W. Patrick (Pat) Lang, is president of Global Resources Group, a consulting firm. He is a retired Colonel of the U.S. Army and served in military intelligence and the Special Forces (the Green Berets).
Background
Lang graduated from the Virginia Military Institute with a BA in English and from the University of Utah with an MA in Middle East Studies. He is a member of Phi Kappa Phi.
He has also worked with the Future Millennium Foundation, a not for profit family charitable and developmental foundation sponsored by a Lebanese industrialist and politician. This foundation was involved in vocational training and micro-credit lending as well as support to the Peace Process. In this capacity, he registered as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Lang is a member of the Roman Catholic chivalric order Knight Commander of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.
He is married to the former Marguerite Lessard. They reside in Alexandria, Virginia.
Military service
He is a graduate of the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and the Armed Forces Staff College. He is a decorated veteran of several of America’s overseas conflicts, including the war in Vietnam.[citation needed] He was trained and educated as a specialist in the Middle East by the U.S. Army and served in that region for many years. He was the first professor of Arabic at the United States Military Academy. In the Defense Intelligence Agency, he was the “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism,” and later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. At the DIA, he was a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service. For his service in DIA, he was awarded the Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.
Blog and punditry
He is the author of many articles on intelligence, special operations and the Islamic World as well as Intelligence: the Human Factor, a social sciences textbook on Human Intelligence Collection Operations (HUMINT). His article "Drinking the Koolaid" in the August 2004 issue of Middle East Policy examined the question of possible abuse of intelligence by the Bush Administration before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
His blog Sic Semper Tyrannis has drawn interest during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict due to his insights. He identified the Hizbollah defense not as classic guerilla tactics but as isolated fortified defensive positions. He had previously explored that concept in a paper written during the Cold War.[1]
Lang is of the opinion that an American attack on Iran would have deadly reprecussions on U.S. occupation troops in Iraq. This would be because "troops all over central and northern Iraq are supplied with fuel, food, and ammunition by truck convoy from a supply base hundreds of miles away in Kuwait. All but a small amount of our soldiers' supplies come into the country over roads that pass through the Shiite-dominated south of Iraq." Iraqi Shiia could easily interdict these supplies, not easily replaced by air, once hostilities start.[2]
Books
- Intelligence: The Human Factor, Chelsea House Publishers, Philadelphia, PA, 2004
Articles
- "Drinking the Koolaid," "Middle East Policy," Middle East Policy Council, Washington, DC, 2004.
- "Wahhabism and Jihad," "America," New York, New York, March 10, 2003.
- "Speaking Truth to Power," "America," New York, New York, August 4, 2003.
- "Jackson's Valley Campaign and the Operational Level of War." Parameters Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, Army War College Winter 1985.
- “The Best Defense Is…” Military Review Command and General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth, KS August, 1976.
- "Contemplating the Ifs..." (with Larry C. Johnson) "The National Interest" The Nixon Center, Washington, D.C., Number 83, Spring 2006.
- "Dear Hearts Across The Seas" "America," New York, New York, May 29, 2006.
External links
- Profile: Patrick Lang, Center for Cooperative Research.
- Patrick Lang on the Department of Homeland Security, BBC, June 7, 2002.
- Interview with Patrick Lang: Targeting Saddam, Public Broadcasting Service, April 8, 2003.
- Seymour Hersh. Selective Intelligence, The New Yorker, May 5, 2003.
- Interview with Colonel Patrick Lang, CNN, July 19, 2003.
- A conversation between Patrick Lang and Joseph C. Wilson on Iraq, University of Virginia NewsMakers, October 31, 2003.
- Interview with Colonel Patrick Lang, CNN, November 8, 2003.
- Interview with Patrick Lang on how Bush bungled the War on Terror, Democracy Now, April 2, 2004.
- Patrick Lang. Drinking the Kool-Aid, Middle East Policy Council, Summer 2004.
- Intelligence agents expose crime behind the Valerie Plame leak, Executive Intelligence Review, August 5, 2005.
- Interview with Patrick Lang on Iraq Insurgency, National Public Radio, August 21, 2004.
- Interview with Patrick Lang on Iraqi Insurgents, National Public Radio, September 17, 2005.