News analysis and commentary from Phillip Carter -- now located at http://www.intel-dump.com

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Gobble gobble

That's not the sound of a turkey -- it's the sound of large defense contractors gobbling up smaller tech firms and defense-related start-ups, according to this report in Monday's Washington Post. After a wave of consolidation during the 1990s in the defense industry, large conglomerate firms like Northrop-Grumman and General Dynamics have been semi-covertly buying up small firms that provide critical pieces of hardware and software for the large ships, tanks and planes they already build. The result is that the industry has become more consolidated than ever, with just a few large contractors (GD, Northrop-Grumman, Boeing) owning most of the business.

The buying spree is contributing to a fundamental change in the structure of the defense industry as the top players move away from their roles as mere weapons makers and increasingly cast themselves as "systems integrators" that produce high-tech networks for the battlefield. In the past three years, contractors have swept up about 180 small tech firms, mostly in Northern Virginia, a 25 percent increase from the previous three-year span.

In one recent high-profile case, General Dynamics Corp., which makes M1 tanks, bought Herndon-based Creative Technology Inc., which designs computer networks that transmit classified information.

The Pentagon has pushed in recent years for a more intensive role for war technology, but the pace has accelerated with the proven high-tech successes in Afghanistan and Iraq and the demands of fighting terrorism. The rush to grab the premier small companies is sparking bidding wars and redesigning the landscape of the local tech industry -- a cornerstone of the region's business community that blossomed in the shadow of the dot-com revolution.

Underlying the consolidation is the sharp competition among the big defense companies to secure a lucrative role in the transformation of the military envisioned by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and backed by a growing Pentagon budget. Some industry observers worry, however, that the absorption of the small tech firms into the giant contractors could crimp innovation in a field that thrives on swift advances.

The companies attracting attention often work quietly behind the scenes, producing the technology essential to the new ways of war. Among the firms recently acquired are Alexandria-based Adroit Systems Inc., which writes software that instructs hovering drones to transmit surveillance photos to fighter jets, ships and ground stations; Chantilly-based Integrated Data Systems Corp., which develops software that allows the Pentagon to share classified information with other agencies on a secure network; Premier Technology Group Inc., a Fairfax firm that analyzes and disseminates intelligence for the Army; and Conquest Inc. of Annapolis Junction, Md., which specializes in managing information networks for the intelligence community.

"Just 20 or 30 years ago, the airplane was the thing or the ship was the thing," said Stuart McCutchan, publisher of Defense Mergers & Acquisitions, an industry newsletter. "Now those things are just nodes in the network, and the network is the thing."

Analysis: I think the jury's still out as to whether this is a good or bad thing for America and its military. In theory, larger contractors can achieve economies of scale across the vertical and horizontal dimension. However, they can also act like a monopolist. Ultimately, I think what matters is getting the best rifle, ship, plane or tank into the hands of the warfighter. So far, they appear to be doing well, but it's hard to know whether a less consolidated industry might do better.
posted by Phillip Carter at 22:05

 
A chaplain's story of war

Chaplains play an important and unique role in the American military. Constrained by our First Amendment and tradition of separating church and state, they serve as part-adviser, part-chaplain, part-sage for battalions of soldiers in war and peace. John W. Brinsfield, who retired as a colonel in the Army's chaplain corps, has a thoughtful essay in Monday's New York Times on the meaning of war and remembrance -- from his perspective as a military chaplain.

In the 1991 Persian Gulf war, I was a senior chaplain assigned to the headquarters of Army Central Command in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. My mission was to help place 568 Army chaplains of all denominations throughout the combat zone so that our troops would always have one nearby. My ministry involved visiting hospitals, counseling the lonely and the fatigued, dodging Scud missiles, conducting worship services under the sky, and later, holding memorial services for the dead.
* * *
After months of waiting, combat came quickly in this war. At first, the operation seemed familiar — business as usual. But then came the dreaded urban warfare. No matter how much you've trained, you are never prepared for the sight of homes turned to rubble or the smell of burned flesh or the sound of a mother wailing among the debris, searching for her missing child. And of course, there's no military manual to prepare you for the pain of seeing your buddy die because you couldn't seal off his sucking chest wound, or the shock associated with having to fire on a civilian vehicle that would not stop for a checkpoint, or seeing two women, an old man and a child lying dead along the road.

And then there's the morning after a particularly fierce battle when the captain, just a few years out of West Point, told his troops to look for drums, containers, anything that looked like a weapon of mass destruction. You searched all day, but nothing turned up.

And now some of the troops are starting to come home, looking forward to much-needed sleep and dreaming of Big Macs and Taco Bell menus. They remember the guy who bled to death and wish like hell they had been able to stop the bleeding. They almost cry, but stop just in time. They think of the children with stumps for arms, or those lying face down in the dust in some village with no name. Was it an air strike that took them out, or was it me? Not knowing is the only salvation.

They'll talk of this only to other soldiers. Years later, at barbecue reunions with medals and overseas caps they'll hear of someone who was in the gulf, in Afghanistan, in Iraq. "Where were you?" is the first question. That means, if you were with me, in my unit, in the same fight, maybe, after a few beers, we'll talk.

Definitely worth a read... Ironically, the piece is juxtaposed in the same day's paper as this report from San Luis Obispo. There, it appears that fire department chaplains are making a bad name for themselves and their department, according to allegations of six firefighters who are suing over their quasi-official use of religion.

The middle-level officers brought the lawsuit earlier this year, saying that the chaplain's corps, run by an evangelical minister who is also a senior official of the department, was almost exclusively Christian and had improperly injected religious faith into a government organization.

The department created the corps two years ago, replacing a peer-counseling program that had existed for years. Of the first 52 people to join the chaplain's corps, all but two are Christians and wear crosses on their firefighting uniforms, according to the lawsuit. The program has since added a Buddhist and a Jew.

The complaining officers, who sardonically call themselves the Satanic Six, object to the chaplains' wearing religious insignia while on duty and say it is only a short step from counseling fellow firefighters to proselytizing them.

The plaintiffs include a Baptist, an Episcopalian, a Christian Scientist, a Jew and a self-described "rationalist agnostic."

Their suit asks that the official chaplain's corps be disbanded and replaced with a nonuniformed, volunteer group of religious counselors. It also asks that no state money be spent for the training or services of chaplains, and that no explicitly religious language be used at public ceremonies, like fire academy graduations.

I can't speak for how the chaplains behave in the San Luis Obispo fire department, nor can I really speak with any authority about this case since I'm just an acolyte to First Amendment law. This case in SLO is not unique. In recent months, lawsuits have challenged their ability to function, and the military's ability to include prayer and religion in certain aspects of life like the meals at the Naval Academy.

While I support the Constitution and its intent to separate church and state, I do think these movements can go too far. There are times in the military when a little religion can be helpful -- regardless of which faith it comes from. America's military certainly embraces Christianity more than Judaism, Islam, or any other religion, somewhat to the detriment to whose who serve (like me) from those other faiths. However, the military chaplains I knew were especially aware of this fact, and they did everything they could to take care of my needs too. Whether they're checking on soldier morale, helping to run the casualty collection point, or providing religious support, chaplains play a key role in our fighting units. Ultimately, I hope that judges balance the interests on both sides to find a Solomon-like answer to the problem of religion in the ranks.
posted by Phillip Carter at 21:59

 
A short note on the meaning of Memorial Day

Veterans Day was established after World War I on the day of the Treaty of Versailles. After World War II, Congress passed a resolution extending the holiday's meaning to honor the veterans of that war. After Korea, Congress passed a third resolution, this time extending the holiday to "honor American veterans of all wars." Over the years since, Congress has updated its resolutions on Veterans Day, made it a federal holiday, and pushed the states to accept it as a holiday too. Veterans Day is properly celebrated on Nov. 11, to mark the day the treaty ending WWI was signed, but is usually observed on the first or second Monday in November.

Memorial Day has an older lineage, which traces back to the Civil War. Unlike Veterans Day, which commemorates living veterans, Memorial Day is expressly intended as a day to memorialize the sacrifice of men and women who have given their lives in uniform. General John Logan, national commander of the Union Army, published an order in 1868 which established Memorial Day. His soldiers placed flowers on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers buried at Arlington National Cemetery. New York recognized the holiday in 1873, and most northern states followed by 1890. Southern states were somewhat recalcitrant, and some even maintained a separate holiday to honor Confederate war dead. After WWI, Congress extended the holiday to honor American soldiers who died in all wars, not just the Civil War, and this tradition has endured until today. On Memorial Day, soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Regiment continue to place flowers on every grave in Arlington, honoring those who rest there.

It's not my goal to take anything away from the millions of Americans who celebrate this holiday more as a 3-day weekend and the start of summer. Our soldiers gave their lives in part for the American way of life, so such a tribute is fitting. However, we should all enjoy this holiday with the knowledge of what it's about, and at least take some time to think about those who have given their lives in our name.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:45

 
Summer sabbatical
I'm now working full-time at a law firm in downtown Los Angeles, and thus unable to devote the time I had for Intel Dump during the academic year. (The life of a grad student is significantly less demanding than the life of an apprentice attorney.) Intel Dump will be updated 3-5 times a week, with lengthier posts on the weekend when I read the Sunday papers and newsmagazines. I hope you'll continue to read this site, as well as my colleagues who I've linked to on the left side of the page. Thanks!
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:09

 
Faux Pax Americana
The lesson from Iraq is that using fewer troops can win a war, but can't keep the peace.

The Washington Monthly just posted a piece that I wrote on military transformation and peacekeeping, in which I argue that America had enough boots on the ground (barely) to win the war in Iraq -- but not nearly enough manpower to do the jobs of post-war occupation or nation-building. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his advisers have pushed hard for a vision of America's military that is lighter, faster and more lethal -- but also more technology-centered and less people-centered. I disagree with this vision, and think that the full spectrum of operations like peacekeeping requires more soldiers than gadgets.

When victory arrived, we lacked the troops on the ground to prevent Baghdad--and most of the rest of the country--from collapsing into anarchy. We had tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles galore in the capital, but not nearly enough soldiers to guard such facilities as the key ministries, hospitals, and the National Museum. Ministries torched and looted during the first days are now unavailable to house the planned interim government. The plunder of hospitals set the stage for a still very possible humanitarian crisis. Looters who ransacked the National Museum stole many of the priceless historic artifacts that connected contemporary Iraq with its ancient roots, inflicting a mammoth public relations disaster upon the United States.

Things have not gotten much better over the following weeks. Lawlessness and chaos continue to reign. Women are raped, law-abiding citizens have their property stolen, those who have anything left don't go to work so they can guard what they still have. The prize the United States sacrificed so much to gain--freeing Iraq from Saddam and clearing the way for its democratic rebirth--is being squandered on the ground as ordinary Iraqis come to equate the American presence with violent lawlessness and immorality, and grasping mullahs rush into the vacuum created by our lack of troops. Mass grave sites, with no troops to secure them, have been unearthed by Iraqis desperate to find remnants of relatives killed by Saddam Hussein's regime, but those same Iraqis, digging quickly and roughly, may have inadvertently destroyed valuable evidence of human rights violations and crippled the ability of prosecutors to bring war criminals to justice. Perhaps worst of all, the prime objective of the entire invasion--to secure and eliminate Saddam's weapons of mass destruction capacity--has been dealt a serious blow. Even Iraq's publicly known nuclear sites had been thoroughly looted before American inspectors arrived, because, once more, not enough troops had been available to secure them. Radioactive material, perhaps enough to make several "dirty bombs," has now disappeared into anonymous Iraqi homes, perhaps awaiting purchase by terrorists. Critical records detailing the history and scope of the WMD program have themselves been looted from suspected weapons sites because too few soldiers were available to guard those places. "There aren't enough troops in the whole Army," said Col. Tim Madere, the officer overseeing the WMD effort in Iraq, in a recent interview with Newsweek. Farce vied with disaster when the inspectors' own headquarters were looted for lack of adequate security. Triumph on the battlefield has yielded to tragedy in the streets.

Belatedly recognizing their horrendous miscalculation, the Bush administration last month replaced the retired general in charge of Iraq's reconstruction, Jay Garner, with former diplomat L. Paul Bremer, who immediately called for 15,000 more troops to keep order. Even if he gets that many, however, Bremer will still be woefully short of the manpower he'll need to turn Iraq from anarchy to stable democracy.

The architects of the war might be forgiven for misgauging the number of troops required had the war come a dozen years ago, when the United States had little experience in modern nation-building. But over the course of the 1990s America gained some hard understanding, at no small cost. From Port-au-Prince to Mogadishu, every recent engagement taught the lesson we're now learning again in Iraq: America's high-tech, highly mobile military can scatter enemies which many times outnumber them, in ways beyond the wildest dreams of commanders just a generation ago. But it's not so easy to win the peace.

Coda: A couple of readers have e-mailed me to say this is all great, but could we have actually put more boots on the ground? From a logistics or manpower standpoint, did we have the capacity to do so? The answer is yes -- and no. America had the manpower in the active force to do so, and it surely had the manpower in the reserves. But for a variety of political, readiness and institutional reasons, those troops were not committed to the Iraq mission. Moreover, we were unable to tap into our NATO allies like France and Germany for peacekeeping support because of the animus between our countries. Still, the mission could have been accomplished with U.S. troops alone. We should have had the foresight -- in Oct. or Nov. 2002, when attacking Iraq became certain -- to mobilize enough of the National Guard to meet the post-war need. (Mobilizing these troops requires a long lead time)

Second, there's the issue of capacity. Could we have actually sent all these troops and their equipment to Iraq, and then staged them in Kuwait? The answer may be no. America has a finite amount of "strategic lift", defined as all the transportation stuff (ships and planes mostly) needed to move things in between theaters of operation (from the U.S. to Iraq). A lot of that finite lift capacity was used to move the existing force to Iraq, and subsequently to supply that force. The U.S. could have contracted for more shipping and aircraft support, but at a high cost. It's not clear that we had the political support in Congress to pay that bill.
posted by Phillip Carter at 21:59

 
Three excellent pieces in the June issue of the Atlantic Monthly

The June issue of the Atlantic Monthly has a great collection of articles on topics ranging from the psychology of terrorism to the psychology of John F. Kennedy. Since subscribing a year ago, I've looked forward to reading the A.Monthly because of its writers' skill and editorial choice of subjects. This issue is probably the best I've read thus far. Here's a sampling of the pieces I liked:

The cover piece by Bruce Hoffman (not available online, unfortunately) dissects terrorism -- from the perspective of both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I've read a lot on this subject, and this is one of the most brilliant essays I've read to date. According to Hoffman, terrorism is not an amorphous phenomenon for either side; it's a mechanical, institutionalized, planned and financed act that is countered by the Israelis in well-planned, rehearsed, well-financed, institutionalized ways. Hoffman's well qualified to write on this subject. He's the foremost expert on terrorism in the world, having studied it for more than 30 years -- well before it became the subject du jour for academics. Hoffman now directs the Washington DC office of the RAND Corporation, and wrote what I consider to be the seminal book on the subject -- Inside Terrorism -- in 1999. (Also see this online discussion with Hoffman on the magazine's site.)

Buses remain among the bombers' preferred targets. Winter and summer are the better seasons for bombing buses in Jerusalem, because the closed windows (for heat or air-conditioning) intensify the force of the blast, maximizing the bombs' killing potential. As a hail of shrapnel pieces flesh and breaks bones, the shock wave tears lungs and crushes other internal organs. When the bus's fuel tank expodes, a fireball causes burns, and smoke inhalation causes respiratory damage. All this is a significant return on a relatively modest investment. Two or three kilograms of explosive on a bus can kill as many people as twenty to thirty kilograms left on a street or in a mall or a restaurant. But as security on buses has improved, and passengers have become more alert, the bombers have been forced to seek other targets.

The terrorists are lethally flexible and inventive. A person wearing a bomb is far more dangerous and far more difficult to defend against than a timed device left to explode in a marketplace. This human weapons system can effect last-minute changes based on the ease of approach, the paucity or density of people, and the security mreasures in evidence...
* * *
The organizations behind the Palestinians' suicide terrorism have numerous components. Quartermasters obtain the explosives and the other materials (nuts, bolts, nails, and the like) that are combined to make a bomb. Now that bomb-making methods have been so widely disseminated throughout the West Bank and Gaza, a merely competent technician, rather than the skilled engineer once required, can build a bomb. Explosive material is packed into pockets sewn into a canvas or denim belt or vest and hooked up to a detonator -- usually involving a simple hand-operated plunger.
* * *
The success of the IDF's strategy is utterly dependent on regularly acquiring intelligence and rapidly disseminating it to operational units that can take appropriate action. Thus, the IDF must continue to occupy the West Bank's major population centers, so that Israeli intelligence agents can stay in close -- and relatively safe -- proximity to their information sources, and troops can act immediately either to round up suspects or to rescue the agent should an operation go awry...
* * *
The strategy -- at least in the short run -- is working. The dramatic decline in the number of suicide operations since last spring is proof enough. "Tactically, we are doin everythin we can," a senior officer involved in the framing of this policy told me, "and we have managed to prevent eighty percent of all attempts." Another officer said, "We are now bringing the war to them. We do it so that we fight the war in their homes rather than in our homes. We try to make certain that we fight on their ground, where we can have the maximum advantage." The goal of the IDF, though, is not simply to fight in a manner that plays to its strength; the goal is to actively shrink the time and space in which the suicide bombers and their operational commanders, logisticians, and handlers function -- to stop them before they can cross the Green Line, by threatening their personal safety and putting them on the defensive.

The next outstanding piece comes from James Fallows, one of America's leading journalists, on the shooting of Mohammed Al-Dura on the second day of the second Intifada. Many will remember the vivid images of 12-year-old Al-Dura's shooting -- allegedly by Israeli soldiers -- and his subsequent death in his father's arms. Since the incident, however, evidence has surfaced to add more than a reasonable doubt to this account. Unfortunately, most of the evidence has been buried, lost or destroyed, and no one trusts the outcome of any investigation run by the Israeli Defense Forces. Nonetheless, Fallows puts together a compelling account of the facts as he can best tell, and the story is worth a read.

Al-Dura was the twelve-year-old Palestinian boy shot and killed during an exchange of fire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian demonstrators on September 30, 2000. The final few seconds of his life, when he crouched in terror behind his father, Jamal, and then slumped to the ground after bullets ripped through his torso, were captured by a television camera and broadcast around the world. Through repetition they have become as familiar and significant to Arab and Islamic viewers as photographs of bombed-out Hiroshima are to the people of Japan—or as footage of the crumbling World Trade Center is to Americans. Several Arab countries have issued postage stamps carrying a picture of the terrified boy. One of Baghdad's main streets was renamed The Martyr Mohammed Aldura Street. Morocco has an al-Dura Park. In one of the messages Osama bin Laden released after the September 11 attacks and the subsequent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, he began a list of indictments against "American arrogance and Israeli violence" by saying, "In the epitome of his arrogance and the peak of his media campaign in which he boasts of 'enduring freedom,' Bush must not forget the image of Mohammed al-Dura and his fellow Muslims in Palestine and Iraq. If he has forgotten, then we will not forget, God willing."

But almost since the day of the episode evidence has been emerging in Israel, under controversial and intriguing circumstances, to indicate that the official version of the Mohammed al-Dura story is not true. It now appears that the boy cannot have died in the way reported by most of the world's media and fervently believed throughout the Islamic world. Whatever happened to him, he was not shot by the Israeli soldiers who were known to be involved in the day's fighting—or so I am convinced, after spending a week in Israel talking with those examining the case. The exculpatory evidence comes not from government or military officials in Israel, who have an obvious interest in claiming that their soldiers weren't responsible, but from other sources. In fact, the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, seem to prefer to soft-pedal the findings rather than bring any more attention to this gruesome episode. The research has been done by a variety of academics, ex-soldiers, and Web-loggers who have become obsessed with the case, and the evidence can be cross-checked.

No "proof" that originates in Israel is likely to change minds in the Arab world. The longtime Palestinian spokesperson Hanan Ashrawi dismissed one early Israeli report on the topic as a "falsified version of reality [that] blames the victims." Late this spring Said Hamad, a spokesman at the PLO office in Washington, told me of the new Israeli studies, "It does not surprise me that these reports would come out from the same people who shot Mohammed al-Dura. He was shot of course by the Israeli army, and not by anybody else." Even if evidence that could revise the understanding of this particular death were widely accepted (so far it has been embraced by a few Jewish groups in Europe and North America), it would probably have no effect on the underlying hatred and ongoing violence in the region. Nor would evidence that clears Israeli soldiers necessarily support the overarching Likud policy of sending soldiers to occupy territories and protect settlements. The Israelis still looking into the al-Dura case do not all endorse Likud occupation policies. In fact, some strongly oppose them.

The truth about Mohammed al-Dura is important in its own right, because this episode is so raw and vivid in the Arab world and so hazy, if not invisible, in the West. Whatever the course of the occupation of Iraq, the United States has guaranteed an ample future supply of images of Arab suffering. The two explosions in Baghdad markets in the first weeks of the war, killing scores of civilians, offered an initial taste. Even as U.S. officials cautioned that it would take more time and study to determine whether U.S. or Iraqi ordnance had caused the blasts, the Arab media denounced the brutality that created these new martyrs. More of this lies ahead. The saga of Mohammed al-Dura illustrates the way the battles of wartime imagery may play themselves out.

The third piece I liked (also unavailable online) comes from Robert Dallek, a history professor who has written extensively on the American presidents of the mid-20th Century. It discusses the presidency of John F. Kennedy that might have been -- and derives in large part from his new 1-volume biography An Unfinished Life. The interesting parts to me were the discussions of JFK's rocky relationship with his military advisers, who, Dallek reports, Kennedy thought were either too audacious, too aggressive, or too dumb to give him good advice. Dallek speculates that Kennedy would have not "Americanized" the Vietnam War as LBJ did in 1965, and would have eventually pulled American advisers out before committing large units of ground forces.

A consideration of likely post-1963 Kennedy policies must begin with JFK's views on how political and military leaders should make decisions about armed action. Why England Slept, his Harvard senior thesis, which was published as a book in 1940, showed a healthy skepticism regarding the astuteness of both political and military officials in assessing foreign threats. He also doubted the effectiveness of a purely military approach to many political problems, especially in light of what he observed during his extensive travels to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia in the late 1930s and after World War II. "If one thing was borne into me as a result of my experiences in the Middle as well as the Far East," Kennedy said after a trip as a congressman in 1951," it is that communism cannot be met effectively by merely the force of arms." And his own military experience as a young man had convinced him that military chiefs were not necessarily the best judges of when and how to fight a war. As a junior naval officer in 1943 and 1944, he marveled at the incomptence of many of his superiors. In a letter to his parents from the South Pacific, where he was serving as a PT Board commander, he wrote that the Navy had "brought back a lot of old Captains and Commanders from retirement and... they give the impression of their brains being in their tails."
* * *
Paul Nitze, who in the 1950s worked with Secretary of State Dean Acheson on defense issues, and who served in the Kennedy Administration as Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's assistant secretary for international security affairs, said in his oral history of the Administration that Kennedy was "always troubled with ... how do you obtain military advice; how do you check into it; how do you have an independent review as to its accuracy and relevance?" A tape of a 1962 conversation with Secretary of State Dean Rusk, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, and Undersecretary of State George Ball makes clear that Kennedy had a low opinion of many U.S. diplomats and Defense Department officials. He described career envoys as weak or spineless. "I just see an awful lot of fellows ... who don't seem to have cojones," [Kennedy] said. "[Whereas] the Defense Department looks as if that's all they've got. They haven't any brains ... I know you get all this sort of virility over at the Pentagon, and you get a lot of Arleigh Burkes [a reference to the Chief of Naval Operations]: admirable, nice figure, without any brains."

Unfortunately, two of these three pieces aren't available online -- even to subscribers. However, I don't think you'll be disappointed if you buy the June issue of this magazine.
posted by Phillip Carter at 11:38

 
More bad news from Al-Tuwaitha nuclear research lab
Looters and locals develop symptoms of acute radiation sickness

As if the decision to leave the nuclear research facility at Al-Tuwaitha unguarded -- with the possible theft of radioactive material that could be used for "dirty bombs" -- wasn't bad enough, CNN reports tonight that civilians near this facility are starting to show signs of radiation sickness. The sick include those who went into the facility, as well as those who did not. If contaminated material was removed from this facility, it's possible that fairly large numbers of Iraqis were exposed to unhealthy levels of radiation. That seems to be the case with several children who have gotten sick, mostly from looted items which have contaminated local water supplies.

Some of the items stolen from the facility have been dumped on the street. Others were used by the people who stole them.

Amar Jorda is a boy who said he has fallen ill after drinking water from a plastic barrel from the site. "My skin itches. I can't breathe well, and my nose bleeds at least four times a day," Amar said.

The boy said he and his father bought the barrel from a man in the street. Amar said he only drank water from it once. Now he's stopped playing soccer and quit going to school. Doctors have told him his illness is not contagious, but Amar has cut himself off from his friends.

"My best friend came only once," he said. "But I told him not to come too close. I was scared he might get infected." One of Amar's friends drank water stored in a different barrel, and she said her vision has faded. "I can't see," Irkhlas Hassam said.

Dr. Jaafar Nasser, a senior physician at the nearest hospital, said he suspects the girl is suffering from radiation sickness. However, until experts conduct a detailed medical study, there's little chance of pinpointing the precise causes or of predicting consequences. Nasser said he has seen six people within two days with similar symptoms as Amar's -- breathlessness, rashes, frequent nosebleeds and vomiting. This is called acute radiation sickness," Nasser said.

Local doctors are just beginning to keep detailed case files on patients they suspect have radiation sickness.

It goes without saying that this story is bad. I wrote a couple of days ago that the decision to leave this facility unguarded -- while putting troops on oil facilities and other critical infrastructure -- was probably a big mistake. Now we have some hint of the cost of that decision. This story also shows the price of not having enough troops to do the job at the precise moment necessary. The critical window for establishing order was right after Saddam's statute fell -- that's when the looting happened; that's when the proverbial radioactive cat got out of the bag.

These cases of radiation sickness may, unfortunately, be irreversible and incontrovertible evidence of that. But at this point, hand-wringing won't do much good. We have to get enough soldiers on the ground to secure Iraq -- whether they come from NATO, the National Guard, or elsewhere. Once the streets are secure, we need to get all the NGOs and aid organizations necessary into Iraq to fix this kind of stuff. There may not be much that we can do for children like Amar. But if they get there fast enough, groups like Doctors Without Borders and the Red Crescent can try to save thousands of others.
posted by Phillip Carter at 23:26

 
Enough for the war, not enough for the peace

When Ralph Peters talks, I listen. He's a retired Army intelligence officer whose view of the world tends to be more prescient than anyone else I've read. Even his fiction books, like War in 2020, have great insight into the nature of warfare and how it will evolve in the future. Recently, he wrote a New York Post piece (thanks to Tapped for the tip) arguing that the U.S. still doesn't have enough troops on the ground in Iraq to do the job -- even after sending thousands more after the war's end to bolster the force.

During the war, we did not have enough troops to do everything that needed to be done, but the quality of our armed forces pulled off a brilliant campaign nonetheless. Now, a month after the fall of Baghdad, the most consistent complaint from our soldiers, our diplomats and even from Iraqis is that we don't have enough boots on the ground to do what must be done.

Secretary Rumsfeld consistently has sought to minimize the role of ground forces in order to justify cutting the Army and funneling the savings to defense contractors. Now he doesn't want to allow a victory parade in Manhattan that would add to the luster gained by the Army and Marines in the recent campaign - and he wants our troops to do the occupation of Iraq on the cheap.

Bad, bad idea.
* * *
Send more troops. Give them authority to do what must be done. Don't wring your hands when they kill regime supporters who still need killing. Face down the very small number of very bad Iraqis determined to destroy the country's future.

We did not have enough troops - or, frankly, the will and common sense - to protect Baghdad's hospitals, museums, ministries or neighborhoods in the earliest days of occupation. Now we need, belatedly, to send in an adequate number of troops and to muster the will to start what we have finished.

I think that's about right. Moreover, there are secondary and tertiary effects which flow from not having enough troops, besides simply having less ability to control the country. All manner of nation-building tasks get delayed, because non-governmental organizations don't like to work without security, nor do private U.S. contractors or U.S. government relief agencies. Security tasks get done in series -- rather than in parallel -- enabling opposition forces to play cat and mouse with us. If we had enough boots on the ground to secure everything at once, this would not be an issue. And the list grows from there. (For a good historical discussion of the tasks facing the Army and L. Paul Bremer in Iraq, see this paper by Army War College professors Conrad C. Crane and W. Andrew Terrill.)
posted by Phillip Carter at 18:37

 
More than just a soldier -- A Mix of 'President . . . and Pope'

Today's Washington Post has a great piece on MG David Petraeus, the commander of the 101st Airborne Division, and his experiences trying to find the right balance between "president and pope" in Iraq. The piece points out that MG Petraeus is far from the caricature of an Army officer, and that his methods are far from what you'd expect from an airborne-qualified Ranger who commands 18,000 of America's toughest infantrymen.

In normal times, Petraeus is the wiry, intellectual commander of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles of military lore. During the Iraq war, his division fought along the Euphrates River, pounding through an epic sandstorm and subduing the cities of Najaf, Karbala and Hilla. His unit arrived in this walled city 220 miles north of Baghdad last month after U.S. soldiers killed at least 10 Iraqis during anti-American demonstrations.

Now Petraeus is the face of the 18,000-troop occupying army in Iraq's northern tip, a viceroy in a land of competing interests and uncertain loyalties. His job, and those of the other division commanders in Iraq, is to win the peace as deftly as they did the war, building the beginnings of democracy in a country with no experience in representative government. The Bush administration has given them enormous authority, with the expectation they will remake Iraq into a regional showcase.

Petraeus, 50, a West Point graduate with a PhD in international relations, acknowledged that "we haven't quite stopped fighting." But he has mostly turned his attention to other matters. Now, as a recent two-day visit revealed, Petraeus worries about building new armies and disarming old ones, taxi rates and gas supplies, the state of Mosul's amusement park and anti-American sentiment in its mosques. He also confronts questions over how much freedom to allow Iraqis, even though freedom is precisely what the United States has promised a country still somewhere between war and peace.

"Combat is hard because you are losing soldiers, killing people. But at the end of the day you are destroying things, and we know how to do that," Petraeus said. "This work requires inordinate patience. There are incredible frustrations. And you can't just pull a trigger and make it all go away."

posted by Phillip Carter at 08:11

 
Not so fast...
Military leaders clarify their "shoot first" policy

Civilian and military leaders clarified the New York Times report from Wednesday's paper in which one of L. Paul Bremer's staff indicated that America's new rules of engagement called for the pre-emptive shooting of looters and criminals. The new, muscular guidance was intended to provide highly visible shows of force that would intimidate the Iraqi population into submission and compliance with American occupation. However, defense officials say now that this comment was mistaken, and that the old ROE of shooting-in-self-defense still apply. Speaking from Iraq, top American generals said their troops would most assuredly not shoot first and ask questions later.

In an internationally televised press conference, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan said that simple looting is not enough to warrant shooting an Iraqi civilian. Soldiers will, however, arrest and hold those caught in criminal acts.

Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the Army's 3rd infantry Division, joined McKiernan. Both addressed press reports that Iraq's new civil administrator, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, told senior staff in a meeting that U.S. forces were "going to start shooting a few looters" to deter lawlessness in the Iraqi capital.

"We are aggressively targeting looters, but we're not going to go out and shoot children that are picking up a piece of wood out of a factory and carrying it away or a bag of cement," Blount said, adding that soldiers retained the right of self-defense.

"If a looter's carrying a weapon and the soldier feels threatened, then of course he's going to engage," the general said.

Similarly, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said today that Bremer's staffmember was out of line, and that no such changes to the ROE were being made.

"That was hyperbole," Rumsfeld said. The rules of engagement for troops in Iraq have not changed, he said. Rumsfeld said that the rules all along have authorized whatever use of force was necessary "for self-defense and other selective purposes."

This is a good sign -- that cooler heads have prevailed in the Pentagon over hotter heads in Baghdad. Nonetheless, it does not cure the real problem here. Soldiers may be forced to compensate for their lack of numbers with force. If pushed too far, or outnumbered by too high a ratio, soldiers may have to employ excessive amounts of force to resolve situations. The answer here is to get enough soldiers to Iraq to do the job. It may not be possible to get enough U.S. troops there quickly. However, this might be the time to enlist our NATO allies in the effort, particularly the British, French, German, Dutch and Russian armies who have extensive nation-building experience from the Balkans. That may require some eating of crow by the Bush Administration. But it may be necessary to accomplish the mission in Iraq, which is what really matters.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:54

 
Army halts troop flow out of Iraq
Criticism of "boots on the ground" leads Pentagon to keep soldiers in country

Today, V Corps halted the depature of soldiers from Iraq, according to the New York Times and other media. Some of these units, like those from the 3rd Infantry Division, have been in the region for a year. The new orders come amid mounting criticism that America does not have enough soldiers in Iraq to establish law and order, and that cuts to the troop count might be premature. This change also comes at the time when diplomat-turned-proconsul L. Paul Bremer has vowed to stop crime in Iraq and establish order (he sounds like LAPD Chief William Bratton).

At the Pentagon, a senior Defense Department official said that American commanders in Iraq were "reviewing the appropriate mix of forces" to stabilize Baghdad, and that "some numbers" of troops would likely have their departures affected. The official said it remained unclear whether these troops would remain in Baghdad for additional days or weeks or longer.

Gen. Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the Senate appropriations subcommittee on defense that about 142,000 American troops are now in Iraq, about 49,000 of them in the Baghdad area.

"There are additional troops arriving as we speak," General Pace said. He said the First Armored Division is now bringing 20,000 troops into Iraq, adding that Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the allied commander, and his top aides "are reviewing the situation on the ground to see how they might reset themselves in the city to be able to provide the kind of patrolling and presence that's necessary to provide the stability they need."

Baghdad's residents have repeatedly complained that security is poor. The United States hopes a new police force can provide law and order. But the effort to establish an effective police force has gone slowly.

Just when the Third Infantry Division will leave is unclear. Some units may stay longer than others. After serving as the main attack in the war many soldiers hope it will not be long. Brig. Gen. Lloyd B. Austin said the deployment of the division "could take a little longer."

Analysis: As much as this sucks for the 3ID soldiers now stuck in country, I think it's the right decision. Until we can get enough troops into Iraq to do the job, we ought not bring these soldiers home. They've fought a long, hard fight, but mission accomplishment has to be come above morale. It is true, however, that the 3rd Infantry's soldiers are tired and in need of replacement. This is not the division you want patrolling the streets of Baghdad, if at all possible. Ideally, the U.S. would have had a pre-staged occupation force in waiting, either of American troops or NATO troops. However, we did not. I imagine the Pentagon is trying very hard right now to build such a force. Until then, 3ID may not get to come home.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:43

 
Rumsfeld v. The Army, Part II

Fred Kaplan has another provocative piece in Slate on the past, present and future battles between Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Army establishment. The piece echoes a similar one that he wrote a couple of weeks ago, except that this one focuses on the legitimate areas of disagreement between the heavily armed camps. Specifically, Rumsfeld has disagreed with the Army leadership on how to best transform the lethargic, heavyset, expensive, Cold War-minded Army.

The problem is that the mainstays of U.S. Army "force structure"—M-1 tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, self-propelled artillery guns, and the caravans of logistical trucks that provide their supplies and fuel—are big, heavy things. Just one M-1 can fit inside a C-5 or C-17 (the largest of our military cargo-transport planes), and not every airfield in the world can accommodate those planes. (Tanks are too big to load into the smaller, more flexible C-130s and C-141s.) These planes are also expensive; the fiscal 2004 military budget includes $3.7 billion to build a mere 11 more C-17s. Many more tanks and armored fighting vehicles can be loaded onto cargo ships, but ships are by nature slow, and they're expensive, too, not just to build but to maintain and keep on station. There's a bureaucratic problem here, as well: Neither the Air Force (which buys cargo planes) nor the Navy (which buys cargo ships) likes spending billions and billions of dollars to expand an intercontinental shuttle service for the Army.

If Army divisions were lighter, not only could they maneuver on the battlefield more agilely, they could get there more rapidly. But here's the dilemma. Let's say we create a new, nimble Army, light enough to get to a crisis spot within hours or days (instead of weeks or months), free enough of long logistics lines to maneuver swiftly across the terrain. What happens when this force runs into serious opposition? Once you find yourself in a battle, it's good to have a tank with a big gun and thick armor. That 120 mm gun on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle came in very handy during Gulf War II. Big guns and thick armor weigh a lot. Vehicles that weigh a lot require a lot of fuel. If they're zooming across the dusty desert or rough terrain, they also need spare parts. All these things are heavy. So, we're back to the original problem.

True enough... but as Kaplan points out, the Army also supplied the Special Forces that provided the unconventional manpower to win the unconventional war in Afghanistan, together with their Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps brethren. (See Stephen Biddle's article for a great exegesis of the lessons learned from this war) In addition, the Army has several light infantry units which can deploy anywhere in the world within 18 hours, and they're working to build a mechanized force at Fort Lewis that can do the same thing. Finally, the Army has developed its own 21st Century tactical internet system -- communications gear that has revolutionized the nature of ground warfare. Army leaders have not just sat around on the decks of their 70 ton M1A2 tanks and grilled steaks on the BBQ. They should get some credit where credit is due.

Secretary Rumsfeld is right that transformation needs to happen. But the Office of the Secretary of Defense does not necessarily have all the answers about transformation. In my old unit, the 4th Infantry Division, the smartest minds on transformation were usually the junior officers and sergeants who actually used the stuff in the field. Similarly, Secretary Rumsfeld should realize that some of the best ideas on transformation may be out in the field right now -- perhaps even in the Army. Furthermore, acrimony between the OSD staff and the Army staff is not in the best interests of America's defense. If there are legitimate areas of disagreement, so be it -- let the best ideas prevail. If there are personality conflicts, those need to be dealt with. But the price for pursuing the wrong vision of transformation will be paid in American blood. Eventually, the OSD and Army staffs are going to have to find the right answer together, and put the Rumsfeld v. Army feud behind them.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:44

 
Shoot first... win hearts and minds later

The New York Times reports today that American diplomat-turned-Iraq-administrator L. Paul Bremer is set to announce a more muscular set of rules of engagement for American soldiers in Iraq. The new rules would essentially authorize American soldiers to shoot to kill when they see a crime in progress, such as looting. Presumably, the rule change is a response to mounting criticism that American forces are not doing enough to stop looting and crime in Iraqi cities. The idea behind the change is to show the Iraqi people that American soldiers mean business -- possibly by making an example out of a few looters and criminals.

"I think you are going to see a change in the rules of engagement within a few days to get the situation under control," [said an official who attended the meeting today.]

Asked what this meant, the official replied, "They are going to start shooting a few looters so that the word gets around" that assaults on property, the hijacking of automobiles and violent crimes will be dealt with using deadly force.

How Iraqis will be informed of the new rules is not clear. American officials in Iraq have access to United States-financed radio stations, which could broadcast the changes.

A tougher approach over all appears to be at the core of Mr. Bremer's mandate from President Bush to save the victory in Iraq from a descent into anarchy, a possibility feared by some Iraqi political leaders if steps are not taken quickly to check violence and lawlessness.

But imposing measures that call for the possible killing of young, unemployed or desperate Iraqis for looting appears to carry a certain level of risk because of the volatile sentiments in the streets here. Gas lines snake through neighborhoods, garbage piles up, and the increasing heat frequently provides combustion for short tempers, which are not uncommonly directed at the American presence here.

Analysis: The Times is right to point out that this policy carries a great deal of risk. American forces currently hold some piece of the moral high ground, having vanquished Saddam's Baath Party regime and brought some semblance of liberty and freedom to Iraq. However, we've also seen a backlash against America's forces. In Fallouja last month, Iraqi citizens protested the occupation of a school by American troops. In an event reminiscent of Britain's awful 1972 Sunday Bloody Sunday incident in Ireland, American soldiers shot and killed 15 demonstrators in response to small arms fire. In Baghdad, thousands of Shiites have protested the American presence, calling for a theocratic government based on Islamic law. It is not clear that the Iraqi people support what we are doing in Iraq. We know their support is critical to our nation-building efforts, yet, we adopt policies like this which can only undermine the relationship between American forces and the Iraqi people. (A good analogy here is the still-tense relationship between the LAPD and residents of South Central L.A.) I'm not sure that shooting looters will go far towards winning Iraqi hearts and minds.

As a matter of law enforcement, I think this is the wrong solution. It's a band-aid measure to cover up the fact that we simply don't have enough soldiers in Iraq to do the job. A strong show of force -- soldiers on dismounted patrol; mounted patrols by armed HMMWVs and Bradley fighting vehicles, quick response to any breach of the peace -- could impose law and order on the chaotic streets of Iraq. But such a show of force takes a lot of manpower -- more manpower than the U.S. has in theater. It would have been wise to mobilize 3-5 National Guard divisions 6 months ago, when we committed to the Iraq mission, so they could be ready to perform this kind of mission today. America's military is stretched thin, but despite the callup of 150,000 reservists, we did not reach very deeply into the ranks of the National Guard, who have a proven track record in peacekeeping missions in the Balkans. It's not too late to pursue this course of action, or to enlist the help of our NATO allies in this mission. But we must do it quickly, or else our soldiers will be forced to compensate for their lack of manpower with overwhelming and excessive force -- as evidenced by this new policy.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:44

 
And in other news...
5th member of "Lackawanna Six" pleads guilty

Wednesday's Los Angeles Times reports that a fifth member of the alleged Al Qaeda cell in upstate New York has pled guilty charges that he worked with Al Qaeda and trained with them in Afghanistan. The cell was originally charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, among other charges, but it's not clear from the news report what Yasein Taher actually pled guilty to. Like the four co-conspirators before him, Taher actually pled guilty to allegations "that he had undergone weapons and explosives training at the notorious Al Farooq training camp in the spring of 2001 and agreed to cooperate with federal authorities in the war on terrorism in return for a likely sentence of no more than 10 years in prison."

I think it's all but certain that the sixth defendant will plead guilty in the coming weeks, lest he be put on trial with the testimony of the other five and sent to jail for life. Already, Attorney General John Ashcroft and US Attorney Michael Battle have claimed this as a victory in the war on terrorism:

...the case against the Lackawanna Six was, in the words of U.S. Atty. Michael Battle in Buffalo, "a model in pursuing and prosecuting terrorism suspects, and in preventing terrorist acts here and abroad."

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft in Washington said the benefit to the government in granting plea agreements to the defendants was to help learn more about terrorist operations, because the men are now obliged to assist the United States.

"The cooperation we secure from defendants who trained side by side with our enemies in Afghanistan and elsewhere is valuable as we continue the war on terrorism," Ashcroft said.

I understand the elation in the Justice Department at these guilty pleas, and as a taxpayer, appreciate the money that's being saved by getting these defendants to plead guilty. However, I'm not so sure this is the victory it's being made out to be. Indeed, I think this is a Pyrrhic victory at best, because we may have deceived ourselves into targeting and imprisoning some pretty small fish while the big fish swam away. The point of going after men like the Lackawanna Six is to focus on the vulnerable parts of a global terror network like Al Qaeda. The men who provide financial, logistical, immigration and technical support are the most visible and vulnerable, and they are the parts which enable Al Qaeda to project terror around the world. By targeting these parts, we hurt Al Qaeda's ability to operate in the United States. (This may make targets in the Middle East more attractive because of their relative ease) Nonetheless, we miss the big fish -- the actual operational planners like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Indeed, we make such men more cautious and harder to catch by prosecutions like this. I think there's a delicate balance to be struck between the two sets of tactics. We've got to net the small fish and the big ones. However, I'm not as ready to celebrate as the Attorney General in this case. This prosecution has made a dent in Al Qaeda's ability to operate, but I don't think it's a very big dent.
posted by Phillip Carter at 22:23

 
Major nuclear research facility left unguarded near Baghdad
Critics say we should've just left a sign: "Get yer dirty bombs here!"

MSNBC has a really disturbing Newsweek report that American forces might have left the wrong thing unguarded in Baghdad -- the Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center. Among other things, the Al Tuwaitha site contained tons of nuclear material that could itself be used to make a nuclear device -- or more easily, combined with an explosive (like the one used yesterday in Saudi Arabia) to make a radiological dispersal device or "dirty bomb".

The well-known Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, about 12 miles south of Baghdad, had nearly two tons of partially enriched uranium, along with significant quantities of highly radioactive medical and industrial isotopes, when International Atomic Energy Agency officials made their last visit in January. By the time U.S. troops arrived in early April, armed guards were holding off looters—but the Americans only disarmed the guards, Al Tuwaitha department heads told NEWSWEEK. “We told them, ‘This site is out of control. You have to take care of it’,” says Munther Ibrahim, Al Tuwaitha’s head of plasma physics. “The soldiers said, ‘We are a small group. We cannot take control of this site’.” As soon as the Americans left, looters broke in. The staff fled; when they returned, the containment vaults’ seals had been broken, and radioactive material was everywhere.

U.S. officers say the center had already been ransacked before their troops arrived. They didn’t try to stop the looting, says Colonel Madere, because “there was no directive that said do not allow anyone in and out of this place.” Last week American troops finally went back to secure the site. Al Tuwaitha’s scientists still can’t fully assess the damage; some areas are too badly contaminated to inspect. “I saw empty uranium-oxide barrels lying around, and children playing with them,” says Fadil Mohsen Abed, head of the medical-isotopes department. Stainless-steel uranium canisters had been stolen. Some were later found in local markets and in villagers’ homes. “We saw people using them for milking cows and carrying drinking water,” says Ibrahim. The looted materials could not make a nuclear bomb, but IAEA officials worry that terrorists could build plenty of dirty bombs with some of the isotopes that may have gone missing. Last week NEWSWEEK visited a total of eight sites on U.N. weapons-inspection lists. Two were guarded by U.S. troops. Armed looters were swarming through two others. Another was evidently destroyed many years ago. American forces had not yet searched the remaining three.

Analysis: There are two problems here. The first problem is the priority list that was developed. Newsweek reports in the same story that "Roughly 900 possible WMD sites appeared on the initial target lists." It's good that the Army had this kind of list in existence; it should have been prepared well before any war, with the knowledge we had about Iraq before we went in. However, the list itself may have been out of whack. I echo Josh Marshall and Tapped on this one. I can understand why the oil ministry might get security before the Iraqi national museum. But clearly, the Al Tuwaitha facility should have been high on this list -- higher, for instance, than lots of other places where we have American troops. In the wake of this report, I really hope that someone is scrubbing and re-scrubbing this list to make sure we have the right priorities for protection.

The second problem is the number of troops we had to secure the sites that were high enough on the priority list. In a perfect world, there would be no prioritized list -- just a list -- and every site on the list would be guarded by American soldiers. However, no commander ever fights with infinite resources, so priorities have to be established and certain things have to go unprotected. The more troops you have, the lower the threshhold for guarding stuff, such that only the really unimportant sites are left unsecured. We knew beforehand that this site -- and others like it -- existed in Iraq. Yet, we did not have enough soldiers on the ground to secure all of these sites. This is the second problem -- too few troops in theater to do the job right. Our lighter, faster and more mobile military might have been able to beat the Iraqi army. However, securing Iraq -- and building it anew -- are much more difficult tasks. Moreover, these are jobs that must be done by young American men and women -- not by expensive gadgets.

High-tech unmanned vehicles and cruise missiles can find and kill tanks, but they can't secure a nuke site or keep looters out of an office building. I might forgive this error if America were new to the business of peacekeeping or nation-building -- but we're not. America has learned what it takes to enforce the peace and build a nation in places like Bosnia and Kosovo. Yet, we continue to try "economy of force" operations because they cost less, and because they are more politically expedient. The truth, unfortunately, is that boots on the ground are what it takes to get the job done. In his famous history of the Korean War, retired Army Col. T.R. Fehrenbach captured this point when he wrote:

“You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life,” wrote Fehrenbach. “But if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud."

posted by Phillip Carter at 16:07

 
The wild streets of Baghdad

The Newark Star-Ledger carried an interesting report on Sunday from Mark Mueller, their reporter in Baghdad, on the state of law and order in Iraq. Mueller's lead could have been the opening scene for a Law & Order episode -- or a crime story from the streets of New York. But it's not -- he writes from the city where we currently have tens of thousands of soldiers attempting to secure the peace.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The men burst into the house before dawn, stabbing some people as they slept, shooting others who tried to run.

In less than five minutes last Tuesday, Karim Salih's family was slaughtered. Five brothers, his father and a sister were killed. Salih and a 9-year-old sister survived the attack by hiding in a bathroom, cowering in a shower stall as the men rooted through drawers and cabinets, stealing what few possessions the family owned.

"I want to know who did this," Salih, 28, said to a group of officers at Baghdad police headquarters late last week. "Why did they kill them? They could have taken what they wanted and gone. What is happening with the world when people cannot sleep safely in their beds? We live in the jungle here. No one is safe."

Iraqi police Lt. Rani Habib nodded in sympathy. "It is a terrible situation," Habib told the man. "The criminals are running Baghdad now. But I can do nothing."

There would be no investigation, not for Salih and not for the dozens of other people who arrive at police headquarters each day, begging for the arrest of killers and for the return of security to a city that has been in the grip of lawlessness since Saddam Hussein's regime fell April 7.

The problems, Mueller writes, are many. The Baghdad police lack weapons, training, organization, funding, vehicles, radios, or the tools of a modern police force. Their ranks have been decimated by the war, then decimated again by American officers seeking to keep former Baath Party officials out of the new nation's police force. In short, Baghdad's police force is a hollow shell -- unable to protect or serve the Iraqi people.

...few of the officers are actively policing. At police stations across the capital, Iraqi commanders say most street cops won't return to work until the pay materializes and until they have the equipment to safely do their jobs.

What's more, those who report for duty have little to do but wait for orders from the Americans in charge. Most days, those orders never arrive, reflecting a lack of communication between the two groups.

"We're not allowed to do anything without permission from the coalition," said Officer Nasir Ibrahim, a 22-year veteran of the Baghdad police force. "My people are killing each other in the streets, and I can't do anything about it."

Disorder in Baghdad has abated somewhat since the chaotic days that followed the regime's fall, when looters ransacked and burned government buildings, banks and stores. But cases of murder, arson, rape and robbery remain far more prevalent than they did before the war, police and residents say.

Analysis: This has to stop, and fast. Letting the Iraqis loot their National Museum and other buildings was bad; this is much worse. It's a safe bet that nascent pockets of organized crime have begun to form in Iraq, in the absence of any public force to maintain law and order. Organized crime elements will focus first on establishing order themselves -- by means of violence and extortion -- then they will start to fight one another for turf and control over various criminal syndicates. If the United States does not stop this crime with brute force and establish order, we will almost surely have to contend with larger, more complex, more organized crime problems in the future.

This is not the time to redeploy forces from Baghdad (as we're currently doing), nor is it the time to let the Iraqis try to police themselves. We must establish order with a firm hand, first, before disorder and chaos become the norm. Once people feel secure in their homes, and trust the U.S.-Iraqi authority to maintain the peace, then we can cede authority to the newly reconstituted Iraqi police. It's clear that the Iraqi police force is incapable (for now) of doing this job. American soldiers may not be police, and they may not be perfectly trained for this job. But they can certainly establish security by force and stop this criminal activity for as long as it takes to get the Iraqi civilian police up and running.
posted by Phillip Carter at 15:10

 
War game's outcome stuns decisionmakers

Frank Tiboni reports in DefenseNews (subscription required) this weekthat a wargame conducted at the Army War College last month has caused consternation a number of key military and civilian leaders in Washington. Specifically, the exercise showed that America's strategy of pre-emptive defense might lead to pre-emptive strikes by terrorists and rogue nations around the world, possibly with weapons of mass destruction. Asymmetric warfare -- striking at U.S. weakpoints with unconventional tactics -- will also become the norm by which our enemies fight us.

Conventional U.S military forces are so vastly superior to those of any potential adversaries that future foes will likely attack with conventional arms or weapons of mass destruction — either aimed at American troops in theater or citizens at home — at the outset of a conflict to blunt a U.S. assault, said military officials.

That was the stunning conclusion of Unified Quest 2003, the first major war game conducted by senior U.S. defense officials since the end of the Iraq war. Held April 27-May 1 at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., it was sponsored by Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), Norfolk, Va., and the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Monroe, Va.

Set in 2015, the computer-assisted exercise pitted U.S. commanders against two adversaries: a nuclear-armed Middle Eastern country surrounded by deserts, mountains and narrow waterways, and a well-armed, well-funded insurgent group threatening an allied Southeast Asian government.

The game’s developers assumed that the U.S. military had retained its overwhelming superiority, and that Washington still pursued the George W. Bush Administration’s policy of preemptively attacking regimes seen as threats to U.S. security.

In each scenario, enemy forces, dubbed Red and played by other Americans, were quick to use conventional weapons to keep Blue, or coalition and U.S. troops, from using seaports and airfields. They also employed weapons of mass destruction early in the battle against Blue units and civilian populations.

"Preemption is essential to Red for limiting and denying access," as is "early expansion of attack outside region and into U.S. homeland," according a briefing book on the war game distributed at a May 2 briefing at the National Defense University in Washington. At the briefing, war game supervisors discussed the game’s conclusions with Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defense secretary; Joint Forces Command chief Adm. Ed Giambastiani; Gen. Eric Shinseki, Army chief of staff; Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations; and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Michael Hagee.

Central to the game, which involved about 700 U.S. military and government personnel and a few reporters, was the concept of asymmetric warfare, in which a weaker adversary aims to counter overwhelming military superiority through unconventional means. The concept began to appear in U.S. doctrine in the mid-1990s, and Pentagon officials have become increasingly convinced no future enemy will pit its conventional forces against U.S. troops.

Analysis: The military conducts such exercises all the time. Exercise results provide the basis for budget requests, troop-stationing decisions, procurement orders, and many other things. Exercises are also used to wargame the secondary and tertiary effects of decisions at the tactical, operational and strategic level. This exercise was designed for that last reason -- to explore the repercussions of American strategy today, by looking to strategic outcomes 10 years in the future.

The results of this war game should not necessarily deter America from its current strategic path. But it should give us pause. Our overwhelming conventional superiority is bound to trigger a massive unconventional, asymmetric, possibly terroristic response. Faced with the type of firepower exhibited in Iraq, our enemies know they cannot challenge us on the open plains of battle. Instead, they will attempt to find the chinks in our armor -- the places they can hit us where we're not well protected. One set of these vulnerabilities is military -- the springboards like ports and railroads we use to project our military muscle overseas. The other set is civilian. In the future, I think we can expect to see attacks on both military and civilian soft targets by our enemies. Indeed, the lines between civilian, military, political and economic targets will increasingly blur for our enemies, who will target American power writ large in any manner they can.
posted by Phillip Carter at 14:59

 
Saudi bombings appear to bear Al Qaeda's thumbprint

Last night's simultaneous bombing of three housing compounds in Riyadh appear to have been the work of Al Qaeda, according to the Washington Post and other news agencies. The story is still developing, but the blasts appear to have killed 20 people including 7 Americans. Speaking today in Saudi Arabia (on a prescheduled visit), Secretary of State Colin Powell said these bombings were unmistakedly the work of Al Qaeda.

Although the investigation is continuing, Powell said today that "the suspects are clear . . . It has the earmarks of al Qaeda." He vowed that the United States would not be deterred from continuing its campaign against the organization and other terrorist groups.
* * *
No building in the compound was spared from the blast. The attackers came in two cars, shot the sentries, opened the gate and then drove in, Powell was told by a Saudi officer briefing him. Bullet holes could be seen in the glass at the guard station.

The remains of a Dodge Ram pickup truck that officials estimated carried about 400 pounds of plastic explosives were inside the compound. Damage was heaviest at the four-story bachelor quarters, which had the front of the building completely ripped apart, with sheets and drapes left blowing in the wind today. The damage extended about 250 yards across the compound.
* * *
A Saudi familiar with the residential compounds attacked said they were each about 40 to 50 acres and have homes of various sizes, as well as common areas with restaurants, shopping, swimming pools and tennis courts. All three are protected by guard houses at the entrances that cars can only approach after weaving around barriers for about a quarter of a mile.

Analysis: Let's review what we know from the attack on one of the compounds, and why we think this might be Al Qaeda. The attackers appear to have entered in a convoy of three vehicles, using two cars of shooters to kill guards in order that a third truck might enter the compound and blow up. The attackers also appear to have perished in the blast, acting as suicide bombers. The attack appears to have used some reconnaissance and professional planning, based on the types of tactics used. And the attack used an improvised explosive device, probably with plastic explosive, something that would not be the work of amateurs. The tactics, coordination, planning and materiel used all indicate a professional terrorist group. On top of that, we have the targeting decision -- a compound of foreigners in Riyadh. That matches the political agenda of Al Qaeda, a group dedicated to the ejection of foreigners from Saudi Arabia.

Finally, we have historical comparisons. Al Qaeda has conducted similar car bombings in Tanzania, Kenya, and Saudi Arabia during the past 10 years. Indeed, this bombing looks very similar to both the Khobar Towers attack in 1996 and the embassy bombings in 1998, except that this attack improves on those past attacks by adding a security element whose mission was to eliminate the guards around the housing compound. American anti-terrorism tactics have evolved -- we now used posted guards to detect car bombs and truck bombs before they can get close enough. Al Qaeda appears to have reacted to that evolution by developing a tactic to eliminate those guards in order to get the bomb close to the target. Fighting terrorism is a dangerous game of cat and mouse, and for the moment, it appears that the mouse has gotten a little smarter.

Coda: As I've said before, first reports are always wrong. We still don't have a lot of well researched, well reported, detailed reports from the field. The FBI has already dispatched a team to the scene to gather evidence on these attacks, and their careful analysis will yield a lot of hard evidence about who actually conducted these attacks and with what means. All we have right now is highly circumstantial evidence -- nothing that I'd take to court. All of these indicators point towards the conclusion I've laid out, but it's very possible they were contrived to point that way. Until we get the hard forensic evidence and analyze it, we can't be sure who bombed these buildings, how or why.

Coda II: The Associated Press reports that Saudi authorities have definitively linked the attack to Al Qaeda. Specifically, the Saudis linked several of the individuals in the attack to Al Qaeda members involved a shootout earlier in the month.

Saudi authorities made a direct connection between the attacks and a May 6 gunfight between police and 19 al-Qaida operatives in the same part of Riyadh where the bombings occurred.

"The only information we have is that some of them were members of the group that was sought a few days ago, the 19 fellows whose pictures came out in the press," Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Britain and a former Saudi intelligence chief, said in London.

The 19 escaped. Among them were 17 Saudis, a Yemeni, and an Iraqi with Kuwaiti and Canadian citizenship. The interior minister, Prince Nayef, said they were believed to take orders directly from Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Again, this is not the kind of hard evidence you'd need for a prosecution in America's criminal courts. But it is pretty good evidence for intelligence and military purposes. It's enough to convince me. The bottom line is that Al Qaeda retains a dangerous operational capability to conduct "spectacular" terrorist operations in various parts of the world, notwithstanding our campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. We must be vigilant to ensure that they do not demonstrate this capability on American soil.
posted by Phillip Carter at 11:03

 
Local prosecutor pushes to prosecute Marine in rape case

Today's Los Angeles Times reports on an interesting skirmish between the Riverside County D.A.'s office and the Marine Corps over jurisdiction to try a recruiter accused of raping a 17-year-old prospect in Southern California. The Marines have requested jurisdiction in the case, something they usually get. But instead of deferring to military jurisdiction, the local prosecutor has pushed the case.

Staff Sgt. William Clayton Bragg, a 32-year-old from Murrieta and 13-year Marine veteran, faces one count of felony rape for allegedly attacking a Corona teenager after a class for incoming Marines.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Barbara Marmor said her office had not made a final decision about retaining jurisdiction but would prefer to try Bragg in civilian court. A military justice official said that the district attorney's "aggressive" prosecution was unusual and that his office has asked to take over the case.

"I've asked for jurisdiction on other [civilian-military] cases 20 times in the last four years, and every time it goes to us, usually because the district attorney's office caseload is too backed up,'' said Col. John Canham, staff judge advocate for the Marine Corps Recruiting Depot in San Diego.

According to a source involved in the case, Marmor will probably turn the case over to the military if defense attorneys try to delay the trial, because a military court would probably hear the case in four to six weeks.
* * *
"This is not adversarial — we'll let the civilians hash out the issues and tell me the results," Canham said. "It is a civilian case, civilian hearing and civilian judge, and the D.A. can decide to not pass on the jurisdiction to us. If they do, our advantage in prosecuting the case is our good order and discipline and reputation of holding Marines accountable."

Analysis: The differences in this case are more than semantic. As Col. Canham says, the purpose of the military justice system is to promote "good order and discipline" -- not just to find justice. Even if the Marine sergeant is not guilty of rape, he can still be found guilty of conduct unbecoming a non-commissioned officer for having sex with his 17-year-old recruiting prospect -- or some other breach of military regulations. In either scenario, Sergeant Bragg can be found guilty and sent to prison. But a general court martial would also have the power to reduce Bragg in rank and dishonorably discharge him from the Marine Corps, things which would have long-term consequences for his post-prison life. Finally, as a matter of law, the two systems will treat Bragg differently in the courtroom.

The military justice system has substantially stronger procedural safeguards than the civilian system, and a more robust right of appeal too. Bragg will also get a Navy or Marine Corps JAG attorney to defend him, rather than a civilian public defender. (He can also hire his own attorney in either system) This is a substantial advantage, since military defense attorneys are usually better resourced and less overwhelmed than their civilian counterparts, and better able to mount a defense.

Ultimately, I think the best decision would be to try Bragg in civilian court for the rape, and regardless of the verdict, subsequently charge him in the military system with conduct unbecoming. Sergeant Bragg appears to have committed the general crime, and as a normative matter, I think the civilian system is better for pursuing the ends of justice in that matter. He also appears to have committed crimes of a uniquely military nature, abusing his privileged position as a sergeant and a recruiter. For those offenses, the military system should try him as well.

Update: The LA Times adds a new report on Wednesday indicating that local prosecutors have decided to defer to the Marine Corps on the prosecution of Staff Sgt. Bragg. Military officials said they could bring the case faster than Riverside could, and that they could add specific military charges like adultery and conduct unbecoming a sergeant. Those arguments persuaded the Riverside DA's office, however, they may still bring civilian charges if the military verdict does not come out the way they want.

"We have not dismissed our case. We want to watch and see what the outcome of the military prosecution is, to ensure justice is served," said Allison Nelson, the Riverside County supervising deputy district attorney. Nelson said her definition of "justice served" would require a conviction, appropriate prison sentence and having Bragg register as a sex offender.

posted by Phillip Carter at 10:26

 
Back from my short break
Final exams have ended and I finished moving into a new apartment, so I'll resume my posts to Intel Dump this week with regular frequency. Thanks for stopping by; stay tuned for some analysis & commentary today.
posted by Phillip Carter at 10:07

 
A soldier's story

Saturday's New York Times carries a thought-provoking dispatch from Michael Gordon about Army Pvt. Kelley Prewitt, who died fighting in Iraq with the 3rd Infantry Division. Pvt. Prewitt joined the Army to be a tanker -- 19K in Army parlance -- but wound up as a truck driver because his unit had all the M1 crewmen it needed. Nonetheless, Pvt. Prewitt came under heavy enemy fire, as the Iraqis learned to let the M1s drive by so they could ambush the lightly-armed supply convoys behind them.

It was a small episode in a big war. But it reveals a lot about the nature of that war.

In a conventional conflict the tanks take the fight to the enemy and supply troops operate behind the front lines. But in this war there often was no clear front line. American forces were pitted against paramilitary fighters, who often let the tanks and the Bradley fighting vehicles pass so they could attack the vulnerable logistics troops that followed them.

Supply troops and even headquarters staff, who were not designated for combat, sometimes found themselves in the thick of the action. Hauling ammunition for the tanks was sometimes more dangerous than fighting in them.

That certainly was the case when Private Prewitt was shot on a stretch of highway and Staff Sgt. Jimmy Ealon Harrison, an Army medic, rushed to his aid.

Analysis: This really does show a number of issues with American military doctrine -- both its strengths and weaknesses. In many ways, our armored forces resemble a hard-shell egg. The front-line units, made up of M1 tanks and M2 Bradleys, are virtually unstoppable. But once you crack those lines, or wait for them to pass, you find the softer side of the American army -- huge logistics units designed to keep the M1s and M2s in the fight. These logistics units carry light weapons, drive thin-skinned vehicles, and train more on logistics than on fieldcraft. They are extremly vulnerable to enemy fire. When the enemy regroups and fights unconventionally, as the Iraqi fedayeen did, the threat to these logistics units becomes especially acute. We saw this happen several times during the recent war, most dramatically with the ambush of the 507th Maintenance Company convoy that resulted in the capture of several American POWs.

The risk of combat extends beyond those tankers and infantrymen who directly engage the enemy -- it includes the logistics personnel who supply them, the medics who heal them, the pilots who fly above them, the MPs who secure the rear area behind them, and the intelligence officers who brief them. One major implication of this is that the military has had a hard time creating a rule for women in combat. As a normative matter, the Pentagon would like to keep women out of direct-fire combat if possible. As a practical matter, it has had real difficult figuring out which jobs carry the risk of direct-fire engagement and which jobs don't. On the modern battlefield, rear areas become combat zones and there are few jobs immune from direct-fire combat, save those aboard ship or far back in the rear area (think Qatar).
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:38

 
Bush backs women in combat

Today's Washington Times reports that President Bush has decided to defer to military judgment on the issue of women in combat. Conservatives, such as Elaine Donnelly with the Center for Military Readiness, had decided to raise the issue after images of PFC Jessica Lynch and SPC Shoshanna Johnson in captivity hit the airwaves during the war. But today, the President said he was not ready to reverse a decade of gender integration in America's military since the first Gulf War, which has resulted in thousands of women in front-line positions.

Although Mr. Bush did not address the issue of women in combat during the 2000 presidential campaign, he came out against coed training in the military.

"The experts tell me, such as Condoleezza Rice, that we ought to have separate basic training facilities," Bush told American Legion Magazine. "I think women in the military have an important and good role, but the people who study the issue tell me that the most effective training would be to have the genders separated."

Now that he is president, Mr. Bush is deferring to the Pentagon on the question of whether the sexes should be separated between combat and noncombat units.

"As with all matters in the military, the president wants to hear first from the experts," Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said. "And then if there is anything beyond this hypothetical, he might have more to say, if that even happens."

Mrs. Donnelly called that a cop-out.

"The president has to show the same leadership here that he did in taking on the forces of Saddam Hussein," she said. "I know sometimes feminist advocates seem even scarier, but I think this president could do it and he should."

Analysis: I wrote in December 2002 on this issue, predicting that thousands of American women would fight on the front lines if we went to war in Iraq. Several policy changes in the 1990s meant that more women would fight further forward in Gulf War II than in Gulf War I, and that this would force a renewed debate on the role of women in the military. Unfortunately, my predictions came true. I also wrote that their performance in combat would shape the public debate on this issue for years to come.

No one is quite sure how Americans will respond if significant numbers of women are killed in Iraq. "The real issue is, if greater numbers of women get captured, how will the country react?" asks Donnelly. "We would have to desensitize the entire nation to violence against women. Endorsement of women in combat means an endorsement of violence against women at the hands of the enemy." Perhaps. But even when women have died in combat, the public hasn't questioned their reasons for being there. The nature of public grief for soldiers like Marine Corps Sgt. Jeannette L. Winters, a radio operator who was the first female military casualty in the war against Afghanistan, may indicate that Americans will accept female casualties if they believe in the cause they're fighting for.

In the end, what will really determine public reaction is how well women perform their jobs under fire. On the ground in Afghanistan, women did not participate in the main actions of Operation Anaconda. But since the fighting died down, female MPs have gone out on long infantry patrols with the 82nd Airborne Division, and by most indications perform-ed well. To be fair, they have not seen combat, and haven't performed the most physically demanding tasks the military has to offer. But women have covered 10 to 20 miles of very hard country per day carrying loads of up to 75 pounds, all while living in close quarters with male infantry.

And so far, as in the Gulf, the worst predictions have not come true--no reports of mass pregnancies or other issues have come to light in Afghanistan. "I'm learning what grunts do, [and] they learn what I do. As MPs, we search people and look for weapons ... I never thought we would be walking for hours or be on the front," MP Sgt. Nicola Hall told a reporter in Afghanistan after the mission. "[The 82nd Airborne soldiers] have been nothing but respectful to us; as long as you walk, carry your own weight and don't whine, you're respected."

All indicators point to women performing exceptionally in combat -- from PFC Lynch to the unknown women who flew deep into Iraqi territory as Army, Navy and Air Force pilots. Thousands of women served in the Army and Marines as MPs, engineers, chemical-warfare specialists, medics, fuelers, and in hundreds of other jobs. Like their warfighting brethren, they performed well under fire. At the end of the day, they proved their case by doing their jobs. In war, that's about all you can ask of a soldier.

Ms. Donnelly and others hoped that the social conservatives in the Bush Administration would back them on this issue, given the high-profile captures of two women by the Iraqis. They made a great miscalculation. President Bush has lauded his military for its strategy, its tactics, and its people -- he's not going to second-guess them on an issue like this, particularly when it's an issue where he can actually win moderate votes by appealling to women. (Can you think of many other issues where President Bush can appeal to moderate female voters?) Ms. Donnelly and other critics ought to see the performance of women in Iraq for the success that it was, and focus their efforts on improving opportunities for military women instead of destroying them.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:37

 
Pentagon narrows the scope of TIA project

The New York Times reports today that the Pentagon has decided to sharply curtail the scope of its "Total Information Awareness" project, limiting it to only data already held by government agencies. Dr. Tony Tether, directed of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), told a Congressional subcommittee that the change was being made to avoid civil liberties problems that had led Congress to legislate limits on the project on February. The legislative limits entailed a reporting requirement which prohibited the Pentagon from moving forward with the project until they developed a plan to mitigate any civil-liberties risks. Dr. Tether's comments indicate that the agency has decided to sidestep these risks by using data -- like crime records -- that are already in government hands.

... the official said the program, the Total Information Awareness program, would rely mostly on information already held by the government, especially by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
* * *
Today, under friendly questioning by Representative Adam H. Putnam, a Florida Republican who is the subcommittee's chairman, Dr. Tether said the main area of private data that might be useful in anticipating terrorist attacks would be transportation records, since terrorists had to travel.

Saying "I'm trying to help you guys a little with your p.r. problem," Mr. Putnam invited Dr. Tether to swear that the agency was not "contemplating" using credit card, library or video-rental information. Dr. Tether said he could see no value in any such data, but he could not swear that no consultant hired by the agency was not "contemplating" the value.
* * *
Dr. Tether argued that from the outset of the Total Information Awareness project, Darpa had been aware of the need to protect privacy. One essential element was concern by different agencies that sources of their information be kept secret. "Historically," he said "agencies have been reluctant to share intelligence data for fear of exposing their sources and methods."

Analysis: This last part is the most important. TIA is not about spying on American citizens or setting up some massive Big Brother apparatus. It's about bringing together information and using it more efficiently and intelligently. Have you ever seen a police background check on TV? Do you think it's really that easy? In reality, it's exceedingly hard to do a good background check on someone -- even if you have them in custody. No agency has the ability to call up information on demand -- even information like criminal records, which it should already have. Across the 50 states, police agencies and other agencies use varying databases to keep their information. Some of it has been put together, such as the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) system. But for the most part, it remains separate. TIA is about bringing this data together so that police officers and security agencies can use it more effectively.

There was some initial conceptual talk about gathering other data -- such as credit information, financial data, travel data, etc -- to make the TIA database even more comprehensive. The point of this was to gather the data points most relevant to international terrorism. Terrorists don't act like criminals, and they rarely have prior records or speeding tickets that can create a pattern of criminal activity. The salient indicators of terrorist activity tend to be financial in nature, or travel-related in nature. Thus, Pentagon officials designed the project to incorporate those data sources. However, this raised a firestorm of controversy, and many objected to the government's collection of this information. (Query why they'd rather let TRW or Equifax manage this data than the Pentagon) Thus, it's been cut out. I think this is a mistake, because this data remains invaluable for the detection and prevention of terrorist activity.

But perhaps we're seeing the first baby step here towards TIA, and the Pentagon needs to "proof" the concept first before the American public will accept the use of this data. The purpose of all DARPA projects, initially, is to prove the concept. But now, the Pentagon also needs to make the TIA project as criticism-proof as possible, if it has any hope of survival. The DARPA folks are testing TIA for their own security-oriented purposes, and that of other interested agencies (like DHS). But they also need to demonstrate this system to the public, in order to build public trust in the system and answer the criticisms thus far that it will infringe on civil liberties. More to follow...

Update: Eugene Volokh has some interesting thoughts on where this all may lead, based on his work on the dynamics of slippery slopes in law and policy.

...the slippery slope may well be in operation here -- I'd call it a mix of the simple attitude-altering slippery slope, either an erroneous evaluation slippery slope or an accurate evaluation slippery slope (depending on whether you think the public will correctly estimate the value of the project), and cost-lowering slippery slope (in the sense that providing the government with more experience about how to run TIA-type projects will lower the cost of broadening them in the future). But some slippery slopes are good, if you already think that what's at the bottom of the slope (e.g., the broader TIA) is good, or if you're not sure whether it's good but you think the first step might indeed provide useful information about the likely value of the next step, and you think that the political system will act soundly based on that information. And of course it's possible that the slippage won't occur, because the public will maintain the line between the government simply organizing the data that it already has, and the government also incorporating data from private sources.

I think he's right -- these initial steps for TIA are designed to make the next ones easier. Starting TIA with a small data set is not intended to limit the project's eventual scope. Rather, it's designed to assuage concerns today about TIA, so that people will object less in the future to the project when it does acquire more data. If you object to TIA in its current prototype form, with its present data set, the time to speak up is now. If TIA proves itself with the government-owned data set, it will most likely be expanded to include medical information, credit information, and other indicators which may be valuable in the national security context. The slope becomes both steep and slippery from here.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:13

 
Rumsfeld v. The Army

A number of stories in the last several days -- including those on Secretary White's resignation and General Shinseki's sacking -- have created the perception that the U.S. Army occupies Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's doghouse on the Potomac. The Pentagon has added fuel to this fire by releasing a slew of general officer transfer orders (like this one) for the Army, including this message today announcing that MG Ricardo S. Sanchez would take command of V Corps from LTG William Wallace. Already, the press is painting this as a decision to remove LTG Wallace for comments he made during the war that the Iraqis were fighting differently than the Army's planners had wargamed.

Today, Slate's Fred Kaplan adds his voice to the fray, predicting great conflicts between The Army (capitalized to represent the Army's establishment of generals, retired generals and major contractors) and the SecDef's office.

Now, with his postwar political favor riding high, Rumsfeld is turning the tables, using the triumph of the "light" force in Iraq as a weapon—the rhetorical equivalent of heavy artillery—in his renewed battles against the Army brass. And in that battle, James Roche will be the wedge that breaches through the line.

Rumsfeld signaled his intentions a few weeks ago, when he told the Army secretary, Thomas White, that he wanted to replace him with someone new. Then, after White marked June 9 as his date of departure, Rumsfeld had Wolfowitz call White to tell him to move out by May 9. Already, Rumsfeld had made it clear that he would accept the resignation of Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, with whom he had tangled several times, most recently when Shinseki told a congressional committee that "hundreds of thousands" of U.S. troops would have to stay in Iraq after a war, a view that Wolfowitz was called out to denounce in harsh terms. (The new chief of staff is likely to be Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of Centcom, who directed Gulf War II and remained loyal to Rumsfeld throughout.)

Civilian service secretaries are often figureheads, but they have enormous statutory authority, and Roche is likely to exercise that authority with Rumsfeld's blessing. Eliot Cohen, the author of Supreme Command and an experienced military consultant, notes, for example, that service secretaries have enormous influence over the appointments of new generals. A key ingredient of "military transformation" is the grooming of new military leaders, and Roche will take a hand in that. "If I were a creative Army captain, I'd find Roche's appointment kind of exciting," Cohen said. "If I were a three-star general, I'd be very scared."

My thoughts... First off, I can sympathize with the creative Army captain's position much more than the three-star general. I think the Army has grown to be too lethargic, too top heavy, and much in need of some churning at the top. Pick your metaphor -- sacred cows make the best hamburger, or you have to break a few eggs to make omelettes. Reforming the military requires officers who can shed old paradigms for new ones, and who are not afraid to take risks in the pursuit of excellence. So far, the Army's generals have not shown a great degree of audacity in pursuing transformation -- save a few generals at middle levels who have actually led the transformed units like the 4th Infantry Division. If the Army's leadership is unable or unwilling to transform the Army to meet the SecDef's vision, then he's right to fire them. (See Supreme Command by Eliot Cohen for an excellent study of civilian leadership in wartime)

However, I'm not sure the SecDef's vision is entirely right. Transformation is great -- it's a wonderful thing to be able to see yourself, see the enemy, and see the terrain. Total situational awareness -- and the ability to precisely hit the enemy -- enable the U.S. to dominate any foe on the battlefield. But warfighting isn't the only thing the American military does. America's military is chartered with conducting "full spectrum operations" -- everything on the continuum from peace to war. Whether they are conducting humanitarian work in Honduras, counter-drug training in Colombia, peace-keeping in Kosovo, nation-building in Afghanistan, or armored warfare in Iraq, our soldiers see more than just the kind of battle where it counts to put steel on target. Most of these missions are decidedly un-high tech; they rely on well-trained people more than high-tech gadgets. Secretary Rumsfeld and his team may have a great solution for winning America's wars in record speed. But the Army establishment may know something about transformation too, and their voices shouldn't be discarded so ruthlessly.

The great irony in all this is that Gen. Eric Shinseki has pushed harder than any officer in the Pentagon for transformation -- he's been doing it since 1999, before Rumsfeld came to town. After Kosovo, Gen. Shinseki saw the writing on the wall for the Army and started pushing them down the road of lighter, faster, more deployable forces. He pushed the concept of a rapidly-deployable medium brigade, and fought for the money to build a prototype at Fort Lewis. Yet, Gen. Shinseki also knew that you could not transform the Army without maintaining a "legacy force" at the same time to make current missions happen. He ultimately lost his job for that belief, and open clashes with Sec. Rumsfeld over the best way to transform the military. If Gen. Tommy Franks is to be his replacement, I hope he is able to carry on the torch of transformation as well as Gen. Shinseki -- and stand up to the SecDef when necessary.

Update: Tom Bowman reports in today's Baltimore Sun on many of the same things I discussed yesterday, including the sentiment within the Army that they're already doing a lot to transform themselves. A lot of this could simply be personality -- that Army Secretary Tom White and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld simply didn't/couldn't/wouldn't get along.

Update II: It's official. The Washington Post reports that President Bush has tapped James Roche to be the next Secretary of the Army, and Colin R. McMillan to be the next Secretary of the Navy.

Update III: I may have created the wrong impression with respect to LTG William Wallace's replacement as V Corps commander. First off, he was due to be replaced this summer anyway, having served two years in this position. Second, changes of command usually happen during the summer, so the actual timing is quite normal. Third, if he were being promoted to a new position, like J-5 (Plans and Policy) officer on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he would have to leave command first. I don't think the Pentagon is as upset with LTG Wallace as the press thinks. Indeed, I think they're quite pleased with his performance in the Gulf as V Corps commander. He's also the kind of guy the Army needs to keep around. LTG Wallace commanded the Army's digitized 4th Infantry Division, he commanded V Corps in combat, and he arguably knows as much as anyone about transformation and where the Army needs to go from here.
posted by Phillip Carter at 22:13

 
Riot control -- a mission that can really stink

DefenseTech passes on a real stinker of a story about new non-lethal weaponry for riot control. Simply put, the technology uses chemically-enhanced concoctions that smell so bad they force rioters to disperse. Conceptually, this is similar to the use of CS tear gas, in the sense that it creates physiological discomfort in a certain geographic space in order to disperse a crowd. Of course, stink bombing a crowd can be a bit more messy than tear gas.

Pamela Dalton, an experimental psychologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, says a military group approached her organization...to study odorants likely to offend everyone, everywhere. "We focused on odors that had biological origin, reasoning that they had the best chance of being universally recognized and reviled," she explains. "Vomit odor, the odor of human excrement, urine, human sweat odor, rotting fish, decomposing bodies, burned hair."

The Monell Center examined how the presence of a malodor distracted people from tasks they were performing, and researched the best strategies for developing chemical likenesses of the odor combinations. Although it didn't tackle dispersal techniques, Dalton says, "I can say from personal experience that the diffusivity of some of these odorants is quite high. As little as a few molecules in the AC system was capable of odorizing—and evacuating—the entire building."

One legal note: The U.S. military has tap-danced around this issue for sometime -- whether it can use non-lethal riot-control agents overseas. The Pentagon's legal answer is yes, in the context of peacekeeping, rear-area security, and other non-battle missions. But in the context of combat, such use would fall under the Chemical Weapons Convention and thus be illegal as a matter of international law. I think it's safe to say that we've entered the peace-enforcement/nation-building phase in Iraq, so we could start to use these kinds of agents there. But then the question becomes: do we want to? Given the collective memory of the Iraqi people towards chemical weapons, and their use by the Hussein regime, I'm not sure we really want to use this stuff on the Iraqi people at all. The last thing we want is to create grounds for comparison between our regime and the one we deposed.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:01

 
Soldiers pump money into Iraqi economy

Since the end of the war, the military has started paying its soldiers and Marines on the ground in Iraq through a system called "casual pay." Without getting into the details, the system basically pays each servicemember a portion of his/her salary for incidentals that they may want on the ground, like sodas and snacks from PX vans that have been shipped into Iraq. (All soldiers have direct-deposit, so their pay automatically gets paid even if they don't see it while they're in combat, allowing families to support themselves while the soldiers are overseas.) Guy Taylor (an embed with the 4th Infantry Division) reports in today's Washington Times that this money is also being spent on the Iraqi economy -- and that it's creating a burgeoning market in Iraq to meet soldier demand.

In many ways, this reminds me of the informal economies of Peru that Hernando De Soto wrote about in The Other Path. This book has been heralded by market-minded economists as proof that market economies will take hold even when the state opposed them, because they remain the best system for the distribution of goods, services and wealth. I'm not so sure that's true, but the Peruvian and Iraqi cases combine to paint an interesting picture of how market economies flourish under adverse conditions. As the reconstruction effort gets off the ground, I think this story will become even more important. Building a capitalistic economy is not easy, as the Russians have found out. The informal market economy in Tikrit is not the kind of system on which a national economy can be based -- it's a rudimentary cash-based or bartering-based system at best. Most importantly, it revolves around transactions at arm's length, thus the problem of trust is significantly less. Issues of contract enforcement can be dealt with in person, without resort to courts. For a national economy to flourish, however, a national system of laws must take root. De Soto makes this point too -- no national economy can work unless businesses feel confident that their contractual obligations will be enforced, and that their property rights will be protected.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:04

 
One embed's perspective on the war

Los Angeles Times reporter David Zucchino had an extremely thoughtful Column One piece in Saturday's paper on his experience as an "embed" in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Zucchino reported from several different units during the war, eventually reaching Baghdad with the 3rd Infantry Division. He writes with startling candor about his experiences in Iraq, and his story provides a great collection of lessons for the good and bad parts of embedding.

During seven weeks spent with half a dozen units, I slept in fighting holes and armored vehicles, on a rooftop, a garage floor and in lumbering troop trucks. For days at a time, I didn't sleep. I ate with the troops, choking down processed meals of "meat, chunked and formed" that came out of brown plastic bags. I rode with them in loud, claustrophobic and disorienting Bradley fighting vehicles. I complained with them about the choking dust, the lack of water, our foul-smelling bodies and our scaly, rotting feet.

At 5:30 a.m. on April 7, precisely 72 hours after plummeting into the canal, I was in the belly of a Bradley, its 25-millimeter cannon pumping out rounds, as an armored column of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division rumbled under fire into downtown Baghdad. And 72 hours after that, I was sleeping on the marble floor of Saddam Hussein's Presidential Palace.

I saw what the soldiers saw. And, like most of them, I emerged filthy, exhausted and aware of what Winston Churchill meant when he said that "nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without effect."
* * *
Most important, I wrote stories I could not have produced had I not been embedded -- on the pivotal battle for Baghdad; the performance of U.S. soldiers in combat; the crass opulence of Hussein's palaces; U.S. airstrikes on an office tower in central Baghdad; souvenir-hunting by soldiers and reporters; and the discovery of more than $750 million in cash in a neighborhood that had been the preserve of top Iraqi officials.

Yet that same access could be suffocating and blinding. Often I was too close or confined to comprehend the war's broad sweep. I could not interview survivors of Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. soldiers or speak to Iraqi fighters trying to kill Americans. I was not present when Americans died at the hands of fellow soldiers in what the military calls "frat," for fratricide. I had no idea what ordinary Iraqis were experiencing. I was ignorant of Iraqi government decisions and U.S. command strategy.

Embedded reporters were entirely dependent on the military for food, water, power and transportation. And ultimately, we depended on them for something more fundamental: access. We were placed in a potentially compromised position long before the fighting began, and we knew it.

The Post weighs in... The Sunday Washington Post's Outlook section has some thoughts & reflections from its embedded reporters -- also worth the read.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:12

 
Did Clinton's military win the second Gulf War?

Slate columnist Fred Kaplan poses this question, and others, in his Friday piece titled "Bush's Army -- or Bill's?". The answer has to be part yes, and part no, according to Kaplan, who writes that President Clinton did preside over some of the innovations which played a big role this time around -- like the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM). But in reality, presidents do little more than preside and give slight direction to the ship that is the military-industrial-congressional complex. The Pentagon's procurement programs move on despite the occupant of the White House, with some major exceptions (such as missile defense).

In other words, the military generally goes about its business, and it is often a mere coincidence which president pays for researching, developing, or deploying a particular weapon. It is doubtful that Clinton knew what a Predator was, nor is it likely that Bush could have passed an exam on the topic before the war in Afghanistan made it famous. Contrary to many Republicans' claims, Bill Clinton did not weaken the U.S. military—far from it. On the other hand, as defense analyst William Arkin put it, "If Jesse Jackson had been president, we would still have JDAM."

Maybe... But if George Bush had won in 1992, or Bob Dole had won in 1996, it's not clear that we'd have the same military today. Fred Kaplan gets the technology piece right -- the Pentagon will buy stuff no matter who's in office. But he fails to draw the connection between foreign policy choices and the military, and the way today's missions shape tomorrow's military.

I believe that missions -- which reflect foreign-policy decisions by the President to deploy the military -- have a profound effect on the military as an institution. This effect is mostly qualitative, though it can also be reduced to metrics like "Number of soldiers who have been shot at in anger" or "number of officers who have deployed for a UN mission." The military expeditions of the 1990s -- driven by policy choices in the Clinton Administration -- had a major effect on the military as an institution. Today's military isn't just a collection of gadgets -- it's an organization of 1.4 million men and women. After Somalia (which was initiated by President Bush I), Rwanda, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, and every other place you don't know about, our military learned how to embrace missions like "peace enforcement" and "nation building." Our military learned how to deploy quickly to hot spots, de-escalate a situation, build order from chaos, work with NGOs, and do the muscle work of diplomacy. In every battalion deployed to Iraq right now, there are dozens -- or hundreds -- of soldiers, sergeants and officers who have been on these deployments. This experience gives them an edge, because they've been on a tough mission with difficult rules of engagement and live ammunition in their load-bearing vests.

Today's military is qualitatively better because of the deployments it did in the 1990s; that makes the Gulf War II military a product of the Clinton Administration's policy choices. To the extent that people -- not hardware -- win wars, this may mean that those policy choices were even more important than the hardware procurement decisions which were made by any one administration. (See Stephen Biddle's brilliant piece Victory Misunderstood for an exegesis of the roles that skill and technology played in the first Gulf War.) Today's military reflects the missions it has run during the lifetime of its soldiers. Many have criticized the "OPTEMPO" of the Clinton Administration, saying that it deployed the military too far, too much, and without enough money. That may be true. But in Afghanistan and Iraq, we have seen the payoff from the heavy lifting our military did during the 1990s.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:01

 
For the complete UC-Los Alamos story, see DefenseTech

Noah Shachtman has probably done more of the journalistic legwork than anyone recently on the security problems at the University of California-run Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in New Mexico. He's broken a bunch of stories (e.g. here and here) before any other reporter, and he's even broken into LANL on a story to see just how good the installation's physical security was. Now, it appears his journalism has had a real effect. The Energy Department announced this week that the contract to run Los Alamos -- something the UC system has had for 60 years (since the Manhattan Project) -- is being put up for bids. The University of Texas, Lockheed-Martin, and others are expected to compete with the UC for the contract, and many expect they will beat the venerable California institution. Already, Los Alamos is seeing a brain drain because of UC management issues and uncertainty over the lab's future. Today, he has even more reporting on the lab's shaky future. Kudos to Noah and his DefenseTech weblog -- your work has had a major impact.
posted by Phillip Carter at 14:52

 
Slightly less painful than having a boat propeller slice into my leg

I just finished my first exam of the term -- this one in Constitutional Criminal Procedure. I took the course from UCLA law professor Peter Arenella, who some may recall from the OJ Simpson trial as one of the original insta-pundits (apologies to InstaPundit). Overall, I'd give the exam a B+ -- it was generally fair, and it was quite broad in comparison to some law school "issue spotters" that only test one part of course (which means if you didn't study that part, you're toast). Unfortunately, the exam didn't test some of my favorite topics in depth, like the Fourth Amendment and searches/seizures. And the hypotheticals were somewhat trite. But it's law school -- not The New York Times. (For the record, I have had a boat propeller slice into both legs, and it's less than fun)

Next up: First Amendment law on Monday. I've been told that Eugene Volokh gives excruciatingly difficult exams in which he expects his students to write a Supreme Court opinion -- something Prof. Volokh did as a law clerk for Justice O'Connor. I'm not sure if he's scouting future talent or having a little professorial fun with us. In any case, it should be challenging.
posted by Phillip Carter at 14:43

 
Admin note - light blogging until May 7
Unfortunately, I can't just go to law school and learn the law for its own sake. UCLA has to test my knowledge, and unfortunately, they choose the all-or-nothing final exam to do so. Barring some major news story, like the capture of Saddam or Osama (alive), I'll be out of the net for the next 8 days. In my absence, please check out the blogs I recommend on the left side of the page -- especially DefenseTech, Casus Belli, Winds of Change, and CommandPost for military stuff.

posted by Phillip Carter at 20:51

 
State Department releases its annual report on "Patterns of Global Terrorism"

While researching a briefing for my reserve unit on terrorism, I found the State Department's 2002 report on Patterns of Global Terrorism, which was released today and placed on the State Department website. This is one of the most exhaustive (unclassified) surveys by the federal government on terrorism, and it's well worth the read.

This report is submitted in compliance with Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(a), which requires the Department of State to provide Congress a full and complete annual report on terrorism for those countries and groups meeting the criteria of Section (a)(1) and (2) of the Act. As required by legislation, the report includes detailed assessments of foreign countries where significant terrorist acts occurred, and countries about which Congress was notified during the preceding five years pursuant to Section 6(j) of the Export Administration Act of 1979 (the so-called terrorist-list countries that have repeatedly provided state support for international terrorism). In addition, the report includes all relevant information about the previous year’s activities of individuals, terrorist organizations, or umbrella groups known to be responsible for the kidnapping or death of any US citizen during the preceding five years and groups known to be financed by state sponsors of terrorism.

posted by Phillip Carter at 11:18

 
What happened in Falluja?

The first reports of the incident in Falluja, in which American soldiers appear to have shot and killed 15 Iraqi civilians protesting their presence, are almost certainly wrong. Or, at the very least, they are tainted by the adrenaline which corrupts all first reports in wartime. Yet, even if they are partially true, these first reports are disturbing. The New York Times reports, along with other media, that American soldiers received rifle fire from a crowd of Iraqi civilians protesting their occupation of a school in Falluja which occurred at night. The paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division returned fire, killing 15 and wounding more than 75, according to Iraqi medical officials.

There were few details about the shootings that the Americans and residents could agree on today, apart from the fact that it began with a demonstration of perhaps 200 people, some shouting slogans in support of Mr. Hussein on his 66th birthday. Soldiers said it was a night of far more gunfire and rock-throwing than had been usual in this city of mostly Sunni Muslims, many still loyal to Mr. Hussein.

The demonstrators gathered after evening prayers sometime after 9 p.m., first stopping at the headquarters of one unit of American soldiers in the Nazzal neighborhood. An American officer, Capt. Mike Riedmuller, said some in the crowd fired automatic rifles in the air, but he said the soldiers did not fire at the demonstrators because they did not feel they were being shot at directly.

He said the crowd then moved several blocks away to the yellow, two-story Al Qaed school, where American soldiers had positioned themselves for the previous three nights. The two versions of what happened there diverge sharply.

Lt. Wes Davidson, an officer at the school, said that about 20 to 30 demonstrators were shooting rifles mostly in the air, and that the soldiers responded with smoke grenades.

Then, he said, several more people with rifles appeared from three houses across from the school and began shooting directly at the soldiers, as did others among the demonstrators and from the houses' roofs.

Both Lieutenant Davidson and Captain Riedmuller said the Americans returned fire precisely.

"Our soldiers returned deliberately aimed fire at people with weapons, and only at people with weapons," Captain Riedmuller said.

Analysis: The fog of war is thick in situations like this, more so because all of this happened at night. Sure, the 82nd Airborne had great night-vision optics (e.g. AN/PVS-14 and AN/PAQ-4C) and they trained on how to engage targets at night. But even the best shots would have trouble engaging moving riflemen in a civilian crowd at night from any distance -- particularly when the Iraqi shooters are concealing their weapons or hiding behind civilians. Responding to this kind of rifle fire from a crowd is extremely difficult; it's almost guaranteed to result in civilian casualties. I think it's likely is that such rifle fire was used by an instigator to provoke exactly this kind of incident. Someone wanted to make the American army look bad -- and they succeeded.

Looking forward, I suspect the CENTCOM staff is looking right now at its Rules of Engagement, trying to determine if it needs to restrict the use of force further now that hostilities have calmed down to a lower level of intensity. I also think that someone at CENTCOM HQ is looking at the troop mix, to see if we really want all this infantry doing the job of military police in Iraq right now. American airborne infantry are really good at their mission -- which is closing with the enemy by means of fire and maneuver to kill or capture him. But they're less good at the kind of fuzzy, graduated-levels-of-force nation-building that this mission has become. Units that deployed to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom did not receive the same kind of pre-deployment training that units going to Bosnia would have, and I think we're going to see lots of incidents in the near future where it becomes apparent that the average American combat unit is not prepared for this kind of mission.
posted by Phillip Carter at 21:23

 
Judges and lawyers on the way

Jess Bravin reports in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) that a team of federal judges and lawyers has been picked to build an Iraqi court system. The team includes 6th Circuit Judge Gilbert S. Merritt Jr., and U.S. District Court Judges Paul Magnuson of Minnesota, Stephen Orlofsky of Camden, N.J., and Donald E. Walter of Shreveport, La. According to the Journal, the team has "signed on for a 90-day project to assess the condition of Iraq's judicial system. It will complement a 13-member police-training team also heading to the region."

posted by Phillip Carter at 11:08

 
Putting it together
America's military plans dramatic changes to globe-straddling posture

A trio of articles from Reuters, USA Today and the Washington Post paint a picture today of an American military about to make major changes in the way it deploys its forces overseas. Reuters reports today that American forces will pull completely out of Saudi Arabia. The news comes as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld travels around the Middle East to visit the troops and assess America's military missions there.

The announcement, made during a tour of Gulf states by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld focused on reducing the U.S. military presence in the region, followed Riyadh's refusal to allow air strikes on Iraq by some 100 Saudi-based U.S. aircraft.

``After the end of Southern Watch ... there is no need for them to remain,'' Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz told a joint news conference with Rumsfeld. ``This does not mean that we requested them to leave.''

Rumsfeld told reporters after talks with the prince that the ``liberation of Iraq'' had changed the situation in the Gulf and allowed Washington to reduce its troops in the region. ``The relationship between our two countries is multi-dimensional -- diplomatic, economic, as well as military-to-military,'' he told a news conference.

The next piece of the puzzle comes from USA Today, which reports that America's commander in Europe is planning to open new bases in Eastern Europe. This move comes in the wake of diplomatic difficulties with France and Germany over the war with Iraq, as well as increasing difficulties with the logistics of keeping troops in Western Europe. With the end of the Cold War, European civilians have become less tolerant of maneuver damage and other problems associated with the U.S. military presence. Eastern European countries, strapped for money and itching to become better members of NATO, may be willing to give the U.S. big concessions in exchange for American troops being garrisoned there.

The Pentagon is considering closing or shrinking bases — now chiefly in Germany — while opening smaller bases in eastern European countries such as Hungary, Romania, Poland and Bulgaria.

Gen. James Jones, who commands American forces in Europe, cautioned that the plan is still a work in progress but said the Pentagon could move away from big bases with large concentrations of troops and focus on Europe as a kind of staging ground for global hotspots. Among the ideas being looked at are "bare bones" bases in Eastern Europe that the Pentagon could use to move troops quickly to the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Although the changes might seem intended to punish Germany — which opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq — while rewarding some who supported it, officials say the moves have more to do with post-Cold War realities and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's efforts to make the military more flexible. "At every turn, we have sought to make sure the work is militarily unconnected to any political discussions," Jones said.

The final piece of the puzzle comes from Washington Post reporter Bradley Graham, who essentially confirms the USA Today report and its analysis.

What could this mean? Secretary Rumsfeld has been working since 2001 on transforming the American military into the lighter, faster 21st Century force he thinks is necessary to win America's wars. If the Pentagon can operate more cheaply in Eastern Europe than Western Europe, that would certainly support his goals. Moreover, there's no love lost between Mr. Rumsfeld and Messrs. Chirac and Schoeder after he called them "Old Europe," and I'm sure that Pentagon planners would rather work with eager Eastern European officials than recalcitrant French and German ones.

However, I think something bigger is at work here. Moving bases from one part of Europe to another is small potatoes. Instead, I think we're going to see a transformation of the nature of these bases -- from permanent garrisons to "lily pads" from which the American military can leapfrog abroad. Instead of maintaining large units in Europe like we do today, I think we're moving towards a model where we keep all these units in the United States, with their equipment pre-positioned in places like Diego Garcia and Eastern Europe, ready to deploy with them as a package to anyplace in the world. This would substantially lower operating costs, and increase the quality of life for soldiers who would choose to live in the United States (there will still be plenty of overseas opportunities for those who want to go). Moving out of Western Europe, with its gargantuan Cold War-era bases, is one step towards this new vision.
posted by Phillip Carter at 10:47

 
"I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy..."

The Associated Press reports that America confirmed the identity of its last missing soldier from the war with Iraq today. Spc. Edward John Anguiano was killed in the same ambush of the 507th Maintenance Company that resulted in the capture of six American POWs, including PFC Jessica Lynch. His body was recovered a day later, but his identity was not confirmed until today by military officials.

Officials used DNA tests to confirm that the remains were Anguiano, according to the soldier's grandfather, and military officials notified the family late Sunday. The grandfather said he believed Anguiano was killed during the initial attack on March 23, when he disappeared.

"What we heard is that he was ambushed," said Vicente Anguiano Sr., 72. "They found his truck, the one he drove, and it had been stripped — tires and everything. They found a body near the truck."

Anguiano's family members gathered in this south Texas town over the Easter weekend and held out hope he would return soon. The soldier's mother, San Juanita Anguiano, "is very sad. She was not expecting him to be found dead," said the soldier's aunt, Maria Anguiano.

Thoughts... There's no such thing as "closure" in a situation like this. However, it should give his family some comfort that America worked as hard as it did to find these missing soldiers, recover their bodies, and confirm their identities. In today's military, every single serviceperson submits a DNA sample (usually in the form of a small blood sample) to a giant repository. It appears that SPC Anguiano was identified with DNA from that database, enabling his family to know his fate for certain. One ramification of this database is that America may never again bury remains in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington. Already, we have exhumed and used DNA to identify the previously unknown soldier from the Vietnam War. Our commitment to bringing every soldier home, together with our ability to positively identify them with DNA, means it's unlikely that we will ever place remains in this sacred crypt again.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:47

 
Marine investigated for possible misconduct in war

The Las Vegas Review Journal reported on Saturday that Marine Gunnery Sgt. Gus Covarrubias was under investigation by the Navy Criminal Investigative Service for comments he made to an LVRJ reporter in an interview. (Those comments ran in a Friday story.) The statements in question indicated that Gunnery Sgt. Covarrubias "double tapped" an Iraqi soldier after he was captured, a possible violation of the laws of war. Covarrubias, a Marine Corps reservists, was wounded in combat in Iraq, and flown back to his home near Las Vegas to recuperate.

During an interview at his Las Vegas home earlier this week, Covarrubias told a Review-Journal reporter the harrowing tale of an intense April 8 battle in Baghdad that he described as "a firefight from hell."

The resulting story, published Friday, included Covarrubias' account of slipping away from other Marines after the battle in pursuit of the Iraqi Republican Guard member who fired a rocket-propelled grenade at his unit, causing a blast that gave him a concussion and wounded several other troops.

The 20-year veteran of the Marine Corps said he found the soldier after dark inside a nearby home with the grenade launcher next to him. Covarrubias said he ordered the man to stop and turn around.

"I went behind him and shot him in the back of the head," Covarrubias said. "Twice."

Military officials on Friday declined to comment on Covarrubias' story beyond a statement released late in the afternoon by the Marine Forces Reserve headquarters in Quantico, Va.

"A preliminary inquiry has been initiated by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to examine the circumstances surrounding the statements made by Gunnery Sgt. Covarrubias in an April 25, 2003 Las Vegas Review-Journal article," the statement reads.

"The preliminary inquiry will determine if the actions described by Gunnery Sgt. Covarrubias during combat operations met the established rules of engagement and complied with the law of war. The inquiry will be thorough and impartial and will determine whether a formal investigation is warranted."

The article correctly points out that Gunnery Sgt. Covarubbias' conduct -- if established to be true -- would be illegal under the laws of war. Put simply, you can't shoot a prisoner who poses you no threat to yourself or your unit. Of course, this incident happened shortly after a firefight, and it's not clear yet that this individual met those criteria. First reports are always wrong in these kinds of situations, and the adrenaline of combat taints every eyewitness account. The investigators will need to stitch each account together to form the best picture of the truth, one that may or may not vindicate Gunnery Sgt. Covarrubias in this instance. If the investigation shows that this killing happened outside the Marines' rules of engagement, and that Covarrubias acted with the requisite level of intent, he could face criminal charges for his action.
posted by Phillip Carter at 13:51

 
LT Smash to Jacques Chirac: "You, sir, have no honor"

In a note more thoughtful than anything I've read from the State Department's public affairs office lately, L.T. Smash (a reserve officer deployed to fight in Iraq) has some sharp words on his well-read blog for French President Jacques Chirac and his refusal to support the war.

For well over two centuries, we have been friends and allies.

So how, sir, do you explain your recent behavior?

It is not unprincipled to be opposed to war. War is terrible.

But we have been in agreement, for over twelve years now, that Saddam Hussein must cooperate with the United Nations and abandon his weapons of mass destruction. Together, we passed seventeen resolutions in the Security Council demanding as much.

The last resolution, which was approved unanimously, called for “serious consequences” if Iraq failed to disarm. But the regime of Saddam Hussein continued to play games of obfuscation, denial, and deception.

We all know what “serious consequences” means, sir.
* * *
Your actions have grave consequences, sir. Like so many others, this American had to leave his home and family and go to war – a conflict from which over one hundred Americans will never return.

Today, in a newly liberated Iraq, we are learning the true extent of your betrayal.

Damning documents have been discovered. Reputable media outlets have reported that your government provided intelligence assistance to Saddam Hussein. This assistance allegedly included briefings covering confidential conversations between yourself and President George W. Bush.

These are not the actions of a trusted ally, much less a friend.

You, sir, have no honor.

Legal Brief: Soldiers have First Amendment rights, though they are somewhat curtailed for operational reasons (i.e. "loose lips sink ships") and political reasons (we don't want an American military coup d'etat). (See, e.g., Goldman v. Weinberger, 475 U.S. 503, holding in another First Amendment context that the Air Force could burden a serviceman's Constitutional right to free exercise of religion by making regulations which proscribed the wear of his yarmulke.) The Uniform Code of Military Justice criminalizes some forms of vocal dissent in Article 88:

Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

This punitive article has been upheld by the courts on Constitutional grounds. LT Smash's words don't criticize any of the named individuals in Article 88, and as such, he's probably not vulnerable to prosecution under Art. 88. Furthermore, he's an anonymous blogger, and it's not clear that anonymous blogging would count for this statute. And there are probably regulations in place for the use of military computing systems abroad that limit such use to work-related purposes or limited personal e-mail. He's also criticizing the head of a NATO country, and speaking out on an issue of current diplomacy. In this case, discretion may be the better part of valor.
posted by Phillip Carter at 12:30

 
Their final words
Letters home from America's fallen sons and daughters

Sunday's Washington Post ran a moving article quoting letters from fallen soldiers to their loved ones. The Post's website also has PDF versions of these letters available for viewing and download. Collectively, the letters offer a moving tribute to the men and women our nation sacrificed in Iraq. Most write of life in the desert, and mundane details like laundry or mail. Some write more openly about their fears, apprehensions and emotions. In many ways, this collection reminds me of For Cause and Comrades by James McPherson, which collected the letters of Civil War soldiers. In that war, American soldiers wrote with considered prose about their thoughts on military life, their unit and their cause. In this war, the letters from America's fallen heroes tell similar stories, updated for the 21st Century, in voices that are at once thoughtful, compelling, intelligent, and strikingly honest.

One soldier wrote to his mother: Send more M&Ms. Another scribbled hello to his Nanny and Pop-pop. A Marine asked his girlfriend to tie a yellow ribbon in her hair. A reservist told his sister that if he didn't make it back, please read Rudyard Kipling's "If" at the funeral.

The soldiers didn't know that these messages would be among their last. They dealt mostly with the mundane -- the blood blisters, the tent mice, the sand that crunched between their teeth. They congratulated Dad on his new heifer and praised Sister's cheerleading. But they were young men preparing for battle, awkwardly caught between imagined futures and an abrupt end. And so they made sure to say the things that needed to be said, to thank, to explain, to apologize and, most urgently, to love. They came from diverse backgrounds, yet a common theme runs through their writing. They died believing in their families, in the president or in their God. Rarely bitter and with scant bloodlust, they were men of faith.

posted by Phillip Carter at 11:04

 
Post-war force may equal 125,000 troops

USA Today reports today that Pentagon plans call for 125,000 soldiers to stay in Iraq for at least a year of initial nation-building efforts. The issue remains in play, however planners and military analysts say that initial estimates have already been used to mobilize reserve units and initiate deployment orders for units not already in Iraq.

The United States fielded a force of 260,000 for the Iraq war. That included ground, air and sea combat forces and tens of thousands of logistical support personnel.

The Pentagon does not reveal troop locations and numbers, but people with knowledge of current and likely deployments said U.S. troops will be clustered in obvious areas — 17,000 to 20,000 in Baghdad, 10,000 in the north, 17,000 in Basra and the south — and augmented with smaller groups elsewhere in the country.
* * *
If postwar Iraq remains generally peaceful and stable, the force could drop to 60,000 troops in a year, military officials said. The size and duration of the force could increase if there is political or religious unrest or if Iraq's neighbors interfere, experts said.

Analysis: If I'm reading this right, we're looking at three divisions of 10,000-15,000 troops on the ground in Iraq, with at least that number in support troops outside the country on ships, airbases and logistics bases in the region. This is roughly half the soldier footprint we have now in the region, but not that much of a departure from the combat forces we have in theater. Right now, America has the 3rd Infantry Division, 4th Infantry Division, 101st Airborne Division, 1st Marine Division, 173rd Airborne Brigade, and a number of special operations and support units on the ground in Iraq. If this plan is accurate, then I think we'll keep 4ID on the ground (since they just got there), and move 1-2 divisions from either Germany or the United States to Iraq to replace 3ID, 101ID and the Marines. After order is restored and a functioning Iraqi government is in place, the troop commitment should drop even further. But it's not altogether clear when American forces may exit the nation completely. That will depend on a lot of variables, many of which are too complex to even begin modeling today.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:42

 
If it ain't broke, don't fix it

William Arkin wrote a great essay for Sunday's Los Angeles Times in which he argues that America's military needs a lot less new stuff after Gulf War II than its generals and defense contractors are likely to want. Indeed, the lessons of this war indicate that American firepower is overwhelming, and America's technological edge is a generation ahead of our closet ally -- the UK -- let alone our Third World enemies. Instead of focusing resources on newfangled gadgets, America's military should instead focus on polishing the finer aspects of warfighting, such as joint Army/Air Force air operations, Arkin writes.

So if our weapons and equipment are effective, does nothing need improving? When compared to Hussein's military, which was crippled by oppressive centralization and poor training, the U.S. military seems like a big, happy family. But much work still needs to be done before its separate institutions learn to love fighting "jointly" together.

One report circulating about this war is about how Army units went solo in some of their initial forays, not telling air forces what they were up to and thus denying themselves air support. In one of those strikes near Karbala on March 24, 27 of 34 Apache attack helicopters sent out on a single mission against the Republican Guard's Medina Division returned so damaged they could no longer fly. One Apache was shot down, and two Army warrant officers were taken prisoner. It all might have been avoided with better ground/air coordination.

We have the firepower we need, and we have the well-trained forces. In general they work well together. But out of this war we need to gain a better appreciation of the combined effects of all of our firepower. Not only are we in need of accurate information about exactly what was unleashed by U.S. and coalition forces; we also need to press the best military minds to change the standards by which we measure our military capability and the capabilities of our opponents. We need to appreciate what we've got.

Analysis: I think it's too early to tell exactly what worked and what didn't work in Gulf War II. In the aggregate, we know that our weapons worked well, and that our ground forces accomplished their missions. But we also had hiccups in many of our sophisticated C4ISR ("Command, Control, Communications, Computing, Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance") systems, such as the ability to find Saddam's chemical and biological weapons (something which, in theory, can be done with technical means). The Pentagon ought to conduct a series of in-depth surveys of America's campaign, such as the Gulf War Air Power Survey done after the first one, to ascertain exactly what worked and what didn't.

America can't afford to hand the Pentagon a blank check for the mall of military contractors. However, America also can't afford to starve the military of what it needs. After-action reviews are the key to finding the middle path between those two opposite courses of action.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:31

 
Slate turns a profit

The New York Times reports today that Slate, a publication to which I've contributed a few times, has turned a profit in the first quarter of this year. This is notable because Slate is an entirely online magazine, and one that many critics claimed would go the way of other .com ventures. Instead, Slate has gone the way of E-Bay, showing that the marriage of good content to the Internet can work. I'm an avid Slate reader, and I think the reason for the magazine's success is its content. You won't find names like Thomas Friedman or William Arkin on Slate's pages. But you will find outstanding writers like Dahlia Lithwick, Fred Kaplan, Jack Shafer, and others who constantly push the envelope to offer new and interesting perspectives on current affairs. To borrow the line from Field of Dreams -- if you build a news site with good content, they will come.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:22