareness capabilities in Iraq," observed U.S.-based

global intelligence consultancy Stratfor. One of the major drawbacks to the military withdrawal is that Iraq's intelligence and security services, heavily infiltrated by Shiite groups with strong links to Iran, are not likely to be capable of waging an effective and non-sectarian

counter-terrorism campaign. U.S. military intelligence and Special Forces ran operations against Iran and its proxies in Iraq, and even into Syria, Iraq's northern neighbor and Tehran's key ally, intelligence sources say. With tension escalating between

the Islamic Republic and the United States, not to mention Israel, the closures could impede such operations.

Withdrawal from Iraq in 2010 significantly impacted US covert opsTucker 14 [Patrick, technology editor for Defense One, Previously, Tucker was deputy editor for The Futurist for nine years, NSA Says Intelligence on the Islamic State Could Have Been ‘Stronger’, http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2014/09/nsa-says-intelligence-islamic-state-could-have-been-stronger/94553/]

The question becomes, then, what could have made the intelligence gathering operation in Iraq more robust, allowing for better and earlier indication of the Islamic State’s capability? The panelists at the conference were in agreement: spies on the ground. “You have indirect capabilities in terms of intelligence, whether it’s overhead or from your sources. But unless you’re actually there, you’re getting second, third

hand intelligence,” Brennan said. In other words, the haste of the U.S. withdrawal in Iraq in 2011 played a causal role in the intelligence community’s myopia. Rogers, too, urged the public and policy to understand that intelligence-gathering capabilities in Iraq saw a significant decline following the withdrawal of U.S. forces in that country. “It’s Iraq of 2014, not Iraq of 2010. Your expectations in terms of what intelligence can generate and the timeliness of your insight needs to be caged to the environment we’re in now. Not necessarily the environment we’ve been used to.”

A2 TerrorismTerrorist networks are weak – Bin Laden’s death, Abbottabad intelligence, no safe haven WILLIAM MCCANTS - Center for Strategic Studies / Johns Hopkins – Sept/Oct 2011, Al Qaeda's Challenge, Foreign Affairs, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68160/william-mccants/al-qaedas-challenge?page=show

Al Qaeda now stands at a precipice. The Arab Spring and the success of Islamist parliamentarians throughout the Middle East have challenged its core vision just as the group has lost its founder. Al Qaeda has also lost access to bin Laden's personal connections in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Persian Gulf, which had long provided it with resources and protection . Bin Laden's death has deprived al Qaeda of its most media-savvy icon; and most important, al Qaeda has lost its commander in chief. The raid that killed bin Laden revealed that he had not been reduced to a figurehead, as many Western analysts had suspected; he had continued to direct the operations of al Qaeda and its franchises. Yet the documents seized from bin Laden's home in Abbottabad , Pakistan, reveal how weak al Qaeda had become even under his ongoing leadership . Correspondence found in the raid shows bin Laden and his lieutenants lamenting al Qaeda's lack of funds and the constant casualties from U.S. drone strikes . These papers have made the organization even more vulnerable by exposing its general command structure , putting al Qaeda's leadership at greater risk of extinction than ever before. Al Qaeda has elected Zawahiri as its new chief, at least for now. But the transition will not be seamless. Some members of al Qaeda's old guard feel little loyalty to Zawahiri, whom they view as a relative newcomer. Al Qaeda's members from the Persian Gulf, for their part, may feel alienated by having an Egyptian at their helm, especially if Zawahiri chooses another Egyptian as his deputy. Despite these potential sources of friction, al Qaeda is not likely to split under Zawahiri's reign. Its senior leadership will still want to unite jihadist groups under its banner, and its franchises will have little reason to relinquish the recognition and resources that come with al Qaeda affiliation. Yet those affiliates cannot offer al Qaeda's senior commanders shelter. Indeed, should Pakistan become too dangerous a refuge for the organization's leaders, they will find themselves with few other options. The Islamic governments that previously protected and assisted al Qaeda , such as those in Afghanistan and Sudan in the 1990s, either no longer exist or are inhospitable (although Somalia might become a candidate if the militant group al Shabab consolidates its hold there). In the midst of grappling with all these challenges, al Qaeda must also decide how to respond to the uprisings in the Arab world. Thus far, its leaders have indicated that they want to support Islamist insurgents in unstable revolutionary countries and lay the groundwork for the creation of Islamic states once the existing regimes have fallen, similar to what they attempted in Iraq. But al Qaeda's true strategic dilemma lies in Egypt and Tunisia. In these countries, local tyrants have been ousted, but parliamentary elections will be held soon, and the United States remains influential. The outcome in Egypt is particularly personal for Zawahiri, who began his fight to depose the Egyptian government as a teenager. Zawahiri also understands that Egypt, given its geostrategic importance and its status as the leading Arab nation, is the grand prize in the contest between al Qaeda and the United States. In his recent six-part message to the Egyptian people and in his eulogy for bin Laden, Zawahiri suggested that absent outside interference, the Egyptians and the

Tunisians would establish Islamic states that would be hostile to Western interests. But the United States, he said, will likely work to ensure that friendly political forces, including secularists and moderate Islamists, win Egypt's upcoming elections. And even if the Islamists succeed in establishing an Islamic state there, Zawahiri argued, the United States will retain enough leverage to keep it in line. To prevent such an outcome, Zawahiri called on Islamist activists in Egypt and Tunisia to start a popular (presumably nonviolent) campaign to implement sharia as the sole source of legislation and to pressure the transitional governments to end their cooperation with Washington. Yet Zawahiri's attempt to sway local Islamists is unlikely to succeed. Although some Islamists in the two countries rhetorically support al Qaeda, many, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, are now organizing for their countries' upcoming elections -- that is, they are becoming Islamist parliamentarians. Even Egyptian Salafists, who share Zawahiri's distaste for parliamentary politics, are forming their own political parties. Most ominous for Zawahiri's agenda, the Egyptian Islamist organization al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group), parts of which were once allied with al Qaeda, has forsworn violence and recently announced that it was creating a political party to compete in Egypt's parliamentary elections. Al Qaeda, then, is losing sway even among its natural allies. This dynamic limits Zawahiri's options. For fear of alienating the Egyptian people, he is not likely to end his efforts to reach out to Egypt's Islamist parliamentarians or to break with them by calling for attacks in the country before the elections. Instead, he will continue urging the Islamists to advocate for sharia and to try to limit U.S. influence. In the meantime, Zawahiri will continue trying to attack the United States and continue exploiting less stable postrevolutionary countries, such as Libya, Syria, and Yemen, which may prove more susceptible to al Qaeda's influence. Yet to operate in these countries, al Qaeda will need to subordinate its political agenda to those of the insurgents there or risk destroying itself, as Zarqawi's group did in Iraq. If those insurgents take power , they will likely refuse to offer al Qaeda safe haven for fear of alienating the U nited S tates or its allies in the region. Thanks to the continued predominance of the United States and the growing appeal of Islamist parliamentarians in the Muslim world, even supporters of al Qaeda now doubt that it will be able to replace existing regimes with Islamic states anytime soon. In a recent joint statement, several jihadist online forums expressed concern that if Muammar al-Qaddafi is defeated in Libya, the Islamists there will participate in U.S.-backed elections, ending any chance of establishing a true Islamic state. As a result of all these forces, al Qaeda is no longer the vanguard of the Islamist movement in the Arab world. Having defined the terms of Islamist politics for the last decade by raising fears about Islamic political parties and giving Arab rulers a pretext to limit their activity or shut them down, al Qaeda's goal of removing those rulers is now being fulfilled by others who are unlikely to share its political vision. Should these revolutions fail and al Qaeda survives, it will be ready to reclaim the mantle of Islamist resistance. But for now, the forces best positioned to capitalize on the Arab Spring are the Islamist parliamentarians, who, unlike al Qaeda, are willing and able to engage in the messy business of politics.

Cyber TerrorNo cyberterror – discount evidence from the new Pentagon report**Rid, 13 (Reader War Studies at King’s College, 3-13-’13, Thomas, “The Great Cyberscare” Foreign Policy, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/13/the_great_cyberscare)

The Pentagon, no doubt, is the master of razzmatazz. Leon Panetta set the tone by warning again and again of an impending "cyber Pearl Harbor." Just before he left the Pentagon, the Defense Science Board delivered a remarkable report, Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat. The paper seemed obsessed with making yet more drastic historical comparisons: "The cyber threat is serious," the task force wrote, "with potential consequences similar to the nuclear threat of the Cold War." The manifestations of an all-out nuclear war would be different from cyberattack, the Pentagon scientists helpfully acknowledged. But then they added, gravely, that "in the end,

the existential impact on the United States is the same." A reminder is in order: The world has yet to witness a single casualty , let alone

fatality , as a result of a computer attack. Such statements are a plain insult to survivors of Hiroshima.

Some sections of the Pentagon document offer such eye-wateringly shoddy analysis that they would

not have passed as an MA dissertation in a self-respecting political science department . But in the current debate it

seemed to make sense. After all a bit of fear helps to claim -- or keep -- scarce resources when austerity and cutting seems out-of-control. The report recommended allocating the stout sum of $2.5 billion for its top two priorities alone, protecting nuclear weapons against cyberattacks and determining the mix of weapons necessary to punish all-out cyber-aggressors. Then there are private computer security companies. Such firms, naturally, are keen to pocket some of the government's money earmarked for cybersecurity. And hype is the means to that end. Mandiant's much-noted report linking a coordinated and coherent campaign of espionage attacks dubbed Advanced Persistent Threat 1, or "APT1," to a unit of the Chinese military is a case in point: The firm offered far more details on attributing attacks to the Chinese than the intelligence community has ever done, and the company should be commended for making the report public. But instead of using cocky and over-confident language, Mandiant's analysts should have used Words of Estimative Probability, as professional intelligence analysts would have done. An example is the report's conclusion, which describes APT1's work: "Although they control systems in dozens of countries, their attacks originate from four large networks in Shanghai -- two of which are allocated directly to the Pudong New Area," the report found. Unit 61398 of the People's Liberation Army is also in Pudong. Therefore, Mandiant's computer security specialists concluded, the two were identical: "Given the mission, resourcing, and location of PLA Unit 61398, we conclude that PLA Unit 61398 is APT1." But the report conspicuously does not mention that Pudong is not a small neighborhood ("right outside of Unit 61398's gates") but in fact a vast city landscape twice the size of Chicago. Mandiant's report was useful and many attacks indeed originate in

China. But the company should have been more careful in its overall assessment of the available evidence , as the computer security expert Jeffrey Carr and others have pointed out. The firm made it too easy for Beijing to dismiss the report. My class in cybersecurity at King's College London started

poking holes into the report after 15 minutes of red-teaming it -- the New York Times didn't. Which leads to the next point: The media want to sell copy

through threat inflation . "In Cyberspace, New Cold War," the headline writers at the Times intoned in late February. "The U.S. is not ready for a cyberwar," shrieked the

Washington Post earlier this week. Instead of calling out the above-mentioned Pentagon report, the paper actually published two supportive articles on it and pointed out that a major

offensive cyber capability now seemed essential "in a world awash in cyber-espionage, theft and disruption." The Post should have reminded its readers that the only military-style cyberattack that has actually created physical damage -- Stuxnet -- was actually executed by the United States government. The Times, likewise, should have asked tough questions and pointed to some of the evidential problems in the Mandiant report; instead, it published what appeared like an

elegant press release for the firm. On issues of cybersecurity, the nation's fiercest watchdogs too often look like hand-tame

puppies eager to lap up stories from private firms as well as anonymous sources in the security establishment. Finally, the intelligence community tags along with the hype because the NSA and CIA are still traumatized by missing 9/11. Missing a "cyber 9/11" would be truly catastrophic for America's spies, so erring on the side of caution seems the rational choice. Yes, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's recent testimony was more nuanced than reported and toned down the threat of a very serious cyberattack. But at the same time

America's top spies are not as forthcoming with more detailed information as they could be. We know that the intelligence community, especially in the United States,

has far better information, better sources, better expertise, and better analysts than private companies like Symantec, McAfee, and Kaspersky Lab.

But for a number of reasons they keep their findings and their analysis classified. This means that the quality of the public debate suffers, as experts as well as journalists have no choice but to rely on industry reports of sometimes questionable quality or anonymous informants whose veracity is hard to assess.

Power ProjectionEvidence for preventive war is spotty.Sechser 5 (Todd, Assistant Prof. Politics specializing in International Security—Stanford U., “How Organizational Pathologies Could Make Nuclear Proliferation Safer”, Presented at the annual conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, 4-7, *I had to ILL this. I don’t think it’s available online)

Empirically, the case against the preventive war bias is at least as strong as that behind it, not least because of the historical absence of such wars against emergent nuclear powers. Proponents of the preventive war hypothesis have found evidence to corroborate their viewpoint in the U.S. military’s attitude toward the Soviet Union’s budding nuclear capability, but a critic might highlight its approach to China’s emerging arsenal: even Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay, notorious for having pressed for preemptive airstrikes against Soviet missile sites in Cuba a year earlier (May and Zelikow 1997), opposed preventive attacks on Chinese nuclear sites on the grounds that they would invite retaliation and create diplomatic problems for the United States. Rather, it was the Kennedy administration’s civilian strategists that maintained an interest in keeping China non-nuclear through preventive strikes, although they too rejected the option (Burr and Richelson 2000/2001).

The arguments in this section caution against interpreting archival evidence too broadly. Rarely have high-ranking military officials actually recommended preventive war to state leaders; rather, most examples of “preventive war bias” have been drawn from officers’ memoirs, diaries, or informal conversations. The distinction between these illustrations and actual policy advice should not be underestimated. Military officers consider absurd ideas all the time—U.S. officers, for example, once toyed with the idea of detonating a nuclear weapon on the moon to intimidate the Soviets (Davidson 1999: 94-95). It is one thing for on officer to make aggressive remarks to a newspaper or college commencement audience about preventive war, or to lecture Air War College students about the dangers of allowing

an adversary to become strong. But it is quite another to recommend to high-level political leaders that the country initiate an all-out war without immediate provocation. One act entails little professional risk (other than being removed for publicly disparaging government policy), while the other places one’s accountability, career, and possibly life on the line. The

logic and examples above suggest that the gap between risk-free chatter and actual policy recommendations is larger than proliferation pessimists have been willing to acknowledge.

Lots of historical disproofAlagappa 8 (Muthiah, Distinguished Senior Fellow—East-West Center, in “The Long Shadow: Nuclear Weapons and Security in 21st Century Asia, Ed. Muthiah Alagappa, p. 522)

The prospect of military action to destroy nuclear weapons and facilities in East and South Asia has declined markedly. The Soviet Union contemplated preventive military action against China's nuclear facilities in 1969, but the United States refused to support such action. Several years ago there was concern that India might attack Pakistan's nuclear installations. Even if this was a serious possibility, its probability has declined sharply. The two countries entered into an agreement not to attack each other's nuclear facilities. This agreement held even during the crisis situations in the 1999-2002

period. Since then, India and Pakistan have taken additional measures to prevent an accidental outbreak or escalation of conflict. More germane to the contemporary context is the emphasis in the U.S. 2002 Nuclear

Posture Review on offensive military action against rogue states. The United States seriously contemplated a

preventive strike against North Korea's nuclear weapon facilities during the first nuclear crisis on the Korean

peninsula in 1993-94 (Perry 2006). And the George W. Bush administration threatened preventive action against North Korea during its first

term. 3 However, that policy has lost traction and has no support among states in Northeast Asia,

including U.S. allies. Neighboring countries oppose any preventive strike, fearing that it could result in a general war that would have negative consequences for their own national security and regional stability. Although the United States has the military capability to undertake such an action it is unlikely to act without the support of its regional allies. The force option is still on the table, but the approach to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem has decidedly shifted to the diplomatic arena.

Empirics prove preventive wars either don’t happen or don’t escalateRousseau 2k (David, Assistant Prof. Pol. Sci.—Penn, "Proliferation Module," http://www.ssc.upenn.edu/~rousseau/archived_web/psci150/modules/pro/lecture1.htm)

Second, opponents of proliferation claim that states acquiring nuclear weapons have enduring rivals.

These critics argue that injecting nuclear weapons into these already volatile relationships will result in violence. New nuclear power could launch preemptive or preventative strikes. These people argue that the existence of a rivalry greatly increases the probability the nuclear weapons will be used. History has demonstrated that only states facing a hostile external environment will be willing to spend the

billions and billions of dollars necessary to acquire nuclear weapons. However, the existence of a enduring and hostile rival does not pose a real danger for two reasons. First, history shows that injecting nuclear weapons into long term hostile situations does not result in war. The U nited S tates allowed the Soviets to get nuclear weapons in 1949 without initiating violence. The Soviets allowed the British to get nuclear weapons in 1952 without initiating violence. The Soviets allowed France to get nuclear weapons in 1960 without initiating violence.

The U nited S tates and Soviet Union allowed the Chinese to get nuclear weapons in 1964 without initiating violence. The Chinese allowed India to get nuclear weapons in 1974 without initiating violence. The Indians allow Pakistan to get nuclear weapons in the 1990's without initiating violence. Nuclear proliferation has not lead

to either conventional or nuclear war. Second, if an existing nuclear power engages in a preventative strike, it will not be the end of the world. Israel's preventative strike against the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981 did not result in the use of nuclear weapons. While the attack was personal tragedy for those killed in the raid, it would not lead me to conclude that proliferation is very dangerous.

No Iran prolifHeard it before, NO such thing as nuclear prolif from Iran. 81 proves Your impact claims are over exaggerated. Chapman’12

(Stephen Chapman has taught at Duke since the fall of 2000.,http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-07-08/news/ct-oped-0708-chapman-20120708_1_nuclear-proliferation-iran-regional-proliferation)

It highlights one of the dangers cited by those who favor military action against Iran. President Barack Obama says that if Iran gets the bomb, "other players in the region would feel it necessary to get their own nuclear weapons. So now you have the prospect of a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region in the world."A plausible threat? It may sound that way. But it also sounded that way in 1981 — when that Washington Post story ran. Nuclear proliferation is always said to be on the verge of suddenly accelerating, and somehow it never does. In 1981, there were five declared nuclear powers — the U.S., the Soviet Union, China, Britain and France — as well as Israel, which was (and is) undeclared.