Al Qaeda vs. the Soviets

Article category: History
Author: Unknown
NSA text category, official: conspiracy theory
NSA text category, FOUO:  another one who waves history at us
NSA author analysis, official Brooks: multiple split personality narcissist
NSA author analysis, FOUO: get me a f**** name and grid coords NOW

Action (TS/NOFORN): Conceivable charge making apologies for terrorists, if we ignore satire content. Deflect w/ axis of evil quotes, make sure to bring up non-Al Qaeda.

Anticipated defense by subject(s): You cannot be f***ing serious. I hate these motherfuckers, do you honestly think I will ever forget 9/11 or fail to get pissed at the shoebombing dimwit?

We have not received a single flame about our "Fallacy of FISA" post.

So, here is a more detailed look at the history of the world since FISA.
We simplify a little by setting up three categories:
Soviets means Soviet Union and all allies
West means US and all allies
Al Qaeda means our favorite terrorists

Reason for contrasting Al Qaeda and Soviets?

US decision to apply FISA instead of using criminal system for the criminals that Al Qaeda are.

The second reason is that we decided to follow your narrative "it's all about terrorists", so, wink, wink.

FISA 1978
West and Soviets at loggerheads. No Al Qaeda. Soviets invade Afghanistan in 1979. At some point later, West starts arming and training resistance. Mr. Bin Laden joins resistance.
1989, good guys win. Terrorists out of job but high on success, turning to biting the hand that fed them.

9/11 2001
The world mourns with the Americans. The Global Conscience Lab at Princeton University registers a phenomenal spike. There is an unexplained and still unique uptick long before the planes hit. Hey, that one is for the conspiracy folks, come on, you know how to run with this.

10/11/2001
History that had ended when Soviets went down is restarted. FISA history for librarians still starts in 1978, for everybody else, it starts now.


2013
Yet another whistleblower. Are we really f**** now?

What were/are the capabilities of our enemies united under FISA?


Manpower
Soviets a few million, Al Qaeda a couple of thou generous

Budget
Soviets: bazillions, Al Qaeda a few millions

Heavy weapons
Soviets up the waazou, Al Qaeda none

Aircraft
Soviets thousands of fighters and bombers, Al Qaeda none. They stole some initially because our security was lax, not because they were smart (after that you'd need to count bin Laden's secret paper airplane)

Nuclear arsenal
Soviets thousands of warheads on interconti missiles, Al Qaeda none (unless you count the radio isotopes in the terrorist human body, collection of urine of all terrorists would give 0.1 g when done for 1000 years)

Human intelligence capabilities
Soviets: moles f*** everywhere, in CIA, FBI, German defense intel chief of staff, Britsh, more than you can shake a shtick at
Al Qaeda none

Signal intelligence capabilities
Soviets: satellites, signal interception f**ing everywhere
Al Qaeda: some burner phones and - caution - the whole internet, except most cannot read English and their IT guy sucks

Near earth orbit threat
Soviets: incredible, Al Qaeda none (attempt to launch Chiuahua using a big slingshot failed)

And now some juicy parts because you were patient and because of that residual "yes, we can".

Story 1:
Coming from West Germany, a sedan with a middle aged driver in civilian clothes as the sole occupant rolls up to the East German border checkpoint at the freeway corridor to Berlin. The East German guard takes the man's passport, disappears in the little hut, comes back, hands back the passport and goes "Have good day, Colonel".
After his return from Berlin, the driver of said car arrives on his military base in West Germany and is caught by the commanding officer as he steps into the building. Major Major (sorry), let me congratulate you, I just received notification of your promotion to Lieutenant Colonel.

Story 2:
A big situation room in West Germany, lots of brass, lots of maps, you get the point. This happened so long ago that the surviving participants are nowadays forced to ask their wives: honey, does that uniform make my ass look fat?
There is lots of goings on until the whole room falls silent.
They just realized that, if a war happened right then, that the Soviets would have a 25 km wide gap for their tanks to roll through unimpeded, to Paris in time for dinner.
One man remains unfazed. He has no idea that he will become the most humiliated man on the planet less than two decades later.
In the silent room in front of a 25 km wide "Soviets this way" corridor, this one man makes a swinging wide motion with his trademark cigar and hollers "attack!"
And the spell is broken.

Story 3:
Late 1980s, the Soviets are starting to look less menacing.
It's background check time, again.  The chat with the DIA folks is cool. A couple of weeks later, the checked man is at the house of a reference friend. Opening the door, the reference friend bursts out: "You will not believe this, when my fiancee and I talked on the phone yesterday we had an East German interceptor cut in because he was bored and wanted to chat."
"WHHHHAAAAT?"
"I swear to God, he had that accent, he was very friendly and open and really bored."
"So, what happened?'
"We talked politics for little while, he called the West German Chancellor Kohl a dumb ass but was otherwise pretty cool."

So, the post is almost done.

We can talk about secret courts if the terrorists get to that past Soviet glory level, thanks.

In case you feel tempted to say that the times have changed, let the author(s) assure you that our IT knowledge and skills have proven adequate in the past couple of decades. This contributes to us having a fun time with the IT experts on vanityfair and other places dishing out sematics and choking on their bytes.

We could add more but won't.

Time to go shop for a pair of adult size waterwings and for swimming lessons. Because we are getting closer to having to take the Rio Grande entry point on our next return to the U.S.