Thursday, February 20, 2020

The Evedence that Led to the Invasion of Iraq Was Bogus Personal Statement

The Evedence that Led to the Invasion of Iraq Was Bogus - Personal Statement Example An inspection team was sent by the United Nations and the team could not verify existence of any WMDs. These weapons were suspected to be used in nuclear, biological and chemical warfare against the coalition and also the surrounding region.3 The claims made by the US have still not been verified. Iraq was suspected of having cruise missiles as a mean to deliver these weapons. Saddam Hussein was accused of war crimes and the country was suspected of harboring Al Qaeda. To support all these accusations and to convince the world the US demonstrated evidence of their claims. The evidence provided by the US was not considered by many of the member states of the United Nations to be sufficient for an invasion. The evidence and claims made by the US will be analyzed in detail. Arguments will be made as to how convincing the evidence was. Before starting with the evidence, keep in mind that the evidence provided is the basis to invade a country. This means that the evidence must be solid en ough to form basis of occupation and destroying the complete infrastructure of a country. To take such a step intelligence must be spot on and confirmed by on field sources. The evidence provided in the United Nations meeting is as follows; Evidence Signals Intelligence Few of the intercepted telephone calls were presented as evidence. These included mention of a modified vehicle that required to be hidden from the inspection teams. Others included hiding and cleaning out â€Å"forbidden ammunition†.4 The evidence was aimed at convincing the world that Iraq had been distracting and misguiding UN inspectors to check sites for presence of WMDs. Measures were taken to hide data indicating Iraq’s counter measures against the UN inspection teams. Satellite Imagery Satellite imagery was shown to indicate chemical munitions bunkers. These bunkers were magnified and it was argued that the presence of â€Å"security† and a truck standing nearby, which was identified as a decontamination vehicle, were signs of presence of unconventional weapons.5 The bunkers were shown to be cleared and abandoned before the inspection in the next imagery. Furthermore, a missile site was shown before the inspections to be active by the presence of trucks and cranes in the area. The site was shown to be cleared just before the inspection. Human Intelligence Sources were referred that Saddam Hussein had threatened people if information was given to the inspectors. Interviews held outside Iraq would be considered as treason. People were not allowed to leave the country. Training was imparted to mislead and perform counter intelligence activities against the inspection teams.6 Workers were under house arrests. These claims were aimed at convincing the world that Iraq has been hiding information and misleading the inspection teams. Furthermore, an Iraqi engineer was sited to refer to mobile biological weapons production facility and a civil engineer confirmed the producti on of these mobile factories. In a similar way Al Qaida was suspected to be growing in the country as per the sources. Analysis The evidence presented by signals intelligence is not convincing. Signals intelligence is always a source to register a possible threat. They are confirmed by ground reports. Signals intelligence in different wars needs to be thoroughly filtered and must present the evidence at multiple occasions

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Consequences of Attacks via Cyberspace Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Consequences of Attacks via Cyberspace - Essay Example The consequences of unauthorized access, on the one hand, and the tampering with information, on the other, are enormous, whether accessed in terms of its impact upon individuals, corporate entities or the economy as a whole (Sturdevant, 2005). Indeed, a considerable of the potential consequences of the unauthorised violation of information, or of cyberattacks, highlights the aforementioned. Much has been written about the consequences of cyberattacks and the extent to which the theft, unauthorized access or tampering with information has the potential to wreak havoc upon individual lives, companies and economies. In explaining this, Schwartau (1994) identified three levels of information warfare, each of which had its own unique characteristics, targets and, naturally, consequences. The first level, referred to by Schwartau (1994) as interpersonal Attacks,' focuses on identity theft, both of individuals and of corporations. The successful theft of identity, entailing the gathering of personal/corporate information and records, allows the identity thief to pose as the person/entity in question. Through possession of information such a credit history, driving records, medical files/history and accounts, the identity thief can proceed to harass the entity/person in question and assassinate his/her character or corporate reputation (Schwartau, 1994). While interpersonal attacks, primarily limited to identity threat, are classified as the first level of information warfare, the harm done to victims can take years and substantial amounts of money to repair. As Block (2007) reports, official crime statistics indicate that approximately 5% of all American adults have been victimized and, as a consequence, have witnessed both the destruction of their credit history and, in many instances, their reputation. On the corporate level, however, identity theft may be identified as a serious annoyance more than a problem insofar as the theft of corporate identity is much more difficult than the theft of individual identity and much easier to disprove. That does not mean to imply that it is not problematic or that it does not expose the entity in question to both financial loss and negative publicity but only that its consequences are much more containable than those which result from one of the other two levels of information warfare. Within the context of level two information warfare, referred to by Schwartau (1994) as InfoWar, the consequences are infinitely more serious and substantially more costly. InfoWar, as defined by Schwartau (1994), involves sabotage, the theft of company records, including client and subscriber lists, and industrial espionage. A not uncommon scenario can involve the theft of client and subscriber lists and their subsequent selling to a competitor. In order to highlight the magnitude of the consequences of this act of InfoWar, Gold (2001) discusses the consequences of InfoWar in relation to Encyclopedia Britannica, which was subjected to such a cyberattack incident approximately ten years ago. Its database, containing the names of 3,000,000 subscribers was stolen and sold to a competitor. That database, considered the company's most valuable asset, was conservatively estimated at $1,000,000. Needless to say, the company lost tens of thousands of subscribers, not to mention the financia l loss it incurred (Gold, 2001). InfoWar is not,