Woodward says USA has a TOP SECRET Weapon and it is the reason for the Surge's success.

[Winterblues]

He would not divulge what it is but said it was equivelent to the introduction of the tank or the airplane in WW I. IOW a Major new weapon.. What in the world could he be talking about?

[seemslikeadream]

1. Woodward wearing the tinfoil?

[depakid]

2. Woodward lost his credibility a long time ago

[JaneQPublic]

3. I saw him on 60 minutes

He said this new technology abled them to know whatever the Iraq terrorists were saying and doing.

I wanted to know why they haven't used it to get bin Laden.

[mainegreen]

4. From the people who almost brought you the gay bomb, it's the HIPPIE bomb!

Your enemies will lay down their weapons, and instead start sending you nasty, well typed letters and flax seed granola bars they made that day.

[Fiendish Thingy]

5. Bribing the enemy? Aren't we paying Sunni insurgents $300 mo. each?

And lots more to the Sunni cheiftains/warlords?

or maybe they're just using that new ray gun demonstrated on 60 minutes...

[Overseas]

11. That was my first thought too.

In which case we could have given every Iraqi $100,000 years ago and spared ourselves billions of dollars.

[The_Casual_Observer]

6. It's called bails of paper money paid as bribes. It's off the books.

[magellan]

20. Maybe they've thrown in some of those Liberian 9-11 certificates

$20 value my sweet bippy. :puke:

[hobbit709]

7. If it works that well, why are they still shooting at our troops?

[AuntPatsy]

8. You mean the occupation? How is it working out for all those poor Iraq'ies who have lost their homes

and or lives and live in fear of going anyway day or night? I have a feeling they would tell a different tale.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

9. Is it a schizophrenic fundie?

[zulchzulu]

10. I think he's referring to the new heat weapon featured on 60 Minutes (Active Denial System)

It's a crowd control weapon that beams heat into a crowd and debilitates them to have to run away.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/29/60minutes/main3891865.shtml

[anigbrowl]

12. Some kind of UAV, most likely

We are deploying a lot of simple-but-effective military robots to Iraq. Well, I say simple by comparison to our image of robots from science fiction. but we're heading that way. I am guessing he refers to an aerial weapon because the various interesting military ground-based robotic platforms I can think of would probably have been caught on video (in Iraq, as opposed to one some test range her in the US) by now.

[goodcitizen]

17. Probably this

The armed UAVs are an awesome capability but I don't know if its equivalent to the introduction of the tank or airplane.

[Junkdrawer]

24. Is This Woodward's Iraq Secret Weapon?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x185258

[yardwork]

13. I'd read that the military is using new weapons that emit very loud sounds.

Apparently people are stopped in their tracks by the incredible sound. Maybe that's what Woodward's talking about. Very effective crowd control.

[tularetom]

14. Remember the old Charles Adams cartoon?

"Death ray, fiddlesticks. Why it doesn't even slow them down!"

[hunter]

15. High Fructose Corn Syrup.

It turns the insurgents into couch potatoes.

Here, have another soda...

[tularetom]

16. Death ray, fiddlesticks. Why it doesn't even slow them down.

An old cartoon by Charles Adams

[Bigleaf]

18. Fuck, on Larry King last night he compared it to the Manhattan Project and stated that

when the public eventually learns of this they will be astounded. He also said he told a 4-star General everything he knew of this and the blood literally drained from the Generals face.

[Johonny]

19. Woodward

is kind of a self promoting nut and no I don't think he has a clue what he was talking about.

[killbotfactory]

21. bullshit

[kenny blankenship]

22. Pallets of shrinkwrapped Benjamins?

[JDPriestly]

23. If the US had such a weapon, Woodward would not have the

security clearance to know about it -- or, if he does have such clearance, then maybe he is a government employee? That would explain a lot. I believe that he was in Naval intelligence at one time. He is described as reporting about certain matters to General Haig as a young man.

http://www.counterpunch.org/colodny07072005.html

I don't know how reliable that is, but then Woodward is a mysterious character as far as I am concerned.

If Woodward is working for the government, then why is he letting this cat out of the bag (assuming the cat actually exists), and if he isn't how does he know about something that is top secret? Did someone else let the cat out of the bag?

[bushmeister0]

27. Read "Silent Coup" for dirt on Woodward's military career.

"Woodward is portrayed not as the Robert Redford movie-version hero, but as a sleazy journalist covering up his past in military intelligence, including a working relationship with Haig. Colodny and Gettlin say that interviews with Admiral Thomas Moorer (former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman), Melvin Laird (former secretary of defense), and Jerry Friedheim (former Defense Department spokesman) prove that Woodward is lying about his relationship with Haig."

http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/year/91/6/books-nixon.asp

[bushmeister0]

25. Sounds like the Vietnam era "Phoenix Program."

From the Memory Hole:

"Created by the CIA in Saigon in 1967, Phoenix was a program aimed at 'neutralizing' —through assassination, kidnapping, and systematic torture—the civilian infrastructure that supported the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam. It was a terrifying 'final solution' that violated the Geneva Conventions and traditional American ideas of human morality."

http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/

Another issue with Phoenix was these hit squads many times got the wrong person.

Not exactly the "Manhatten Project" Woodward is making it out to be. Hardly heroic.

Interesting piece at CNN:

"CNN Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware cast doubt on Woodward's assertion Tuesday in a conversation with 'American Morning' host John Roberts.

Ware: 'On the ground you've seen the lack of coordination as the left hand of one agency is not with the right hand of another agency within the American effort. But by and large, to suggest that anything like this being done now has been the major reason for the decline in violence is a bit rich.

I mean, the U.S. subcontracted out an assassination program against al Qaeda way back in early 2006. And this was conceded by the then-chief of military intelligence in Baghdad and by Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad himself. That's what broke the back of al Qaeda.'"

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/09/09/ware.qanda/index.html

One possible victim of mistaken idendity? Samir Sumaidaie, the Iraqi ambassador to the United States' nephew was killed for no appearant reason in 2005:

CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer:

"BLITZER: But even months before the incident in November, you lost a cousin at Haditha in a separate battle involving United States Marines.

SUMAIDAIE: Well, that was not a battle at all. Marines were doing house-to-house searches, and they went into the house of my cousin. He opened the door for them.

His mother, his siblings were there. He led them into the bedroom of his father. And there he was shot.

BLITZER: Who shot him?

SUMAIDAIE: A member of the Marines.

BLITZER: Why did they shoot him?

SUMAIDAIE: Well, they said that they shot him in self-defense. I find that hard to believe because, A, he is not at all a violent -- I mean, I know the boy. He was a second-year engineering course in the university. Nothing to do with violence. All his life has been studies and intellectual work.

Totally unbelievable. And, in fact, they had no weapon in the house. They had one weapon which belonged to the school where his father was a headmaster. And it had no ammunition in it. And he led them into the room to show it to them.

BLITZER: So what you're suggesting, your cousin was killed in cold blood, is that what you're saying, by United States Marines?

SUMAIDAIE: I believe he was killed intentionally. I believe that he was killed unnecessarily. And unfortunately, the investigations that took place after that sort of took a different course and concluded that there was no unlawful killing."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/05/30/cnna.sumaidaie/

Food for thought . . .

"It is a wonderful example of American ingenuity solving a problem in war, as we often have." Woodward said."

Indeed.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

26. So they've got this ultra Top Secret weapon...

And they're going to tell one of the the world's most famous investigative journalists about it?