They Just Don't Get It: How Washington Is Still Compromising Your Safety--and What You Can Do About It - Hardcover

Hunt, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 140009741X ISBN 13: 9781400097418

Publisher: Crown Forum, 2005

Synopsis

No more politics—just the truth about what we can and must do to protect ourselves.

Fox News military analyst Colonel David Hunt has dedicated his career to fighting terrorism. A twenty-nine-year U.S. Army veteran, he has helped take out an active terrorist camp, trained the FBI and Special Forces in counterterrorism tactics, and served as security adviser to six different Olympic Games.

And Colonel Hunt is angry. Why? Because even after the terrorist attacks on our country and on Americans around the world, the people charged with protecting us—the politicians and the bureaucrats in military and intelligence—still aren’t getting the job done.

They Just Don’t Get It provides a much-needed wake-up call to all Americans. As politicians posture and pundits bicker, we’re losing sight of the fundamental problem: We’re still not equipped to win the War on Terror. In fact, the terrorist threat is far worse than we feared, as made frighteningly clear by the fifty pages of documents published here for the first time—including a shocking manual taken from the terrorists themselves.

But instead of just complaining, Colonel Hunt tells us exactly what we must do—without regard to political game-playing—to emerge victorious in the challenge that history has given us. These are changes we can make at every level—as individual citizens, as a government, and as a military power. As he shows in this book, while the government and our military lead the fight to protect us, ordinary citizens can and must contribute.

They Just Don’t Get It reveals:

• What you can do to keep your family safe

• How many of the government’s recent “reforms” are mere window dressing or, worse, counterproductive

• How we can fight this war and still safeguard our civil liberties and the American way of life

• How to fix the intelligence disaster (and yes, the politicians in D.C. still haven’t fixed it)

• How we got into this mess in the first place: it’s mostly because our government let the problem fester for three decades

Colonel Hunt is no cautious bureaucrat or finger-pointer looking for political gain. He is a straight shooter with deep insight into what’s happening in the War on Terror—on the ground and in the government. They Just Don’t Get It lays out in clear and compelling terms the steps we must take—all of us—to win the War on Terror and ensure our survival as a free, proud, and strong nation.

From They Just Don’t Get It

We’re fighting a war for our very survival, so we’d better figure out how to win. That’s why I’m writing this book—to show us how we can win, how we can protect ourselves. As a Fox News military analyst, I’m paid to offer insight into how our armed forces are conducting the fight against our enemies. But this book shows that to win the War on Terror we need to concern ourselves with more than just military tactics.

For one thing, we need to look at what our political leaders are doing. The sad truth is that they still don’t get it.

Then there’s intelligence. You’ve heard about our intelligence failures, but I doubt you know how bad it really is—even after the “reforms.” I’m going to tell you.

And another critical dimension to this story usually gets overlooked—what you can do. The fact is, you can do a lot. Hell, you must do a lot.


A selection of American Compass

About this title

About the Author

Colonel David Hunt, U.S. Army (Ret.), has extensive operational experience in counterterrorism, special operations, and intelligence operations. He is a designated terrorism expert in federal court, having testified at many major terrorist trials, and has lectured at the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and Harvard University. A military analyst for the Fox News Channel, he frequently provides commentary on radio programs hosted by Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes, Michael Savage, Monica Crowley, and others. Colonel Hunt, a senior research fellow at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, lives in Maine with his family.

Reviews

"Hang onto your ball caps and hairpieces, this is going to be monkey-butt ugly." Indeed. Delivering an account of the U.S.'s failures in combatting terror, Hunt, a Fox TV News military analyst and retired army colonel, depicts a world of gutless politicians, bungling bureaucrats, deceitful allies and bleeding-heart liberals. His solution is to expand the armed forces and vastly contract bureaucracy, especially the many intelligence agencies, which he proposes be combined into one central bureau with a single, long-term director who is exempt from testifying before congressional committees. Hunt hates congressional committees and admires elite military teams like the SEALs and Delta Force; he wants them turned loose. Merged into the "TKA" (Terrorist Killing Agency), they would receive intelligence from the now competent intelligence bureau, proceed to wherever terrorists operate and (with or without the host country's permission) kill them. The author considers Israel an ideal model; its forces, he says, respond viciously to every attack. Legal niceties and public relations take a back seat. Assassination teams travel the world to murder Israel's enemies. (Thoughtful readers may wonder why, after decades of slugging it out, Israel remains wracked with terrorism.) No group escapes the author's venom—or his praise. (On sale Apr. 12)

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 1: Terror in Your Living Room

They came in low over the mountains doing about 190 miles per hour, two Task Force 160 UH 1 60 Black Hawk helicopters carrying an assault force of sixteen French Foreign Legion reconnaissance soldiers led by a British colonel. It was broad daylight. Not the best time for a tactical military operation, but we had little choice.

A NATO force of sixty thousand soldiers had just taken over the Bosnian peace mission from the United Nations. Now we were confronted with one of the most serious threats to peace in the bloody Balkans: a terrorist training camp was in full operation in Fosnica in northwest Bosnia.

The president of Bosnia claimed the terrorist camp did not exist, but we had all the evidence: satellite imagery, technical communications intercepts, and information that was being fed to us by the four two-man teams we had positioned in hidden "observation posts"—holes that were just yards from the terrorist compound. We knew that an Iranian branch of the terrorist organization Hezbollah had built the camp. And we knew Hezbollah means business; just to give you an idea, the number two man in the U.S. State Department later said publicly that "Hezbollah may be the A-team of terrorists and maybe al Qaeda is actually the B-team"—and he said this after the 9/11 attacks. During this long war in the Balkans, much of the Muslim world had rallied to the support of the Bosnian Muslims, who were outgunned and outmanned by the Serbs. But when you're dealing with Hezbollah and a terrorist camp—and with Hezbollah's main supporter, Iran, which the State Department puts on its list of state sponsors of terrorism for a reason—you know that helping people defend themselves isn't the only priority.

I was the tactical adviser to the commander in chief of NATO forces in Bosnia, Admiral Leighton "Snuffy" Smith, U.S. Navy. My job was to facilitate all U.S. national intelligence matters for him and to perform any other tasks he deemed necessary. Taking care of this terrorist training camp had become one of those "other" tasks. The mission became urgent when we learned that the Iranians were using hunters and dogs to guard the perimeter of the camp. They might soon discover our guys in the observation posts. We had to go in-now.

I had been in the Army for more than a quarter-century doing tours from Southeast Asia to South America. I had gone to every school the Army would let me go to, from Airborne to Ranger to Special Forces, and I had more years commanding soldiers than almost anyone still in uniform. But I still felt lucky to have been picked for this mission. Sure, I had years of experience, but I was a colonel. Colonels don't do raids. Now here I was, hanging and banging with the best Special Operations forces in the world. We were going to take down some very bad men and make Bosnia, and possibly the world, a safer place. I loved every minute of it.

My mission was twofold: link up with the assault force and establish an intelligence link to arrange for the Bosnian president to be shown the camp he said did not exist. As the Black Hawks carried the assault force to the terrorist camp, we made our way in an unarmored Chevrolet Suburban truck through Serb and Muslim territory that was known to be hostile to NATO forces.

We knew we would have to deal with roadblocks, which were everywhere, even though they had been illegal ever since NATO began its occupation in 1996. In this case, though, we weren't going to stop at any of the roadblocks. If need be, we'd shoot our way through. I would take all targets from the center of the car window to my right, while my colleague, Fran the Navy SEAL, would take all targets from the center to his left. The first shot would shatter the window and make our visibility difficult, but oh well-nothing was going to stop us from linking up with the assault force.

Our Chevy Suburban reached the camp just after the two Black Hawks landed within inches of the main house. The French Legionnaires, with their blackened, grim, and alert faces, took the house in a mere eleven seconds. They surprised and captured twenty-one men. We linked up with the assault force in time to see three Iranian diplomats get busted.

In the raid we recovered more than 10,000 valuable pieces of information, 200 separate explosive devices, 150 weapons, ammunition, cameras, and planning documents-documents that provided shocking evidence of the terrorists' deadly intentions. It quickly became clear that the terrorists had been planning to target the U.S. Embassy or the NATO headquarters next door, which served as barracks for Turkish and French soldiers. The terrorists knew that the approaches to the embassy and the barracks remained unguarded, and they planned to move over the unprotected walls, toward the barracks' side doors, and up the stairs that their spies had already photographed and checked out. They would have run down the long corridor, throwing bombs into the rooms and killing as they went. When they reached the main room of the enlisted barracks, where hundreds of men were bunked, the terrorists would have blown themselves up, leaving death and destruction everywhere.

Fortunately, we didn't let that happen, because our raid was a total success. It was, in fact, the first successful U.S. or NATO raid on a terrorist training camp anywhere in the world.

But one can imagine the reaction within NATO and within the United States if at the beginning of the reluctant and controversial NATO-led occupation in Bosnia terrorists had killed a substantial number of Americans or NATO soldiers or destroyed the recently reopened U.S. Embassy. I was there, and I assure you that if all of this had happened, we would have done what we did in Somalia, what we did in Lebanon—we would have turned tail and run.

Four years after the raid I was back in Bosnia, testifying in front of the Bosnian Supreme Court to try to prevent the release of the Bosnian government official who had been responsible for the terrorist camp. I testified for twelve hours with armed guards protecting me. I was allowed to have a loaded weapon with me while I testified. It was a good thing I was, because the Bosnian government was about to release this terrorist/government official. It turned out there was a price on my head.

Being involved in the only takedown of an active terrorist camp was just part of a long career spent fighting terrorists. I have trained Special Forces units, SWAT teams, the FBI, even the local police in counterterrorism tactics. I advised authorities on how to prevent terrorist attacks in the 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, and 2002 Olympic Games. I am a designated terrorism expert in federal court, and I have testified at many of the major terrorist trials concerning everything from Pakistan to the World Trade Center. So although some people were surprised when terrorists attacked the United States by flying airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, I was not. A handful of us had been sounding the call for years. But nobody listened.

I guess it's not all that surprising that our country was caught off guard on September 11, 2001. "We the people" have short memories. The fact is, Islamic terrorists killed nearly eight hundred Americans in the three decades leading up to 9/11. But as this book will detail, the United States did almost nothing to counter all the terrorist attacks we saw, except occasionally lob a few missiles and call it a day. No effective response. No willingness to deal with or even acknowledge the growing threat. For years we refused to face reality. Had we had leaders with foresight and courage, had we as a nation been paying attention, had we done anything to counter the rising threat of terrorism, we would not have been surprised on 9/11. But our mentality remained "Ain't gonna happen—not here. No way."

Well, it happened. And what's really scary is that the terrorist threat isn't going away. Look around. In Madrid, Islamic militants drop off ten backpack bombs on commuter trains and blow them up using cell phone technology, killing 191 people and injuring more than 1,600; the attack turns an election on its ear. In Indonesia, hundreds of people are murdered in a nightclub bombing. Outside of Singapore, terrorists seize a super oil tanker, killing all hands and destroying the ship. In the Middle East, Muslim radicals kidnap and behead Nicholas Berg, Paul Johnson, and other Americans. In Iraq, Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations kill American soldiers as part of the insurgency. Iran keeps giving the world the finger while it builds nuclear bombs. Syria is still an acknowledged supporter of terrorism. Al Qaeda cells are being uncovered in South and Central America, and the terrorist organization's top leaders remain at large. It is estimated that more than 10,000 terrorists were trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan before we invaded.

Do you get that the bad guys aren't going anywhere?

Unfortunately, it seems that many of us are already starting to hide from this reality. Do you remember the horrors of 9/11? Do you remember how you felt on that terrible day and in the days and weeks that followed? Do you remember how our children cried? Do you remember the pictures of burning buildings and the calls for revenge? Well, you must remember. Winning the War on Terror—at home and abroad—is the most difficult and important task facing us as a nation, and that task can't be accomplished without all of us feeling a bit uneasy, a bit afraid, and a whole lot angry. These emotions shouldn't paralyze us. Not at all. They steel our resolve and spur us to take the actions necessary to win the War on Terror. We can't fall into the trap of saying—again—"No way. Ain't gonna happen here" or "They have ...

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown Forum
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 140009741X
• ISBN 13: 9781400097418
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 272