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

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Rebirth of the Weinberger/Powell doctrine

Remember the Powell doctrine? It was really an adaptation of the Weinberger doctrine, which itself was a response to Vietnam. The Powell doctrine essentially said the U.S. would not get involved anywhere militarily without a clear mission, a clear end-state, and a large enough force to do the job with minimal U.S. casualties. The doctrine has become the mantra of the U.S. military officer corps, and in general, I think of it is as pretty good planning guidance.

Today, in a press conference, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers used this doctrine in a discussion of Liberia, and troop constraints presently facing the Pentagon.

Q: General Myers, on the Liberia. If the U.S. commits a brigade set of soldiers, there's going to be inevitable cries from analysts and commentators that the U.S. is stretched too thin militarily and this is another example of them being stressed. From a purely military perspective, what problem would that cause, if you sent 2(,000) or 3,000 soldiers to Liberia, from just that military stress on the force perspective?

Myers: Tony, I think that's one too many what-ifs. The secretary's exactly right in describing the situation, describing what the U.S. is prepared to do. In terms of U.S. forces, we know right now that we're very busy in Afghanistan, we're very busy in Iraq. We've talked about -- our people have talked about the rotation scheme down here, so we have -- we are working that very hard. We're trying to put predictability into the lives of our soldiers, their families and the reservists and their employers. So all that is working. We have sufficient force to do what is required in the world today, however, so -- I mean, there is not a crisis in terms of that -- in that respect. But to try to "what-if" what would happen is --

Q: Okay. And one follow-up. Some commentators have said this could be another Somalia if the U.S. goes in there without a clear objective, and, you know, harkening to 10 years ago.

Myers: Let me assure you. Let me assure you this -- I'm not going to speak for the secretary, but I think I'll -- I think I can say for both of us --

Rumsfeld: Oh, go ahead. (Laughter.)

Myers: Okay, I'm going to speak.

There will be no commitment of troops anywhere in the world without some of the essentials that we need, and that is a clear mission, a clear end state, and sufficient force to do the job. That's not an issue. I don't know who's talking about Somalia. This is not the same situation. People that really care ought to figure out what's really going on in Liberia and then develop some of the intelligent options. But we're working that.

So... we're not going to do any missions where:

- We don't have a clear mission
- We don't have a clear end state
- We don't have sufficient force to do the job

Does this apply to Iraq? Were these principles printed out on a PowerPoint slide and posted in the work cell of the planners who fashioned the occupation force? There appears to be a disconnect between this doctrine -- which has served us well -- and what we are now doing in Iraq.
posted by Phillip Carter at 15:29

 
A failure of the imagination

That's how Slate columnist Fred Kaplan describes the Pentagon's failure to effectively or adequately plan for the security and stability of post-war Iraq. Kaplan argues that the Pentagon's leadership should have known what was coming, because of recent experience in previous nation-building endeavors. The sad part is that there were thinkers in the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz circle who knew these things, and even wrote about them, but their ideas were dismissed before the war.

Through much of the Bush administration, Wolfowitz could merely have picked up the phone and called a colleague named James Dobbins.

Dobbins was Bush's special envoy to post-Taliban Afghanistan. Through the 1990s, under Presidents Clinton and (the first) Bush, Dobbins oversaw postwar reconstruction in Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, and Somalia. Now a policy director at the Washington office of the Rand Corp., he has co-authored a book, America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq (released just last week), which concludes—based on research done mainly before Gulf War II got under way—that nearly everything this administration has said and done about postwar Iraq is wrong.

One pertinent lesson Dobbins uncovered is that the key ingredient—the "most important determinant," as he puts it—of successful democratic nation-building in a country after wartime is not the country's history of Westernization, middle-class values, or experience with democracy, but rather the "level of effort" made by the foreign nation-builders, as measured in their troops, time, and money.

To see just how wrong Wolfowitz was, look at Dobbins' account of how many troops have been needed to create stability in previous postwar occupations. Kosovo is widely considered the most successful exercise in recent nation-building. Dobbins calculates that establishing a Kosovo-level occupation-force in Iraq (in terms of troops per capita) would require 526,000 troops through the year 2005. A Bosnia-level occupation would require 258,000 troops—which could be reduced to 145,000 by 2008. Yet there are currently only about 150,000 foreign (mainly American) troops in Iraq—about the same as the number that fought the war.

Analysis: I recommended Mr. Dobbins' new book last week because I thought it was a good study of an important aspect of American foreign policy -- "nation building". Until reading today's War Stories column, I didn't know about the close connection between Mr. Dobbins and the Bush Administration. A number of scholars have convinced me in recent years that the most dire threats to America's security in coming years will come from failed states (e.g. Iraq and Afghanistan) as opposed to powerful states (e.g. China and Russia). If that's true, then an awful lot of nation-building may be our future to pre-empt these threats. Mr. Dobbins' book seems like awfully good reading for this summer.

But with all due respect to Mr. Dobbins, this isn't something you need a PhD to figure out. I wrote in May 2003 that American planners had failed to adequately incorporate the lessons from Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan into the plan for Iraq, in this piece for The Washington Monthly.

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.

Consider the lessons of Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. In Bosnia, America won its war with a combination of muscular diplomacy, air power, and covertly armed Bosnian-Muslim and Croat proxy armies on the ground. That mix of tools brought about the Dayton Accords in the fall of 1995. But when it came to making that treaty work, America had to send in its heaviest armor divisions, putting a Bradley fighting vehicle on nearly every street corner to enforce the peace. NATO initially sent 60,000 soldiers into Bosnia, and almost eight years after Dayton, America still has several thousand soldiers on the ground in Bosnia, as part of a 13,000-soldier NATO force. Winning hearts and minds took a backseat to overawing malcontent factions with an overwhelming and, for all intents and purposes, enduring show of force.

Like Bosnia, Kosovo was taken without any American ground commitment. There the United States won its war by unifying air power with what now-retired Gen. Wesley Clark calls "coercive diplomacy." But to win the peace America had to send in substantial ground forces. NATO quickly deployed a force of nearly 50,000 troops to the tiny province that is roughly 1/40 the size of Iraq. Truly pacifying Kosovo--a process that has really only just begun--means leeching it of its toxic ethnic hatreds and endemic violence. Most indicators hint that NATO will have to maintain its mission in Kosovo for at least a generation.

In Afghanistan, the pattern was much the same. It took only 300 U.S. special forces on foot and horseback--supported by 21st-century aircraft, GPS-guided bombs, and a force of Northern Alliance fighters--to bring down the Taliban. But once the government in Kabul had fallen, thousands of U.S. and allied troops had to come in to secure the country. Today, 15,000 American and allied soldiers remain there, 50 times more than it took to win the war.

Even the failures of these previous missions demonstrate that manpower is less important to the achievement of military victory than to coping with victory's aftermath. In Kosovo, according to retired Gen. Montgomery Meigs, then commander of the Balkan stabilization force, we were forced to "do less" because the Pentagon claimed it could not send more peacekeeping troops. As a result, says Meigs, "we were unable to run operations inside Kosovo to interdict the internal movement of arms and Albanian-Kosovar fighters to [neighboring] Macedonia." Those armed separatists set off a civil war in Macedonia--stopped only by the timely deployment of more Western troops, including Americans, into that country.

Something very similar happened in Afghanistan. Our biggest failure there occurred in the mop-up stage, following the flight of the Taliban government. Because we had so few troops on the ground, we failed to cut off and destroy the remnants of al Qaeda--including, most likely, Osama bin Laden himself--as they fled into the lawless mountain regions of the Afghan and Pakistani frontier. Our subsequent efforts at nation-building on the cheap have yielded similar results. Our unwillingness to put many troops on the ground has made a mockery of the president's promise for a "Marshall Plan" for Afghanistan. The Western-oriented, U.S.-installed president, Hamid Karzai, controls little more than Kabul, and the rest of the country has already drifted back into warlordism.

Coda: It's hard to tell exactly how well (or how poorly) things are going in Iraq. We appear to be gathering, analyzing, and exploiting intelligence in the hunt for Saddam and his henchmen. We also appear to be building some institutions, and moving closer to a free, stabile and prosperous Iraq. On the other hand, we continue to take casualties from guerilla attacks on a daily basis. (Footnote: the media tends to only report fatalities. This masks the numbers of non-fatal attacks that are either fought off by our well-trained soldiers or that don't result in a fatality because of outstanding medical care and body armor.)

I still think we have insufficient numbers of troops in Iraq to do the job right. Mr. Dobbins' research appears to confirm this. But getting more troops is a challenge of Herculean proportions. It does not appear that the reserves and National Guard can sustain this deployment for more than a few years. The active-duty force certainly cannot do so. Our only option is to seek support from our allies in NATO and elsewhere. That means going back to the UN for support, since our allies (namely France, Germany, India and most of NATO) will not send troops without the UN's blessing. It may be tough; it may take a lot of political capital; it may result in a large plate of crow being eaten by several senior administration officials. But if we truly care about getting the job done right in Iraq, it must be done.
posted by Phillip Carter at 14:47

 
Congratulations to UCLA professor, fellow blogger, and friend Mark A.R. Kleiman for this piece in Slate. Mark has one of the most brilliant minds around when it comes to social policy, and he's also no Ivory Tower wonk -- he's actually practiced in this field as a policy consultant and analyst. In his Slate piece, Mark dissects the reported success of one of President Bush's faith-based initiatives to reduce recidivism among criminals.

You don't have to believe in faith-healing to think that an intensive 16-month program, with post-release follow-up, run by deeply caring people might be the occasion for some inmates to turn their lives around. The report seemed to present liberal secularists with an unpleasant choice: Would you rather have people "saved" by Colson, or would you rather have them commit more crimes and go back to prison?

But when you look carefully at the Penn study, it's clear that the program didn't work. The InnerChange participants did somewhat worse than the controls: They were slightly more likely to be rearrested and noticeably more likely (24 percent versus 20 percent) to be reimprisoned. If faith is, as Paul told the Hebrews, the evidence of things not seen, then InnerChange is an opportunity to cultivate faith; we certainly haven't seen any results.

Interesting... and worth a read. I also recommend Mark's book Against Excess, which remains one of the seminal works on drug policy, and his weblog for continuing commentary on various issues.

PS: The recently-passed California budget contains no salary increase for UC faculty, as well as hefty fee increases for me. I appreciate the decision by Slate's editors to accept this article from Mark, since their stipend will help to offset the legislature's inability to adequately fund the university. I hope Slate continues to help the UC retain quality faculty in this way, since the Ivy League schools are probably chomping at the bit to exploit California's budget crisis as a way to lure top faculty to the East Coast. If only I could sell a few more articles, I could offset this fee increase too . . .
posted by Phillip Carter at 10:06

 
Update to "The downside of outsourcing"

Several smart readers wrote me to criticize this note as naive, saying that in essence, this was a business deal and these contractors should be able to walk away from a bad business deal at the cost of any purely contractual damages. That's one perspective, and it's a valid one. But I admit to being a little more moralistic than this, especially where contingency contracting is concerned. I think these contractors did a great disservice by backing out of contracts where they could reasonably foresee the risks involved.

However, there are two caveats that are important to note as a matter of goverment contract law:

- The great majority of clauses in a government contract are specified by the Federal Acquisitions Regulation ("FAR") and agency versions such as the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation ("DFAR"). These terms are generally incorporated into every government contract, and they are not open to negotiation. A contractor would have very little ability to change these terms during negotiations with the government. Essentially, government contracts are a package deal, and you can't negotiate the terms the way you can a private document.

- The contractors' decision to scrap their contracts probably took place in the context of a "change". (See Notification of Contract Changes, 48 CFR 43.104) I don't know this, but it's an educated guess. At some point after April 9, the contractors probably looked at Iraq and said that the security situation did not look as good as the Army promised when they agreed to the contract. That situation necessitated increased security and insurance, which increased the cost of the contract. The contractors probably argued that they deserved more money in order to cover these costs, and the Contracting Officer probably rebuked them. Rather than lose money in Iraq, the contractors decided to abandon the contracts, seeing execution as more risky than breach of contract. That may have been a wise business decision.

Ultimately our soldiers are the ones left holding the bag. But that does not reflect so much on these contractors as it does on our political leaders who have made the conscious decision to outsource so much of America's defense capability. Put simply, our military cannot go to war today without a legion of contractors in support -- to maintain everything from computers to helicopters to latrines. It should come as no surprise that the current Pentagon leadership wants to outsource even more of the military's support missions -- possibly as many as 320,000 uniformed positions. As we consider this proposal, I think we should carefully weigh the risks, as demonstrated by the problem with getting contractors to go to war.

Update II: For more on the art and science of contingency contracting, see this webpage hosted by the Army Materiel Command on the subject.

Update III: I've beat up on government contractors a little, and perhaps unfairly. The AP reports today that an American civilian contractor was killed in Iraq by a remote-detonated explosive as he traveled in a convoy of trucks.

The contractor was employed by Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, a Houston-based oilfield-services and construction company. Halliburton, the former company of Vice President Dick Cheney, has major contracts for reconstruction in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
* * *
Kellogg Brown & Root has been doing work at the Baiji refinery and pipeline terminus about 30 miles north of Tikrit, the hometown of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, about 125 miles north of Baghdad.

Clearly, there are risks to doing business in Iraq.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:36

 
Culture Clash: CIA v. Homeland Security

Bruce Berkowitz, a former CIA official himself, writes today in the New York Times that there are fundamental differences in the ways that the CIA and Department of Homeland Security use information -- and that these differences will continue to complicate the use of intelligence for domestic security operations. Berkowitz writes from a position of authority, and this argument sounds a lot like what he wrote in The New Face of War.

Talk to intelligence professionals about their work, and you will hear them bat around this term: tradecraft. It's the combination of skills, procedures and, especially, the culture that guides them in their jobs. Tradecraft is similar to what people in the private sector call a business model, and just like any corporation, an intelligence organization develops its own tradecraft.

At the C.I.A., where I started my career, the "business model" goes something like this: "Collect information other countries don't want us to have. Deal with unsavory characters and organizations. And keep all of this a tightly guarded secret so we can keep doing it as long as possible."

Homeland security, however, requires a totally different business model: "Collect information from as many sources as possible. Get the product out quickly to thousands of local officials and emergency workers so they can anticipate threats and respond effectively. And do all of this while respecting the civil liberties of Americans."

Effective homeland intelligence will depend on people who can find blueprints for factories in Michigan, electric grids in California and communications lines in Kansas, and correlate them with other databases like visa records. They will need to schmooze with local Rotarians, religious leaders, city officials, civic groups and small-business owners — even journalists. In essence, the new department needs people who operate more or less the opposite of how C.I.A. analysts are trained to operate.

Analysis: Ultimately, Berkowitz concludes that the culture gap is too wide and that a new intelligence center is a better answer than trying to pound the square CIA into a round hole. I'm not so sure. The CIA has a great deal of institutional knowledge and competence that can't be built overnight in a new domestic security agency. It may be the case that the two cultures cannot effectively be combined under the same roof. But starting a new agency to deal with a professional threat is like letting the Bad News Bears go up against the Dodgers -- not a good idea. In the long term, this may be right. But until such time as we can create an American version of MI-5, we need the CIA and FBI to work together and shoulder the load.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:02

 
CONGRATULATIONS to Prof. Norman Abrams, who was selected as interim dean for UCLA's law school. Prof. Abrams is an expert on federal criminal law and evidence law, and has served on the UCLA faculty since 1959. I helped him put together a casebook on Anti-Terrorism and Criminal Enforcement, and he is advising me on the course I'm teaching on that subject next year. I think Prof. Abrams is the right choice for the job, and think the school will do well with his hand on the rudder.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:53

 
The downside of outsourcing
Soldiers in Iraq learn to live without contractors who failed to show up or perform

David Wood reports for the Newhouse News Service from Washington that a number of government contractors have gone AWOL on the Army. Specifically, contractors that were supposed to deliver goods, provide ervices, build facilities, and perform other tasks have declined to a) enter the combat zone or b) do the job once there. Some of this may owe to the ongoing guerilla conflict, and the unwillingness of contractors to have their employees shot at. But our sons and daughters in Iraq are the ones left holding the bag.

Though conditions have improved, the problems raise new concerns about the Pentagon's growing global reliance on defense contractors for everything from laundry service to combat training and aircraft maintenance. Civilians help operate Navy Aegis cruisers and Global Hawk, the high-tech robot spy plane.

Civilian contractors may work well enough in peacetime, critics say. But what about in a crisis?

"We thought we could depend on industry to perform these kinds of functions," Lt. Gen. Charles S. Mahan, the Army's logistics chief, said in an interview.

One thing became clear in Iraq. "You cannot order civilians into a war zone," said Linda K. Theis, an official at the Army's Field Support Command, which oversees some civilian logistics contracts. "People can sign up to that -- but they can also back out."
* * *
It got "harder and harder to get (civilian contractors) to go in harm's way," said Mahan, the Army logistics chief.

Analysis: First, it should be said that some contractors are doing an outstanding job in Iraq. But this last quote is certainly true. The government cannot order these contractors into combat the way they can order soldiers there. All the Army can do is sign a contract based on a mutual agreement between the parties. However, the government does have a whole host of penalties available to them, including suspension and debarment from competition from future government contracts, and substantial penalties. I would hope that our Justice Department looks into this story, and the conduct of government contractors with respect to Iraq. Where proper, I think the government should pursue civil actions to recover damages from contractors who agreed to these missions and then reneged. Our soldiers deserve better.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:42

 
Could the DARPA terrorism market have worked?

Lou Dobbs, the prominent financial news anchor, argues in U.S. News that the planned terrorism futures market may have been the best predictive tool available for the complex irrational phenomenon of terrorism. Dobbs isn't a terrorism expert, but he is an expert on market behavior, and he thinks that markets make a good tool for quantifying collective opinion where a "swag" (super wild a**ed guess) is all you've got.

There is a minor problem with all their declarations about the Policy Analysis Market: It just might have been the most accurate predictor of terrorist activity available to us in the war against radical Islamists. Instead of asserting the all-too-familiar orthodoxy of both Washington and New York, the capitals of politically correct-inspired conformity, Wyden, Dorgan, and the editors of the New York Times might have asked how useful a tool the market could have been in the war on terror.

Smart money. As it turns out, such markets are actually very successful at predicting nonfinancial outcomes and events. The best-known and possibly most successful example is the Iowa Electronic Markets, a system set up in 1988 at the University of Iowa as a way to examine the behavior of markets. Results from the IEM have been better at predicting the outcome of political elections than opinion polls. Since its inception, the system has successfully predicted the outcome of every presidential election. Robert Forsythe, board member and cofounder of the IEM, told me the way that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency exchange was going to work appeared logical. "[It would have run] contracts whose payoffs were tied to the GDP of Iraq and Iran; that could make a lot of sense to me."

Analysis: This may well be right, but it's irrelevant. PAM failed because the powers that be failed to understand the political reality of the situation. DARPA's program officers failed to gauge how much the public would tolerate, and how much distrust lay dormant within the American public towards the government at this moment in time. The program concept itself was probably sound -- especially if the planned market would have been open by invitation only to experts and market professionals. But as the maxim goes: "politics is the art of the possible." You can't do what you can't pass, and in this case, DARPA didn't have a prayer of passing PAM.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:33

 
American military stretches to get the job done in Afghanistan

Greg Jaffe and Christopher Cooper report in this morning's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) that the U.S. Army is experiencing significant difficulty in making ends meet across all of its global commitments. Specifically, the mission in Iraq is taking away critical specialty units from the mission in Afghanistan -- civil affairs, MPs, Military Intelligence, and others necessary for nation-building.

Frustrations such as this are becoming more common as the Pentagon rejiggers its forces to fight terrorism, handle the reconstruction in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and prepare for potential new missions in places such as Liberia. That is a broader portfolio than the Pentagon used to plan for; prior to Sept. 11, 2001, its strategy was geared to simultaneously handling two intense wars of limited duration. "I've been telling my soldiers the truth: You do need to understand that this is a changed world," says Gen. James Helmly, commander of Army reserve forces.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have begun hearing the same thing. At his Senate confirmation hearing this week, recently appointed Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker said he plans to focus on maintaining the right mix of soldiers for various missions. He said the number of the Army's civil-affairs officers, now in short supply in Afghanistan, hasn't much changed in years, and "I don't think we can count on that forever."
* * *
One senior Army official involved in personnel said that if the military sticks to one-year deployments for civil-affairs soldiers, it could use up its roster of these specialists as soon as next year. Gen. Schoomaker agreed, saying that while he hadn't studied the issue completely, "I'm going to take a little risk here, and I'm going to tell you that, intuitively, I think we need more people. I mean, it's just that simple."

Analysis: Josh Marshall criticized the facile argument that the war on Iraq took away from domestic security funding, e.g. federal sky marshals. For the most part, I agree with him that this is a useless point to make, because the federal appropriations process is much more complicated than that. You can't simply pull money out of the National Defense Authorization Act or DoD emergency supplemental act and put it into the Department of Homeland Security's budget. (But maybe you should be able to, if you really want to be adaptive and flexible enough to respond to a nimble threat like Al Qaeda. . . )

That said, this military resources problem is a zero-sum game where this argument holds water. There are a finite number of Civil Affairs, Military Police, and Intelligence soldiers in the Army -- both active duty and reserve. That finite number is set by Congress every year in the National Defense Authorization Act and by the Pentagon in its force structure documents. It cannot be altered without an act of Congress and a subsequent revision by the Pentagon of the force structure. SecDef Rumsfeld is trying to alter this mix right now, bringing more of these "nation building" units onto active duty. But that will be a tough fight, and we're not there yet.

The point is this: the mission in Iraq deprives the mission in Afghanistan of resources like these "nation building" units. There are so many go to around, and the Pentagon has designated Iraq as the priority location right now. It would be a shame if that prioritization caused the situation in Afghanistan to deteriorate. Iraq is an important place for a lot of reasons. But Afghanistan is the place where Sept. 11 came from, and it's the failed state that we ought to be most concerned with.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:47

 
Another casualty in the DARPA wars, part II
John Poindexter isn't the real reason DARPA programs keep dying

After being scooped by the Wall Street Journal (see below), the New York Times catches up with this report by Eric Schmitt on Poindexter's resignation, based on a background briefing from an anonymous senior defense official.

"It's fair to say that the secretary understood what Admiral Poindexter understands, which is that it's difficult for any work that he might be associated with to receive a dispassionate hearing,'' said the official, who spoke to a group of reporters at the Pentagon today on the condition of anonymity.

Huh? That's like the classic Rumsfeld-ism that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. (Tell that to a judge on a summary judgment motion and you're toast.) Frankly though, I'm not sure that Poindexter is the issue here. Even if PAM fell outside the purview of his DARPA IAO shop, the project would still have been dead on arrival in the Senate.

Why's that? Because the real issue here isn't John Poindexter -- it's the deep mistrust of the Bush Administration on issues of civil liberties that runs through American society like a cold stream. Since Sept. 11, the administration has leaned really far forward in its foxhole on issues of liberty and security, and I think the American people are a little spooked. Part of this owes to a successful campaign by the ACLU and others to frame these issues as a choice between liberty and security; part of it owes to deep divisions in American society over the Bush Administration itself. But in general, I think that DARPA's projects fail because the American people simply don't trust the administration to try anything that might further affect the balance between liberty and security.

Let's be honest -- few people actually understand how Total Information Awareness, LifeLog, Genoa, or the Policy Analysis Market will actually work. These are very complex programs that are mostly still in the conceptual stage. Even without knowing those details, people find themselves opposed to these programs. I have seen among my friends in Santa Monica a visceral reaction to these programs -- even after I explained their details. I think this all traces back to trust.

Bottom Line: the Bush Administration no longer has the trust of the American people when it comes to civil liberties. This is the "blowback" from the administration's aggressive stance towards anti-terrorism since Sept. 11. The administration aggressively implemented a long list of anti-terrorism laws and policies, including:

- The USA PATRIOT Act
- The Homeland Security Act
- Military commissions
- The presidential power to designate "enemy combatants" and hold them indefinitely without counsel
- Detention of 600 combatants at Guantanamo without Geneva Convention protection
- Broader surveillance powers under FISA
- Use of the "material witness" statute to detain citizens
- Use of immigration laws to detain and deport U.S. residents

Right or wrong, I think the public perception is that these measures collectively encroach on American civil liberties. At some point, the administration had to have known that the American public would say "Enough!" That day has come. Until the administration regains the public trust on these issues, the American people and their legislators are going to torpedo every DARPA program that leaves the Pentagon.
posted by Phillip Carter at 14:37

 
Congratulations: Donald Sensing at One Hand Clapping has something to be very proud of: his son enlisted yesterday in the U.S. Marine Corps. Don has an MPEG video of the event posted on his weblog. As a retired military officer, Don was able to actually administer the oath of enlistment to his son, which must have been a proud moment. (My parents pinned my 2LT bars on me in June 1997, and I will never forget how that felt)
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:24

 
Trigger pullers and video games

Noah Shachtman has this interesting article in Wired about the military's decision to buy video games for soldiers stationed overseas. The move is driven largely by morale considerations, but is also geared towards the generation of young men and women now serving in uniform.

Just out of high school, thousands of miles from friends and parents, and isolated by language and culture from the people around them, young airmen stationed on a U.S. Air Force base in Europe can find life pretty lonely.

But now the military's fresh faces can get a bit of the comforts of home -- by wasting their pals in an online shoot-'em-up game.

posted by Phillip Carter at 09:21

 
Another casualty in the DARPA wars

First Total Information Awareness; then the Policy Analysis Market -- now John Poindexter. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reports on A2 today that the retired Admiral and Iran-Contra figure will leave the Pentagon's DARPA team within the next several weeks. His resignation comes as Congressmembers on both sides of the aisle took the Pentagon to task for even conceiving of a "betting parlor" for terrorism.

John Poindexter , director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, is expected to resign in a matter of weeks, a senior Defense Department official said. The office sought $8 million from Congress to help a private group set up a Policy Analysis Market as a way to provide the Defense Department with "market-based techniques for avoiding surprise and predicting future events."
* * *
Mr. Poindexter , a retired Navy rear admiral, served as national-security adviser during the Reagan administration and was sentenced to prison stemming from the Iran-Contra affair. His conviction was reversed on appeal. Mr. Poindexter couldn't be reached Wednesday night.

How's this for irony? CNN/Money reports that you can now speculate on John Poindexter's future in at least one global market.

What are the chances that Poindexter is still around at the end of next month? About 70 percent according to the Poindexter contract that began being traded on Dublin-based futures exchange Tradesports. Yep, Poindexter is about to serve as an example of how accurately a futures market can predict future events -- the very idea that he was espousing.

"There must have been 15 requests for the contract in my inbox this morning," said Tradesports CEO John Delaney. "It seemed like a good idea to list it."

Tradesports biggest business is in futures contracts that allow traders to speculate (some would say bet) on sporting events, but its current events futures contracts have been steadily gaining attention ever since CNN/Money first highlighted its Saddam futures back in January.

I don't know if this is anything more than a glorified office pool -- no different from betting on the NCAA championship or when a co-worker's family might have their next child. But economists are convinced that markets can be harnessed for decisional purposes, as a quantification of collective intelligence and rational-choice. Maybe, but I'm not convinced yet.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:49

 
A tough break for Gulf War I POWs

U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts handed a defeat today to 17 American POWs from the first Gulf War who sought to attach Iraqi assets currently held by the U.S. government. (Thanks to How Appealing for the link) The decision seemed like the only option for Judge Roberts as a matter of law, but he made his distaste for the outcome clear in his opinion:

Plaintiffs immediately offered to compromise their awards in an effort to settle the case amicably with their government which they had served so well and for which they honorably endured severe torture. It was an unrequited gesture. According to the government, the President has the authority to designate a variety of assets seized from Iraq as available for satisfying the compensatory awards to the POW torture victims, but has not chosen to do so. Instead, the Secretary argues that he is entitled to summary judgment on plaintiffs' TRIA claim because Congress in a supplemental appropriations bill authorized the President to make TRIA inapplicable to Iraq, and because the President in a Presidential Determination issued May 7, 2003, exercised that authority.
* * *
The Secretary's position that the POWs are unable to recover any portion of their judgment as requested, despite their sacrifice in the service of their country, seems extreme. Yet, he is correct that the Congress and the President have withdrawn TRIA as an available mechanism for the plaintiffs to use to satisfy their judgment. Prior to the date the plaintiffs in this case obtained their judgment against Iraq and their corresponding ability to attach assets under TRIA, Congress and the President made TRIA inapplicable to Iraq. As a result, defendant is entitled to summary judgment on plaintiffs' TRIA claim.
* * *
"Though the penalty is great and [the] responsibility heavy, [the Court's] duty is clear.” Rosenberg v. United States, 346 U.S. 273, 296 (1953).

This decision looks like the legally correct outcome, but I don't think Judge Roberts thought it was the right outcome. Unfortunately, that can't change the law, and you can't win an appeal on the basis of sentimentality when the law's against you. This appears to be one case where the right outcome and the legal outcome don't quite match up.

Update: The Washington Post reports today that these ex-POWs have no plans for surrender after their temporary setback in the D.C. District Court.

Attorneys for the POWs called the decision "incredibly disappointing" and said they would immediately appeal it to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

"This is not what Congress could have intended -- that Iraq would be rebuilt on the backs of these victims," said Steve Fennell, a partner at Steptoe and Johnson and attorney for the former prisoners.

posted by Phillip Carter at 17:03

 
ACLU challenges USA PATRIOT Act in federal court

The AP reports that the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a challenge to the continued use of Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act in a Detroit federal court. This section broadens the authority of the Justice Department to request documents, library records, and other items about persons connected to foreign intelligence or criminal investigations. It has been the subject of much controversy since the passage of the act in Oct. 2001. The ACLU argues that this provision runs afoul of the Constitution. The suit asks the U.S. District Court to permanently enjoin the Justice Department from using Sec. 215; here's an excerpt:

153. Section 215 violates the Fourth Amendment by authorizing the FBI to execute searches without criminal or foreign intelligence probable cause.

154. Section 215 violates the Fourth Amendment by authorizing the FBI to execute searches without providing targeted individuals with notice or an opportunity to be heard.

155. Section 215 violates the Fifth Amendment by authorizing the FBI to deprive individuals of property without due process.

156. Section 215 violates the First Amendment by categorically and permanently prohibiting any person from disclosing to any other person that the FBI has sought records or personal belongings.

157. Section 215 violates the First Amendment by authorizing the FBI to investigate individuals based on their exercise of First Amendment rights, including the rights of free expression, free association, and free exercise of religion.

First off, there are a lot of hurdles this suit must pass in order to get in the door of a federal court. The federal judiciary can choose to avoid disputes for any number of reasons -- jurisdiction, abstention doctrines, mootness, standing, ripeness, etc. The ACLU is essentially suing on behalf of an amorphous group of individuals who may have been injured. The lawsuit itself admits that it does not know of any Constitutional violations under Sec. 215 because of the secretive nature of the violations themselves. This is a Catch-22 situation, because Sec. 215 prohibits disclosure of searches to the targets of those searches, or to anyone else. The ACLU's complaint does set forth statements by AG Ashcroft and others that Sec. 215 has, in fact, been used in various criminal cases. But I still think these jurisdictional and jurisprudential obstacles will be very hard to get over in this case.

Furthermore, the District Court may decline jurisdiction because matters under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ("FISA") belong to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Moreover, the FISA Court of Review has exclusive appelalte jurisdiction over FISA issues, and that body which decided last year that several parts of the USA PATRIOT Act were constitutional. The Supreme Court declined a request by the ACLU to review this decision.

Whatever the outcome, this is going to be a really interesting skirmish in the battle over the USA PATRIOT Act. I suspect that neither side will back down until the Supreme Court rules on the matter, and that may take years.
posted by Phillip Carter at 15:59

 
Recommended reading from RAND

The RAND Corporation -- a private think-tank that does the bulk of its work for the Defense Department -- has put out two outstanding and timely pieces of research that deserve a look. RAND has also recently put its incredible terrorism database online, in a way that's accessible to the public.

- America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq. Abstract: "In Iraq, the United States is facing its most challenging nation-building project since the 1940s. The authors draw lessons from seven case studies—Germany, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan—then apply these to the Iraq case. The results suggest that nation-building will be difficult but possible. Success will, however, require investing sufficient financial, military, and political resources—and time." Hmmm... sounds eerily familiar, doesn't it?

- New Challenges, New Tools for Defense Decisionmaking. "The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War—and then the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001—transformed the task of American foreign and defense policymaking. This book outlines the dimensions of that transformation and sketches new tools for dealing with the policy challenges—from modeling and gaming, to planning based on capabilities rather than threats, to personnel planning and making use of "best practices" from the private sector." This book surveys some of the most current thinking out there on how to best plan for the defense sector. I'm not sure all these ideas are right, but they're certainly provocative and worth reading.

- The RAND-MIPT Terrorism Incident Database. The RAND Corporation has finally put its outstanding database on terrorism incidents online. "The MIPT Terrorism Database System acts as a "one-stop shopping place" where authorized users can go online to find comprehensive information and intelligence on terrorism. . . . The system includes two RAND databases, the RAND Terrorism Chronology Database and the RAND-MIPT Terrorism Incident Database. The RAND Terrorism Chronology Database records international terrorist incidents that occurred between 1968 and 1997, while the RAND-MIPT Terrorism Incident Database records domestic and international terrorist incidents occurred from 1998 to present."

Alright... so it's a pretty wonkish list. But I guarantee you'll come away from reading this stuff well informed, if not well entertained. If you do choose to read these two books, you may also want to order a copy of Harry Potter for balance.
posted by Phillip Carter at 14:29

 
An organized enemy or a decentralized enemy?
Which one is better for U.S. forces fighting a guerilla war in Iraq?

Mickey Kaus raises that issue in his Slate column, and I think he's right on target. The question has come up in relation to the shape of the enemy we face today in Iraq. Some have argued that we currently face a hierarhical, coordinated enemy force that is choosing to fight us by means of guerilla warfare. I think the evidence points more towards a loosely organized network of guerillas that share common goals, but no recognizable command structure. Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek agrees, as this transcript from This Week shows, but I disagree with him about the implications of this conclusion.

[M]y sense is that the resistance is also getting less centralized and more sporadic, which is the crucial issue because clearly we are facing guerrilla operations but this is not a guerrilla war because you do not have the same kind of central control. If you think of the Vietnam analogy, which many people are foolishly making, that was the case where you had an inexhaustible supply of people, long supply lines into North Vietnam and the guerrillas were being helped by not just the north Vietnamese government but two superpowers, China and Russia. None of that applies here. Here you have isolated bands of Fedayeen who kind of decide let's look at this road and see if you -find Americans coming down, take them out. Terrible tragedy but a very different circumstance. ... [snip] By and large the attacks do not seem to have the character of an organized resistance in the sense they're not advancing any objectives and finally, frankly, I mean, the people I've talked to say there's absolutely no, within the Pentagon, say there is absolutely no evidence that it's centrally directed.

Zakaria's right about the threat, but wrong about the implications. Mickey has some great thoughts on this, but I'd like to offer another reason why Zakaria's conclusion is off. It's clear that these two organizational models present *different* threats, but it's not clear what threat is better for U.S. forces. I would argue that a networked, decentralized enemy is far more dangerous for American forces than a hierarchically organized enemy, regardless of what our experience was in Vietnam.

A bunch of folks at RAND and the Naval Postgrad School have done work on network-centric warfare that looks at the implications of decentralized, network organizations in the conduct of warfare. The general conclusion is that it takes a network to fight a network. (See, e.g., the work by John Arquilla and Bruce Hoffman in particular) If this is true, this is very bad for the U.S., because our command structure is anything but a network. The U.S. military command structure is incredibly structured and hierarchical, and this handicaps us in many ways (beyond the scope of this note) for dealing with agile, flexible, decentralized, networked threats.

Similarly, our homeland security apparatus is bureaucratized and hierarchical in a way that hobbles it. I hate to keep beating the John Boyd "OODA Loop" horse, but this is the best framework for understanding the core problem. That core problem is this: how can a large, cumbersome, heavily regulated, bureaucracy like the DHS (or DoJ or DoD) respond to an agile, flexible, small, decentralized, networked, innovate threat like Al Qaeda? Answer: it really can't.

A decentralized enemy that fights from many different directions with loose coordination is precisely the kind of threat we are not organized to defeat. We may be able to do so with brute force and ignorance, but doing so will be quite costly.

More to follow on the implications of network-centric warfare for the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism...
posted by Phillip Carter at 12:05

 
Grilled Wolfowitz
Senate panel throws Pentagon official on the barbie, so to speak

The Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post both report the "grilling" of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz yesterday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Frustrated by American progress in Iraq and upset by obfuscation on the part of Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of State Josh Bolton, several senators engaged in pointed exchanges with the two men in the open committee meeting. Here's a sample of the discourse from the LA Times:

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the committee, twice got into heated exchanges with Wolfowitz over the question of how much the Iraq operation is costing.

"I think you're going to lose the American people if you don't come forward now and tell them what you know, that [the reconstruction effort is] going to cost tens of billions of American taxpayers' dollars and tens of thousands of American troops for an extended period of time," Biden said, his voice just below a shout.

Referring to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's penchant for saying certain things are "unknowable," Biden admonished Wolfowitz: "Please don't waste our time or yours by saying the future is simply unknowable. Pick a number. Pick an idea."

Here's a sample of what the Washington Post reported:

"I agree with the rest of the members of this committee that I think you, Mr. Bolten, should be more forthright in terms of what the costs are going to be so that we have some idea, and the American people [know], how long, how much," said Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio).
* * *
When Bolten said that the administration did not plan to ask for funds in the fiscal 2004 budget for sustaining 150,000 troops in Iraq and rebuilding the country because it didn't know what the precise costs would be, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), the committee's ranking Democrat, erupted.

"Give me a break, will you?" he said. "When are you guys starting to be honest with us? Come on. I mean, this is ridiculous."
* * *
Sen. Jon S. Corzine (D-N.J.) said that while six service members from New Jersey have been killed, "I don't feel comfortable I have the information to be able to argue that we want that patience that I know we need to have."

Exactly. I've said this over and over. America is sacrificing a lot in Iraq on a daily basis. These sacrifices are not abstract; every casualty represents some American son or daughter with parents and friends in the communities from which they came. The Army's plan for Iraq calls for large numbers of National Guard soldiers to be mobilized, which equates to further sacrifice on the part of the American people. I don't think it's too much for these senators to ask:

- Why are we in Iraq?
- What will it cost to succeed in Iraq?
- What is the end state for our mission in Iraq?
- What is our plan to get to that end state, and how long might that plan take?
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:29

 
Enemy Combatants II

Today's Washington Post has the second article in a two-part series on law and terrorism -- this time on the case of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla. The article discusses the Padilla case from the perspective of Padilla's lawyers, so it has some slant towards that perspective. Nonetheless, it does frame the legal issues correctly:

Court battles in these cases have centered on two primary questions. First, does the president have the constitutional authority to designate citizens suspected of terrorism as enemy combatants and hold them incommunicado, without charging them with crimes? So far, courts hearing the Hamdi and Padilla cases have ruled that he does, though the challenges continue.

Issues of law and terrorism have been subject to a great amount of spin over the last two years since Sept. 11. To many, the issues have been reduced down to a deceptively simple balancing between "liberty" and "security". Unfortunately, it's not that easy. I highly recommend reading some of the original documents in these cases, such as Judge Michael Mukasey's December 2002 order in the Padilla case, for a greater understanding of how all the important issues play out in these cases. Findlaw.Com has built an incredible repository of documents on terrorism, and it's a great resource for this endeavor.
posted by Phillip Carter at 06:34

 
The threat of "enemy combatant" status
Prosecutors delegitimize this status by using it to extract plea bargains

Today's Washington Post has a really good article on the case of the "Lackawanna Six" -- six men that pled guilty to providing support to Al Qaeda and attending terror raining camps in Afghanistan. As someone who teaches and writes on issues of law and terrorism, my eyes got wide when I read the piece of the story describing the tactics used by the government to get the plea bargain:

Why would six of their young men so readily agree to plead guilty to terror charges, accepting long prison terms far from home?

"These knuckleheads betrayed our trust, and we're disgusted with their attendance at the camps in Afghanistan," Mohammed Albanna, 52, a leader in the Yemeni community here, said of the six men who have admitted to attending an al Qaeda training camp two years ago. "But the punishment doesn't fit the crime, or the government's rhetoric. It's ridiculous."

But defense attorneys say the answer is straightforward: The federal government implicitly threatened to toss the defendants into a secret military prison without trial, where they could languish indefinitely without access to courts or lawyers.

That prospect terrified the men. They accepted prison terms of 61/2 to 9 years.

"We had to worry about the defendants being whisked out of the courtroom and declared enemy combatants if the case started going well for us," said attorney Patrick J. Brown, who defended one of the accused. "So we just ran up the white flag and folded. Most of us wish we'd never been associated with this case."

This is not an isolated incident. On June 22, I wrote about another instance of the government using this tactic to extract a guilty plea from a defendant in federal court. The New York Times reported this in their story about alleged Al Qaeda operative Iyman Faris, who was accused of plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge.

Prosecutors said Mr. Faris traveled in Afghanistan and Pakistan beginning in 2000, meeting with Osama bin Laden and working with one of his top lieutenants, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, to help organize and finance jihad causes. After returning to the United States in late 2002, officials said, he began casing the Brooklyn Bridge and discussing via coded messages with Qaeda leaders ways of using blowtorches to sever the suspension cables.

The plotting continued through March, as Mr. Faris sent coded messages to Qaeda operatives in Pakistan. One such message said that "the weather is too hot." Officials said that meant that Mr. Faris feared that the plot was unlikely to succeed — apparently because of security and the bridge's structure — and should be postponed. He was arrested soon after, although officials would not discuss the circumstances of his capture.

Analysis: There are several implications for this kind of behavior for the government:

The first is that it really does extend the threat of "enemy combatant" status to a broader segment of the population than was previously thought. When the men at Guantanamo were labeled enemy combatants, we could rationalize it by saying "They were picked up in Afghanistan, on a battlefield, with some plausible connection to the war on terrorism." When men like Jose Padilla were so designated, we could arguably say he was an enemy guerilla seeking to wage war on the streets of America. But when we start to see men charged in federal court, treated as civilians by the system, and then threatened with this status, I think it casts doubt on the protections afforded to those in the criminal justice system.

Second, I think this delegitimizes the label of "enemy combatant" itself. That term has tremendous weight in court. The government is arguing in the Hamdi and Padilla cases that it should not even be questioned by the courts about this designation. Yet, the government casually uses this label as a threat in cases where the defendants are being charged in civilian court.

Third, the casual use of "enemy combatant" status will hurt the government as it tries to win the trust of the American population. A lot has been written about the proper balance between liberty and security since Sept. 11. It takes political capital to pass measures like the USA PATRIOT Act and Homeland Security Act, and it will take more political capital to pass future anti-terrorism laws. That political capital is built on a foundation of trust between the people and the government; that the people trust the government to abuse their liberty in the name of security. I think the average American will see this story and think the government is abusing its public trust, and going too far in its war on terrorism at the expense of civil liberties.

Update: An informed reader writes with a link to a story in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) from April 2003 reporting this same story about the Lackawanna Six. When something appears in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal (papers which lean to the left, center and right, respectively), you can pretty much take it as true. Scot Paltrow adds an interesting dimension to this story that I hadn't considered:

In the Lackawanna case, there were indications that the government's case wasn't as strong as officials in Washington had characterized it after the arrests. The government had called the arrests a major victory in the fight against terrorism. But Michael A. Battle, the U.S. attorney in Buffalo, confirmed the government has found no evidence the defendants were involved in any violent plot.

A former senior FBI official in Washington, who was involved in supervising the investigation for months before the arrests were made, said in an interview that secret surveillance revealed no sign that the men had any hostile intent. That contrasts with the portrayal of the defendants by top government officials, including President Bush in his State of the Union address, as a dangerous terrorist cell waiting to carry out an attack.

Guilty pleas also enable the government to sidestep a crucial, unsettled legal issue: Whether mere attendance at a training camp amounts to providing "material support and resources" to a terrorist organization, under terms of a 1996 law. While the issue hasn't been decided in court, the charges appear to conflict with specific guidance in the Justice Department's Manual for U.S. Attorneys, which says the charge requires evidence of continuing work on behalf of terrorists.

A similar issue came up in the John Walker Lindh case, where U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III held that the material support statute (18 U.S.C. 2339b) did not unconstitutionally infringe on Lindh's rights. But Lindh did a lot more than merely attend a training camp -- he admitted to carrying weapons and explosives as part of the Taliban. Jess Bravin reported at the time of Lindh's plea bargain that this threat was made in his case as well, and that it was probably a factor in Lindh's decision to plead guilty in exchange for a 20-year sentence.

Lawyers in the case said informal talks about a plea bargain began six weeks ago, and that the defense initially proposed a 10-year sentence. President Bush approved a 20-year term Thursday. The two sides spent the weekend hammering out the particulars, and signed off on the terms around 1 a.m. Monday.

Mr. McNulty [the U.S. Attorney] called the deal "an important victory for the American people," adding that it proved "the criminal justice system can be an effective tool in combating terrorism."

In recent months, the Bush administration hasn't been so sure. After coming up against such varying hurdles as Mr. Lindh's crackerjack defense team and the erratic courtroom behavior of Zacarias Moussaoui, who is representing himself at trial on charges of conspiring in the Sept. 11 hijackings, officials increasingly are seeking to bypass the justice system altogether.

Instead, officials have designated two U.S.-born men taken in antiterrorism operations as "enemy combatants," holding them in military jails without charge or access to lawyers.

And according to chief defense lawyer James Brosnahan, prosecutors suggested Mr. Lindh might face the same fate should he be acquitted of criminal charges, adding to the pressure for a plea deal.

Final Thoughts: It's not clear how the courts will treat 18 U.S.C. 2339b when it comes before them. First, some defendant has to challenge the government and not be carted off to a military brig as an enemy combatant. Second, the defendant will need to overcome all of the judicial deference issues which have dominated the major terrorism cases to date. Third, the challenge will need to be made on the right facts -- someone who purely provided nominal material support to a terrorist organization, such as speech or advocacy on their behalf.

Had the Lackawanna Six not pled guilty, they might have been the first defendants to take this issue up through the courts. But the issue for these six men is now moot.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:45

 
Interesting stories at DefenseTech

Noah Shachtman has some great stuff at his site this morning, including:

- An excerpt from his Wired news article on LifeLog, a Pentagon project which would create a system capable of recording everything you see, hear, sense, and know. The object is a personal digital assistant capable of supporting field commanders and bolstering their memories. But the implications resemble a cross between Total Recall and Minority Report...

- A note on the Pentagon's new policy analysis market project -- also run by DARPA, the folks who brought you the Internet, Total Information Awareness, and Lifelog. My first reaction to this was that it was absurd. But Noah has some interesting links on the subject, including some economics studies that lend credibility to the effort.

Update: CNN reports that the Pentagon has cancelled its "terrorism betting parlor" project.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:47

 
Still not enough troops to do the job right

Retired General Barry McCaffrey argues in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) that we need to bolster America's military by quite a bit in order to meet our current global commitments. McCaffrey's no amateur at this stuff -- he commanded the 24th Infantry Division in Gulf War I, and after retiring with 4 stars, served as President Clinton's drug czar. You also can't dismiss McCaffrey as a "liberal critic" who wants to see us fail in Iraq -- a brush which has been used by some (e.g. Ann Coulter) to tar moderate and liberal politicians on this issue. In blunt language, he writes that we don't have the resources to get the job done.

Right now, U.S. active and reserve force-structure of infantry, military police, civil affairs, special operations, aviation and field logistics formations are inadequate. Contractors and allies (now a tiny 7% of the coalition supporting the effort) can mitigate some of the burden in Iraq. And if everything goes to plan, an additional 40,000 allies, organized in three multinational divisions, will be on the ground in Iraq by September. But we should be skeptical about their military effectiveness, independent funding, and logistics support. The only long-term solution is to create a well-trained and -equipped Iraqi police, civil defense corps, border guards, army and contract security force. L. Paul Bremer, chief administrator, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. ground forces, are seized of this effort. We must see to it that they have the cash, equipment and training resources required for the mission.

Gen. Jack Keane, one of the most experienced and thoughtful Army officers we have, has laid out the global rotation plan for the near term. If you analyze the plan, the U.S. Army is very close to being overextended. The risk is too great. Our active strength of 491,000 is too small. Twenty-four of our 33 active brigades (73%) are deployed. Fifteen of our 45 National Guard battalions are deployed. Some 368,000 Army soldiers are deployed to 120 foreign nations. We are in a global war on terror with inadequate forces.

McCaffrey's plan is to mobilize an extra 7 National Guard brigades on top of the 2 included in Gen. Keane's rotation plan. After those reservists demobilize at the end of a 1-year tour, McCaffrey would keep those "units" on active duty, but man them with additional soldiers recruited/trained in the intervening year. It's a viable concept, but it's also one that would cost a lot of money. This plan would also take congressional approval, since the end strength of the military is limited each year by the National Defense Authorization Act. This may be the right answer -- but it will require tough choices (e.g. missile defense funding vs. troops) and hardball politics to make it happen.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:37

 
Update on 3ID decision to remove embedded reporters

Fred Kaplan writes in Slate that this move may be one of the first public signs that the Bush Administration knows things are going badly in Iraq. (The other sign is an attempt to enlist James Baker as the new proconsul for Iraq.) I wrote on this decision by MG Buford Blount last week, after seeing the news in the European Stars & Stripes:

On Monday, the 3rd ID commander, Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, decided to stop allowing reporters to spend time with his troops, other than to gather information for pre-approved “news features,” according to an e-mail response from Lt. Col. Birmingham, 3rd ID spokesman in Baghdad.

The 3rd ID is “no longer embedding media for short stays, effective the beginning of this week,” Birmingham said.

The only exceptions to the policy will be made for three journalists who were embedded with the unit during the war and have subsequently returned, Birmingham said.

Blount “instituted the new ground rules with the intent to give soldiers some opportunity to unwind among themselves,” Birmingham said.

Fred Kaplan thinks something is rotten in the E-Ring, and I think he's right. In his Slate piece, he implies that the Bush Administration sees saturating media coverage as a hindrance to further nation-building efforts. In short, too much coverage of casualties, adverse conditions, unfriendly locals, and griping soldiers may hurt American resolve to persevere in the face of all that adversity.

Now, however, the story has turned sour, to the point where two soldiers with the 3rd I.D., who had grown all too accustomed to talking freely with the press, publicly lambasted not just the brass but the political bosses—on network television, faces exposed, names on the record—in startlingly stark language. One of the soldiers told ABC News, "If Donald Rumsfeld was here, I'd ask him for his resignation." The other said, "I've got my own 'Most Wanted' list. … The Aces in my deck are Paul Bremer, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz."

After that exhibition, the spokesman for the 3rd Infantry issued a statement that the unit was "no longer embedding media for short stays, effective the beginning of this week." The unit's commander, Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, went further, deciding, as Stars and Stripes put it, "to stop letting reporters spend time with troops, except to gather information for pre-approved 'news features.' "

It is unclear whether this was Blount's decision or the Pentagon's. However, since embedding was a Rumsfeld initiative (specifically, conceived by his then-assistant secretary for public affairs, Victoria Clarke), its termination almost certainly could not have been ordered without the permission of Rumsfeld or his aides. And if someone so high up has decided that the image of the mission would now do better without embeds trailing along, that means they know the era of casually good stories is over.

There's some irony to this... The most pro-military coverage of the war -- arguably of the last decade -- came from the reporters who were embedded with the troops on the march to Baghdad. Even when covering bad news, like the shooting of Iraqi civilians at a checkpoint, the embedded reporters generally told the story from a grunt's perspective in a way that would make their parents proud. The most skeptical coverage came from the rear, from reporters at HQ in Kuwait or further back in Washington.

Removing the embedded reporters is likely to result in less "candid camera" moments for our troops in the field. (No more quotes asking for the SecDef's resignation) But it may result in a more negative spin in general for the military. That would be ironic, given the reasons the administration has for removing the embedded reporters from 3ID.
posted by Phillip Carter at 16:46

 
Congratulations to Joe Doherty and his colleague Lynn Lopucki of UCLA Law School for their research on bankruptcy which earned them this mention in the Hearsay column of The Washington Post.

According to researchers at the UCLA School of Law, bankruptcy costs for the largest U.S. companies in Chapter 11 reorganization have dropped 57 percent in real dollars since the 1980s. But the length of time that cases are in bankruptcy has decreased almost as much -- 50 percent -- which the researchers say roughly correlates with the drop in costs.

Yes, say Lynn M. LoPucki and Joseph W. Doherty, the bankruptcy lawyers are doing quite well. As The Washington Post reported last month, legal fees in the Enron Corp. bankruptcy have exceeded $496 million, making it the most expensive case ever.

The researchers also found that fees and expenses in 48 cases they studied totaled more than $600 million. Eighty percent went to firms working for debtors; most of the rest went to those working for creditors. And less than 1 percent went to professionals working for lowly shareholders, who usually are at the end of the line when it comes to recovering their losses.

Among the other nuggets in LoPucki's study, which can be found at www1.law.ucla.edu/~erg/pubs.html, is a chart showing that the more firms there are in a bankruptcy case, the higher the fees.

LoPucki wanted to title the chart "Pigs at the Trough." But, then he decided, no, "it lacks the dignity required for a scholarly paper."

posted by Phillip Carter at 15:41

 
Notes on the offense of treason

Stop the Bleating, another military/legal affairs blog, has a great note today on the history of the treason clause in the U.S. Constitution. Matt takes on the thorny issue of whether you can prosecute someone for espousing views that might amount to treasonous speech, whatever that may be. He concludes:

. . . I'm not entirely sure that we need to resort to any new rules of law to resolve the issue that Bell identifies. You see, in my own research on the topic I came to the realization that the overarching purpose of the Treason Clause was primarily to protect peaceful political dissent. But we have something in the Constitution now that wasn't present when the Clause was enacted, and it protects such dissent quite well. It's called the First Amendment, and I think it may be up to the task of dealing with situations like the Al Qaeda Al scenario that Bell proposes.

posted by Phillip Carter at 14:37

 
Going on the offensive

Tom Ricks has an outstanding piece in today's Washington Post, which he wrote from Iraq where he is currently reporting on the Army's 4th Infantry Division. The piece assesses the latest campaign by American forces to quash the Iraqi insurgency. Using a mix of unconventional tactics and intelligence-driven operations, American forces appear to be winning some significant victories -- but at a cost. The whole story's worth reading for an understanding of what's going on over there right now.

Despite their losses, Army officers and soldiers asserted that they are making solid gains in this region, where most of the fighting has taken place and where about half the 150,000 U.S. troops in the country are posted.

At the beginning of June, before the U.S. offensives began, the reward for killing an American soldier was about $300, an Army officer said. Now, he said, street youths are being offered as much as $5,000 -- and are being told that if they refuse, their families will be killed, a development the officer described as a sign of reluctance among once-eager youths to take part in the strikes.

At the same time, the frequency of attacks has declined in the area northwest of Baghdad dominated by Iraq's Sunni minority, long a base of support for Hussein. In this triangle-shaped region -- delineated by Baghdad, Tikrit to the north and the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi to the west -- attacks on U.S. forces have dropped by half since mid-June, military officers reported.

That decrease is leading senior commanders here to debate whether the war is nearly over. Some say the resistance by members of Hussein's Baath Party is nearly broken. But other senior officers are bracing for a new phase in which they fear that Baathist die-hards, with no alternative left, will shift from attacking the U.S. military to bombing American civilians and Iraqis who work with them.

In addition, there is general agreement among Army leaders here that in recent weeks both the quality and quantity of intelligence being offered by Iraqis has greatly improved, leading to such operations as the one last Tuesday in Mosul that killed Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay.

Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in." Such tactics are justified, he said, because, "It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info." They would have been released in due course, he added later.

The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered.

Update: Mark Kleiman, a UCLA professor who I know and respect, thinks this is unethical conduct -- and possibly unlawful under the laws of war.

Mark (with an assist from Atrios) cites to Art. 75 of Protocol I to the Geneva Convention, as his support for the contention that this is unlawful. Unfortunately, the U.S. has not signed Protocol I, and thus cannot be bound by it by the conventions of positivistic international law.

Of course, that's just a legal footnote about Protocol I. The U.S. did sign the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949, and it explicitly precludes hostage taking in armed conflict:

Art. 34. The taking of hostages is prohibited.

There is also a norm of international law known as "distinction" -- which literally means distinguishing between combatants and non-combatants. This principle would probably preclude the kind of conduct conducted by COL Hogg in Iraq, since the Iraqi Lt. Gen.'s family members are unquestionably non-combatants.

Doing what's unlawful is one thing; doing something which is counter-productive is quite another. We're trying to rebuild Iraq as a kinder, gentler place -- a nation that contributes to regional stability, economic growth, personal liberty, etc. To accomplish our mission, we need to win the Iraqis' hearts and minds. Kidnapping the wives and daughters of our adversaries is not a way to win hearts and minds -- it's a way to squeeze their private parts. This is the kind of tactic that can backfire, bigtime. Especially if your opponent is willing to go a step further in his atrocities than you.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:57

 
America's finest sons and daughters

Ruth Voshell Stonesifer writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer this morning about her son -- Kristofor Stonesifer -- who was killed in combat during the first days of combat in Afghanistan. Her essay discusses some of the reasons her son went to war, and some of her feelings since his death in 2001.

My son was a quiet and thoughtful patriot. When I questioned him about Sept. 11, while he was still at Fort Benning, Ga., and before he went overseas, he spoke only about his fellow Army Rangers chomping at the bit to right the wrongs perpetrated on America that day. But Kris expressed no such zeal.

I always found it hard to imagine he would be able to kill another human being. After his death, it did not surprise me to hear that he had removed a cast from his ankle to be on that plane bound for the Middle East. He wanted to be there to protect his buddies. That is why he went, not to find some ringleader or a stockpile of weapons or chemicals. His buddies would probably say the same.

Since my son died in the Middle East and I became a Gold Star Mother, I am more sensitive to this current debate, along with the rest of the families whose sons or daughters did not come home from this battle.

When we see reported on the news only the turmoil instead of the progress being made by the Iraqi people, we feel intense frustration - even though we have been assured by everyone from our President on down that our loved one who died in the line of duty is an "American hero." We now begin to wonder if the other adage told to us is true: that "they did not die in vain."

Steve Lopez, one of the Los Angeles Times' best columnists, also writes today about the mother of a soldier killed in combat.

Evan Ashcraft was killed last week. He was 24 and an Army sergeant in the 101st Airborne Division. When his mother invited me to visit with her, she had only one purpose. She wanted to honor her boy, and to put a human face to the daily tally of casualties.

"I don't want them to be just numbers," said Bright, human resources director for a North Hollywood aerospace company. "This anguish is unspeakable, and another family goes through it every day. We're not speaking enough about the losses."
* * *
"I think it's normal to say, 'OK, I lost a son. Was this for a good cause?' But what Jane is saying is that she lost a son, and people need to know he was not a number," Jim Bright says. "He was someone to be honored and remembered. She and I both believe it transcends political consideration. Kids are dying, and that is what it is. Kids are dying."

Thoughts... I think the essential question is precisely "Was this for a good cause?" America has sacrificed a great number of its sons and daughters on the fields of Iraq for some cause -- whether it's WMD, regional stability, prevention of terrorism, oil, humanitarian goals, or something else. Some people have questioned the efforts of reporters (such as Josh Marshall) in seeking out the truth about the Bush Administration's casus belli -- our reason for going to war with Iraq. I don't think such queries are misplaced. If we are going to send our finest sons and daughters into harm's way, then we deserve to know as a nation the reasons for doing so.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:53

 
The lawfulness of killing in war

John Yoo, a UC Berkeley law professor who recently served as a political appointee in the Justice Department, opines in the Weekly Standard that there is no reason to wring our hands over the killing of Saddam's sons. This essay is one of the better ones I've seen on the subject. It concisely sums up the law and states why no legal problem exists with last week's targeted killing of the two Hussein men.

No law prohibits the targeting of specific enemy leaders in war. Assassination is different: the murder of a public figure for political reasons. The murders of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Abraham Lincoln were assassinations. By contrast, the killing of the enemy in combat is protected by the laws of war. As Hugo Grotius, the father of international law, observed in 1646, "It is permissible to kill an enemy." Legitimate military targets include not just foot soldiers, but the command and control structure of an enemy's military, leading up to its commander in chief.

Therefore, it is perfectly legitimate for the United States to kill Hussein's sons, and ultimately Hussein himself, just as it is to kill members of the Iraqi military who continue to fight against the coalition. It is legal for the Armed Forces to use a Hellfire missile to kill Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, who are enemy combatants in a war with the United States. While President Ford and his successors have banned assassinations by executive order, killing Hussein or bin Laden would not be an assassination but a lawful use of force against an enemy in war.

Killing enemy personnel is the very purpose and means of conducting warfare. While international law prohibits killing an enemy "treacherously," this has never been understood to prohibit the targeting of specific military leaders. Rather, it is a ban on soldiers' disguising themselves as civilians or Red Cross workers, or otherwise seeking to blur the line between combatants and noncombatants in order to give themselves a military advantage. It does not prohibit the use of surprise, ruses, or stealthy tactics to kill enemy personnel.

posted by Phillip Carter at 09:44

 
Assessment: women in combat

A semi-official after-after review of Gulf War II has concluded that women performed effectively in combat, after a decade of policy changes that opened up a myriad of opportunities close to the front lines. Women in all four services saw combat in Iraq, whether as helicopter pilots, MPs, chemical warfare specialists, or logisticians. Anthony Cordesman, now a professor at CSIS, wrote the study, which says:

Women made up roughly 15 percent of U.S. military forces during the Iraq War, ranging from a high of 19 percent in the Air Force to 6 percent in the Marines. The number of women in high-risk jobs increased strikingly compared to those in the Gulf War, although women are still barred from ground combat positions. Perhaps the most striking aspect of this change is that there are no meaningful reports of gender problems in combat or high riskpositions. While scarcely unexpected, this experience is a further refutation of the arguments that women cannot perform such duties or will disrupt operations in wartime.

Analysis: Notwithstanding the ordeal of PFC Jessica Lynch, I think this conclusion is right on. In general, women performed effectively in the gulf, proving the wisdom behind the policy changes in the 1990s that opened more combat and combat-support roles to women. I wrote about this in December 2002 in the Washington Monthly, saying essentially the same thing as Cordesman.

Indeed, if mixed-gender units perform as they have in the California desert--and in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan--it would strengthen the integrationist trend in several ways. The least likely possibility would be the elimination of all rules barring women from full combat service, from special forces to light infantry. But even if this were to happen, surveys suggest that only a small number of women would apply. And only a fraction of those who do would have the physical ability and fortitude to make it through, say, the crucible of Army ranger school, from which a majority of qualified men wash out before graduation.

The second, and more likely, possibility is that certain combat jobs currently off-limits to women would be opened. For instance, women can currently serve in Patriot air-defense units, but not in short-range air-defense or offensive artillery units closer to the front--even though the skill levels are virtually the same. Female soldiers frequently win the Army's highest awards for marksmanship and even participate on the U.S. Olympic marksmanship team--but outside the MPs cannot be snipers. If Saddam's Baathist regime falls to U.S. forces that include women, these kinds of job limitations may collapse, too.

Finally, a successful showing by female soldiers is sure to increase pressure on the Army to end the subtle day-to-day discrimination that remains a fact of life for so many female soldiers, from anachronistic "wives clubs" in some units to assignment policies that place a premium on female soldiers willing to defer childbearing indefinitely.

Even if more opportunities for women open up, the changes are unlikely to be as radical or disruptive as many imagine, for a simple reason: Not that many women are likely to take advantage of the opportunities. A recent RAND Corporation study indicates that women have not flooded into every new specialty opened to them during the 1990s. Some, such as Army bridge crewmembers, have seen an increase. But the number of, say, female Marine Corps F-18 pilots has not really changed. This is true in part because the services still make it difficult for women to enter these occupations by setting quotas that limit their number. But it is also because of a lack of interest. According to a RAND survey, while more than 75 percent of military women supported the general idea of women in combat, only 10 to 15 percent of those said they would actually pursue such jobs if given the option. "Enlisted women are much less keen on rushing off to combat than female officers," observes Northwestern's Moskos.

In other words, even in the event that the Army opens combat jobs to women, those opposed to the idea may not have much to worry about. And besides, the more women like Capt. Streigel who serve bravely and effectively in an upcoming Iraq war, the more female generals we'll see a few years down in the road--and the more likely the issue of women's role in the military will work itself out.

Bottom Line: Women went to the gulf, they fought, and they did as well as the men they served with. Today's military is a remarkably diverse organization, and it knows how to build cohesive winning teams regardless of the backgrounds of the soldiers in those units. Male, female, black, white, brown -- it makes no difference. Everyone wears green (or desert camo), and that's what counts.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:58

 
LANCE WINS HIS FIFTH CONSECUTIVE TOUR DE FRANCE!

Lance Armstrong, the gifted athlete who battled testicular cancer and won, added a fifth consecutive Tour De France title to his long list of accomplishments today. This tour was tougher for Lance than previous ones. He faced fatigue, dehydration, French citizens, crashes, and near wipeout during the grueling 2,130-mile race. But in the end, his experience and endurance enabled him to win the race, supported by the strong U.S. Postal Service team. Lance already ranks with the best American athletes of all time -- Jim Thorpe, Jackie Robinson, Bruce Jenner, Mark Spitz -- to name a few. But this title puts him in the rarefied ranks of cycling. Only one man (Miguel Indurain) has ever won 5 consecutive Tour De France titles.

Maybe Lance will go for six?
posted by Phillip Carter at 11:03

 
More on the impact of killing Odai and Qusai Hussein

Speaking by video teleconference from Iraq, 4th Infantry Division commander MG Ray Odierno said today that the killing of Saddam Hussein's two sons in Mosul on Monday had little practical effect on the threat he was seeing arrayed against him.

Q: General, Eric Schmitt with the New York Times. What's been the effect of your region in the last few days since the deaths of the two Hussein sons? What impact has it seen in your area?

Odierno: I will just comment that I believe most of the operations are really decentralized, so I've seen, actually, no impact. It's been about the same. We've seen no increase or no decrease; we've seen about the same amount of activity. And I think that has to do with it -- it was not organized up to the top, but is a very decentralized organized effort.

But we've had some great successes. What we continue to see is Iraqis coming forward to us with information, and that has been going on now in significant numbers for the last two to three weeks, and that's what we've really seen the difference.

Analysis: This sounds very similar to what I wrote on Tuesday. I opined that America would not see a significant dropoff in guerilla attacks because Odai and Qusai probably spent more time hiding than exercising command and control over insurgents. Moreover, the evidence tends to indicate a loosely connected network of guerillas in Iraq -- not a hierarchical organization controlled by former Saddam henchmen. Ultimately, I think the killing of these two men will probably have a marginally positive effect on our operations in Iraq, but not a large one. MG Odierno agrees:

. . . What I would say is -- to comment on that -- I think there will be more of a long-term effect. It's very important that this operation occurred and that we have shown them that no one of the old regime's going to survive. And I think it's going to have a long- term effect. It will take a little bit of time. Might take months, might take weeks, might take three months, four months, but it's going to have an effect overall on the overall outcome. But I have seen no immediate impact based on the specific attacks.

Sounds like a very prudent commander, and one that I'm glad we have over there. Taking these men out was the right thing to do, but it's not the end of our mission in Iraq. We must continue to persevere, to take the offensive, in order to prevail over the guerillas who aim to thwart our goals in Iraq.
posted by Phillip Carter at 15:36

 
3ID commander orders an end to media embedding

In response to the controversy this month surrounding some out-of-school comments by his soldiers to the media, MG Buford Blount has put the 3rd Infantry Division "off limits" to embedded reporters from the states, according to Lisa Burgess in the European Stars & Stripes. The move appears to be calculated to reduce troop contact with the media, giving them a chance to blow off steam without having their comments picked up by a journalist and transmitted around the world. This move comes after one soldier candidly told an ABC News reporter: "If Donald Rumsfeld was here, I’d ask him for his resignation."

On Monday, the 3rd ID commander, Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, decided to stop allowing reporters to spend time with his troops, other than to gather information for pre-approved “news features,” according to an e-mail response from Lt. Col. Birmingham, 3rd ID spokesman in Baghdad.

The 3rd ID is “no longer embedding media for short stays, effective the beginning of this week,” Birmingham said.

The only exceptions to the policy will be made for three journalists who were embedded with the unit during the war and have subsequently returned, Birmingham said.

Blount “instituted the new ground rules with the intent to give soldiers some opportunity to unwind among themselves,” Birmingham said.

It would be a shame if the "media embedding experiment" ended on such a low note after the second Gulf War. For the most part, I think this experiment worked very well. It gave the American public a grunt's eye glimpse of the war and exposed a generation of reporters to the military. If anything, media embedding created problems because news reports from the field were largely positive, and most media did not offset that coverage with quality analysis from the rear. (The Washington Post is the notable exception to this criticism)

Nonetheless, this may be the right thing to do now, with so many media "flooding the zone" in Iraq to find stories of disenchantment and quagmire. Our soldiers need to blow off some stress, and they don't need a reporter embedded in their unit to hear them do that. Furthermore, there's nothing preventing a reporter from covering the news as a "unilateral" in Baghdad or any other part of Iraq -- they don't need to be embedded anymore.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:16

 
Was it legal to take out Saddam's sons?
Corollary: was it legal to show their post-mortem photos?

Slate provides an excellent explainer on this subject, citing to Executive Order 12333 and other relevant authority on the subject. The basic answer is "yes -- it was legal to kill Odai and Qusai Hussein". The legal analysis boils down to one question: were these political leaders, or military leaders? Political leaders (e.g. Yassir Arafat) cannot be killed because it would be an assassination. Military leaders (e.g. Admiral Yamamoto in WWII) can be killed lawfully in wartime. Whether Odai and Qusai were military or political targets is a matter of argument, but I think the administration is on firm ground in saying that they were not legitimate political leaders now, after the fall of the Hussein regime.

During wartime, it is generally acceptable to attack figures who are involved in military operations, and it is widely believed that Odai and Qusai were helping to coordinate resistance to the American occupation. As long as the brothers weren't killed by treacherous means—say, by luring them to a peace conference, then shooting them—they are legitimate targets. A close parallel is the 1943 killing of Japanese Adm. Isoruku Yamamoto, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor. When U.S. aircraft* ambushed his plane, Yamamoto was the mission's sole target. However, because the admiral oversaw military operations against the United States at the time, the killing is generally not considered to have been an assassination.

Since Ford's order, the United States has occasionally targeted foreign heads of state for purposes of self-defense, most notably when American warplanes bombed Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi's personal quarters in 1986. The attack was in retaliation for the Libyan-orchestrated bombing of a Berlin disco in which two U.S. soldiers were killed. According to the Reagan administration, the United States had the authority to launch an attack under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which states that nothing "shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs." By this logic, Qaddafi was a combatant who was planning military operations and could be targeted just like Yamamoto.

A thornier question is whether the United States can legally kill terrorists, who lack formal affiliation with a particular nation. It's unclear whether war can be declared against a terrorist group, as opposed to a sovereign country, and that muddles the issue of what qualifies as combat or self-defense. But the ban on assassinations may be lax enough to render these concerns moot. Unlike a law passed by Congress, an executive order like 12333 can be amended by the president at any time. And since this one deals with national security, the president can make that change secretly.

The Slate explainer goes on to tackle a more pressing issue: the legitimacy of our decision to publish photos of the two men's corpses.

The military claims that the publication of Odai's and Qusai's photos was necessary in order to prove to the Iraqi public that the pair were dead. But as Explainer noted in March, the Geneva Convention prohibits the public airing of pictures that might humiliate a combatant—the same justification the United States used to object to broadcasting interrogations of American POWs.

As a matter of law, the Third Geneva Convention does indeed prohibit anything that would expose POWs to "public curiousity". Of course, one can argue that these were corpses, not POWs, and that at no time were they alive and in the custody of the United States. Some have also suggested that the U.S. might have given the bodies and photos to the Iraqis for dissemination -- or for public display as was done for Mussolini when he was killed. Though that may technically sidestep the Geneva Convention problem, I think it's still wrong. Using our agents and surrogates to do our dirty work is not a good answer. Furthermore, doing so would make the Iraqi "government" look more like our puppet.

The Moral Dimension of War: We've dealt with this issue in other contexts, such as the "rendering" of captured suspects over to allies (like Pakistan) for interrogation, or the use of foreign interrogators in American detention facilities to do things that our guys can't do. Those things don't sit well with the American public, let alone the international human rights community. And I'm not sure that the marginal gains are worth the loss in political capital and moral capital.

One of John Boyd's ideas that really intrigued me was his perspective on the moral dimension of war. I think this is one of the defining characteristics of 4th Generation Warfare. If you can define the moral dimensions of a conflict and the norms/rules of conflict, you can dominate it. To date, we have been able to do so by casting asymmetric means like terrorism and guerilla warfare in a negative light. But the more we employ unconventional tactics, and the more we step into the gray area of international law, the more we will cede the moral high ground to our opponents. I think it's something we need to be cognizant of.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:54

 
The Art of War

Jess Bravin has a fascinating piece in this morning's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) on the combat artists who accompanied allied forces in Iraq. These men went as soldiers first, artists second, and captured some incredible images of the war that simply transcend what photographers were able to capture.

Britain started the modern practice of appointing war artists in 1916. Hungry for propaganda to shore up the war effort, officials sent such leading painters as John Singer Sargent and Paul Nash to the front lines. Britain's World War I allies, including the U.S., Canada and Australia, followed suit with combat artists of their own.

There were occasional aesthetic battles between artist and army. No fans of modernism, Canadian authorities ordered World War I artist David Bomberg to redo his cubist rendition "Sappers at Work: A Canadian Tunelling Company." But the work of war artists, reproduced in domestic magazines, provided folks back home their best glimpse of life in the trenches.
* * *
. . . war art still tells a story that mere photography can't touch, military painters say. "The photograph is like prose. The painting is poetry. That's my opinion," says Nick Mosura, deputy director of the Air Force Art Program. An illustrator himself, Mr. Mosura escorted four civilian painters to Iraq for a two-week stint painting airplanes and airmen. The Air Force maintains relations with five different illustrators' clubs across the country, in peace and war. In exchange for free travel to Iraq, the artists agreed to donate their paintings to decorate air bases.

The Journal has one of the Marine Corps artists pencil sketches embedded in the story on its website, of a Marine cleaning his rifle in Kuwait while wearing chemical protective gear. The elegant simplicity of the sketch is quite powerful. I recommend reading this piece if you can, and looking for these artists' work over the next several months.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:31

 
Editor's note

All of the news stories I post on this site are the intellectual property of their authors and the publications which originally run them, e.g. the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Additionally, I own the copyright to all of the content that I write for this site, and I have a copyright notice posted on this page to indicate that. Federal copyright law prevents me from posting anything more than brief excerpts or summaries of an article, with due credit, under the "fair use" doctrine. I intend to follow the law, and respect the intellectual property of the authors and publications which I cite.

In one note (see below), I excerpted parts of a story that altered the balance that the writer attempted to achieve between conflicting viewpoints. At the editor's request, I have posted the entire story in order to provide that balance. Normally, I would not post the entire text of a story because doing so would infringe on the copyright of the publication. However, I have received permission to do so in this case.

Finally, some of the publications I cite to include the notation (subscription required) after the link (such as the Wall Street Journal). That means that these journals require a subscription in order to see the full text of the article. I am typically more careful about borrowing text from these publications, since they have made a conscious decision to sell their content instead of giving it away online. If you want to read the full text, then I ask that you purchase a one-time subscription or general subscription. Good reporting is worth paying for.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:56

 
Recruiting and retaining top talent in the FBI

Today's Los Angeles Times has a great Column One piece on their front page about the difficulties the FBI is facing with recruiting and retaining its best agents despite a meager salary scale. Unfortunately for all of us, the difficulties appear most acute in urban areas like Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York -- where the threat of terrorism is greatest.

While the FBI plays a lead role in the war on terrorism, many agents say they are waging a private battle against financial hardship. An outdated pay structure has left many agents struggling to make ends meet, especially in high-cost cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York.

Some agents endure lengthy commutes. Others have gone deep into debt. A few have gone on food stamps or moved into government housing.

FBI veterans say the impact on the bureau's crime-fighting prowess is subtle, but unmistakable. Scores of younger agents are resigning for better-paying jobs in the private sector. Experienced agents want out of big cities. Top-level vacancies in specialties ranging from white-collar crime to counterterrorism go begging for applicants.

The financial squeeze, agents say, is greatest in the very urban centers where the need for top investigative talent is most urgent.

"It is the elephant in the living room that no one wants to talk about," said Nancy Savage, a Portland, Ore., agent who is president of the FBI Agents Assn. "It is killing us in terms of getting people to want to work and stay in these high-cost cities. And these are critical places for us to work."

Analysis: This problem is not unique to the FBI. Lots of public agencies are having difficulty with recruiting and retaining the best and brightest Americans they can. Nick Thompson had a great piece in the Washington Monthly on this issue in June. Federal judges (including Chief Justice Rehnquist) have also expressed their discontent with the federal salary structure. Although they're making as much money as any federal employee save the President, the differential between the pay for a federal judge and a private law firm partner can run into the thousands of dollars. This has been an issue for America's military as well, with an exodus of junior officers from all four services in the late-1990s due to chronic problems in the military and opportunities in the outside world. (This exodus has slowed somewhat due to world events, but it may resume when large units redeploy from overseas and "stop-loss" orders come off.)

So how do we encourage more public service? That's a really hard question. I'm not in favor of a draft, nor am I in favor of compulsory public service. However, I do think that we should create an opportunity-based system (like military enlistment) where young Americans can serve in various capacities in return for college scholarships, graduate-school scholarships, and other benefits.

In the age of terrorism, our lives depend on the FBI's abilities. The FBI's abilities, in turn, depend on the people it can recruit and retain. Given the importance of these agents to our national security, it may be wise to pursue some sort of housing allowance or cost-of-living offset for the agents we put in high-threat/high-cost areas like New York and Los Angeles.
posted by Phillip Carter at 10:23

 
Better terrorism intelligence -- or a longer OODA loop?

That's the question posed by members of Congress in today's Los Angeles Times. The Times reports that several lawmakers have taken the new "Terrorist Threat Intelligence Center" (TTIC) to task for being just another piece of bureaucracy instead of an effective clearinghouse for the gathering and analysis of intelligence.

The intelligence center, staffed by more than 100 agents from all three agencies as well as the State and Defense departments, was established to remedy a widely acknowledged failure of the CIA and the FBI to share critical intelligence in the months leading up to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Members of the House homeland security and judiciary committees, at a joint hearing, said the center began May 1 with the deck stacked against it.

"There is an unclear division of responsibility and therefore no basis of accountability," said Rep. Jim Turner of Texas, the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee. "The robust intelligence unit envisioned by the Homeland Security Act does not exist today."
* * *
Committee members questioned why the center was not a part of the Homeland Security Department. "What this looks like is the intelligence community's jobs-forever program," said Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Anaheim). "Why are we duplicating our efforts?"

Analysis: These members of Congress are on to something, but they're not there yet. The central problem is this: how can the large, bureaucratic, federal security apparatus (DoD, CIA, DHS, DoJ, etc) compete with a nimble, agile, networked, flexible foe like Al Qaeda? How can it possibly react to intelligence reports fast enough to actually do something before a terrorist attack?

The best conceptual framework for this problem comes from the late-Col. John Boyd, whose ideas redefined military strategy over the last 4 decades. Boyd also developed the "Observe, Orient, Decide, Act" (OODA for short) model of military decisionmaking. He developed this model to map the competitive mental processes of fighter pilots in the Korean war, largely to explain why U.S. pilots did so much better with ostensibly inferior aircraft. The answer was that they had slightly more maneuverable aircraft, and better training, which enabled them to move through their OODA loop faster and react faster than their opponents. Though designed for 1-on-1 combat in the skies, the OODA loop can be used to illuminate almost any competitive endeavor, from corporate decisionmaking to warfighting.

In the context of terrorism, it provides the perfect framework for understanding the difficulties of the U.S. government in dealing with a threat like Al Qaeda. We now face a global terror network capable of rapid innovation and adaptation to our actions. They, in short, have a very tight OODA loop. It is imperative that we construct organizations capable of rapidly gathering intelligence on Al Qaeda, analyzing it, and exploiting it. The TTIC can be such an organization, if given the chance. But it must be embraced by its colleagues in DoD, DoJ and DHS, who ultimately must act to exploit the intelligence from TTIC.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:00

 
U.S. confirms the death of Uday and Qusay Hussein -- now what?

The Washington Post (and others) report that American military officials in Baghdad have confirmed the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein -- sons of the former Iraqi dictator. The two men died after a fierce firefight with American infantry who surrounded a residence they had sought refuge in. After pounding that house with rifle, machine gun, and other fires, American infantry entered the building to find the two Husseins dead.

[Lt. Gen. Ricardo] Sanchez, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, gave few details about the operation, but he said it lasted about six hours and involved troops from the Army's 101st Airborne Division, Special Forces and others. U.S. officials became aware of the location when a "walk-in" informant came to them last night and said that several high-ranking suspects could be found there.

Sanchez said more information on the operation would be coming tomorrow, and details of the attack were very sketchy. But an intelligence official in Washington said that tentative identification was made when the bodies were shown to several Iraqis who have been detained by U.S. forces and who told U.S. military officials that they were Hussein's sons.

"We're certain that Uday and Qusay were killed," Sanchez said. "We've used multiple sources to identify the individuals."

So what does this mean for our Iraqi endeavor? Well, it depends. If these two men were providing some of the command and control behind the ongoing guerilla attacks on American forces, then some of that activity may drop off, assuming they did not have a redundant command structure. However, it's not clear that these two men were directing those attacks, or doing anything other than trying to hide from American forces along with their father.

Optimism is good, but realism is better. We need to consider all possible scenarios in Iraq, including the possibility that the guerilla resistance we're seeing is not the result of a coordinated, shadow command structure led by Mr. Hussein or some other "Mr. Big". (American forces in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Haiti and Afghanistan have been predisposed to see this organized crime-style model even in the absence of evidence indicating its truth) It's very possible, given the diffuse locations and tactics of these guerillas, that we are seeing a loosely connected network of enemies in Iraq. If that's the case, then we may not see any drop at all from this latest success.

Bottom Line: The jury's still out on this one. This success may have some effect on the guerilla activity in Iraq, but I don't think we're going to see it disappear entirely anytime soon. Relentless pursuit of the Hussein regime (and Hussein himself) will help the infant government now forming, and add to the sense that the Hussein regime will never return to power. But it's hard to tell anything else with a great deal of certainty.
posted by Phillip Carter at 14:23

 
Did we plan for success in Iraq?

"Maybe," according to a report in today's USA Today, which mirrors a story in the Los Angeles Times last week. Barbara Slavin and Dave Moniz make the point that U.S. planning for post-war Iraq was less-than-stellar, largely due to faulty assumptions and group-think about what post-war Iraq would look like.

Baghdad fell just 21 days after the initial assaults, and military analysts describe the campaign as historic, even brilliant.

But so far, the verdict on the aftermath of that campaign is much harsher. More than three months after Baghdad fell, American soldiers are not being treated like liberators. Instead, they are mired in a guerrilla war, according to Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. forces in the region. Shadowy forces prey on U.S. troops, sabotage the nation's electric grid and other vital infrastructure, and spread fear among average Iraqis that Saddam is coming back.

Administration officials say the violence will eventually subside. But as of mid-July, even the top U.S. official in Iraq was offering no clear forecast for when. "We need to be patient," Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator for Iraq, told Meet the Press on Sunday. While expressing confidence that resistance could be overcome, he conceded that "we are going to be there for a while. I don't know how many years."

Interviews with more than 30 current and former U.S. officials, analysts, Iraqi-Americans and others — including a cross-section of those involved in the planning process — identified a number of pre-war decisions that they say helped create the current situation. Hasty planning, rosy assumptions about Iraqi attitudes and a failure to foresee and forestall the disastrous effects of looting and sabotage all contributed, they say. Most spoke on the record, but a few in sensitive positions requested anonymity.

Apparently, Bush Administration knew the post-war phase would be the toughest. The USA Today report notes the advice given by the Army's leadership -- former-SecArmy Tom White and retired-Gen. Eric Shinseki -- that the occupation would require "several hundred thousand" troops. The USA Today report also notes a National Security Council memo analyzing past nation-building operations and projecting a need for 500,000 troops for this one:

As late as February, barely a month before the war began, the question of how many troops to send to Iraq to stabilize the country after the war was unsettled, according to a high-ranking Defense Department official involved in the planning process.

To help planners reach a decision, staff members on the White House's National Security Council (NSC) prepared a memo that looked at the numbers of troops used in recent peacekeeping operations and stated what numbers would be sent to Iraq if those models were followed, the official said. If the peacekeeping operations during the 1999 Kosovo crisis were used as a benchmark, the memo said, 500,000 troops would have been deployed to Iraq. A large number of peacekeepers was also sent to Bosnia, but relatively smaller forces were deployed in other crises in Haiti, Sierra Leone, where the outcome has been less successful than in the Balkans.

The memo did not set an inflexible rule for force size, but instead laid out the apparent lessons of recent peacekeeping operations. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice saw the memo, but it is not clear whether President Bush did. Michael Anton, an NSC spokesman, refused to comment on the document, apart from denying that any specific recommendation had been made regarding how many troops should be deployed. "The NSC staff does not make recommendations or provide estimates to the president on the number of troops needed for any mission," he said.

Yet about the same time the document was drafted, Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz harshly criticized then Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki for telling the Senate Armed Services Committee that it would take "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" to stabilize Iraq in the months after the war.

In the end, the conviction that U.S. forces would be warmly welcomed was at the heart of the decisionmaking, judging from the administration's public statements and inside accounts from those who took part in the debate. Thomas White, who served as secretary of the Army until Rumsfeld pushed him out after the war over differences about force size and other matters, traces the force-size decision to the belief by Cheney, Rumsfeld and others that U.S. troops would be hailed as liberators.

Shortly after American troops entered Baghdad, I wrote a piece similar to this memo in the Washington Monthly, arguing that our recent experience with nation-building should be a guide for doing it this time around.

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.

Consider the lessons of Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. In Bosnia, America won its war with a combination of muscular diplomacy, air power, and covertly armed Bosnian-Muslim and Croat proxy armies on the ground. That mix of tools brought about the Dayton Accords in the fall of 1995. But when it came to making that treaty work, America had to send in its heaviest armor divisions, putting a Bradley fighting vehicle on nearly every street corner to enforce the peace. NATO initially sent 60,000 soldiers into Bosnia, and almost eight years after Dayton, America still has several thousand soldiers on the ground in Bosnia, as part of a 13,000-soldier NATO force. Winning hearts and minds took a backseat to overawing malcontent factions with an overwhelming and, for all intents and purposes, enduring show of force.

Like Bosnia, Kosovo was taken without any American ground commitment. There the United States won its war by unifying air power with what now-retired Gen. Wesley Clark calls "coercive diplomacy." But to win the peace America had to send in substantial ground forces. NATO quickly deployed a force of nearly 50,000 troops to the tiny province that is roughly 1/40 the size of Iraq. Truly pacifying Kosovo--a process that has really only just begun--means leeching it of its toxic ethnic hatreds and endemic violence. Most indicators hint that NATO will have to maintain its mission in Kosovo for at least a generation.

In Afghanistan, the pattern was much the same. It took only 300 U.S. special forces on foot and horseback--supported by 21st-century aircraft, GPS-guided bombs, and a force of Northern Alliance fighters--to bring down the Taliban. But once the government in Kabul had fallen, thousands of U.S. and allied troops had to come in to secure the country. Today, 15,000 American and allied soldiers remain there, 50 times more than it took to win the war.

So what's the bottom line? I think we can draw some conclusions from today's article, the LA Times article last Friday, and some of my writing.

(1) The U.S. knew what it would take to do the job right in Iraq, because of our recent experiences in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Indeed, our top officials knew what it would take, based on studies done by the Army War College and National Security Council.

(2) Senior officials in the Pentagon and White House appear to have chosen courses of action which were contraindicated by the advice mentioned in (1). It's not clear why this choice was made. It may never be possible to pin down the exact decision calculus inside the minds of the top leaders in the Pentagon. However, it appears that the Pentagon made a conscious decision to accept risk in the planning and execution of its post-war plan, in order to start and fight the war faster. That may have been an acceptable tradeoff, given the effect that our high operational tempo had on the Iraqis. But it's clear now that the risk on the back-end (in the post-war phase) was significant, and possibly larger than planners anticipated. (More on operational risk and planning later...)

(3) The entire post-war plan was given relatively short shrift by planners and commanders at the top levels, apparently because of assumptions at the highest levels of government that "we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." (Vice President Cheney, March 16) This assumption drove every other aspect of the plan, from mobilization of additional reservists for security to contracts for additional civilian security forces. When this assumption proved to be false, it was too late to change those other aspects of the plan. Without a contingency force already sitting in Kuwait ready for commitment, it was impossible to rapidly mobilize one from the states to get there when they were needed.

The result: American soldiers have not been set up for success in Iraq. The Administration has not yet done all it can do to set them up for success, and we must. Our mission in Iraq is important, notwithstanding questions about our casus belli. (See Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo for the best reporting on this issue.) We must succeed there in order to create regional stability and prevent the kind of threats from emerging in Iraq that have emerged in other failed states (e.g. Afghanistan). Going to the U.N. on bended knee to get official U.N. sanction and peacekeeping support is one answer. Mobilizing sufficient numbers of reservists to implement a long-term rotation plan with enough boots on the ground is another. Contracting with Iraqis for civilian security forces is a third good option. Ultimately, we must prevail. But we must get smarter about our planning in order to do so.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:57

 
Army examines its choice of weapons lube

After taking sharp criticism from current and former soldiers alike for its continued use of "CLP" weapons lubricant, Inside the Army (subscription required) reports today that the Army has decided to relook its choice of lubricant for the standard M-16A2 assault rifle that most soldiers carry. (The same lube is also used for the M4 carbine and M249 squad automatic weapon)

Inside The Army
July 21, 2003
Pg. 1

Small Arms Problems In Iraq Spur Army To Investigate Lubricants

By Megan Scully

Problems with small arms during Operation Iraqi Freedom have prompted the Army to investigate alternatives to the standard lubricant used for individual weapons, like the M-16 machine gun, according to service officials.

Soldiers deployed to Iraq have consistently complained that the Army's standard “CLP product” attracted sand to weapons and otherwise performed poorly in the desert terrain, according to an Army after-action report on soldier equipment. CLP stands for the military specification for a lubricant -- cleaning, lubricating and preserving.

With confidence low in CLP, many soldiers turned to Militec-1, an artificial lubricant deemed by troops to be a “much better solution for lubricating individual and crew-served weapons,” the report states.

Army officials, however, are not so sure.

As a cleaner and a lubricant, the product works “fine,” according to an Army official. But because the product does not protect weapons against corrosion, it is not approved for small arms use by the Army's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center.

Interest in the performance of small arms in Iraq has heightened in recent weeks with the release of the report on the March 23 ambush of the 507th Maintenance Company. The report details several instances in which the soldiers' M-16s malfunctioned during the ambush, but does not definitively indicate whether the jamming resulted from inadequate lubrication, poor maintenance or desert conditions.

The report on the 507th, however, does suggest that the weapons malfunctions “may have resulted from inadequate individual maintenance in a desert environment.”

According to a Militec Inc. official, the maintenance company never requested the Militec-1 product.

Militec-1 has been listed in the Defense Logistics Agency inventory for more than a decade. As such, field units were free to purchase it on their own until such requisitions were canceled in March, just prior to combat operations in Iraq, Russ Logan, senior vice president at Militec Inc., told Inside the Army last week.

Unit commanders and individual soldiers -- especially those from the 3rd Infantry, 1st Armored, 82nd Airborne and 101st Airborne divisions -- then began to purchase the lubricant individually, using both personal and military-issued credit cards, Logan said. Since March, the company has received thousands of individual orders for the product, which sells to the military for $3 per 1-ounce bottle -- enough to last a soldier in combat for six months.

In early May, the Army re-opened DLA requisitions for 60 days because officials didn't want to “second guess field commanders' operational requirements for lubricant,” the Army official said. That requisition window has since been closed and the service is now in the process of conducting an assessment of the “application and performance” of Militec-1 during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Those findings will then feed into the overall lubricant study, which will review all alternatives to CLP -- not just Militec-1, the official said. The investigation will include representatives from across the Army, U.S. Special Operations Command, the independent Southwest Research Institute and industry.

“We're concerned about getting the best product to the soldier,” the Army official said. “If the study conclusions lead us to an entirely new military specification, that's one option. If it leads us back to CLP, that's another option; back to Militec-1, another option.”

But Militec claims that word never got out to the field on the re-opening of the requisition period and nearly $120,000 in canceled orders placed through the DLA in March and April were never recovered.

“The 60-day window was put into effect primarily after combat was over,” Logan said. “Very few people in the field knew about it.”

The Army and Militec are now locked in a heated debate over use of the product, with the service decidedly opposed to the full-scale distribution of any lubricant that does not meet military specifications.

“Our specifications are developed in response to operational requirements identified by [U.S. Army Forces Command] or [Training and Doctrine Command] soldier-customers,” Maj. Gen. Ross Thompson, commander of the Army's Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command, stated in a May 15 memorandum to Militec.

Thompson adds that the Army has worked for the last two years to update the lubricant specification “with input from industry that capitalizes on advanced technology,” according to the memorandum. The service eventually determined that the current CLP specification represents “state-of-the-art performance for this multi-purpose product.”

Militec, however, has argued that the preservative specification is not essential in dry environmental conditions. In the jungles of Vietnam, the Army “might worry” about corrosion, but the risk of that occurring in the Iraqi desert is low, Logan said.

The company also argues that the product's lubrication capabilities would be hindered if it functioned equally as a lubricant, cleaner and preservative. CLP, Logan said, “doesn't do any one of those three things well.”

“If the gun doesn't work, everything else is not important,” Logan said.

Thompson, however, is firm in his memorandum, stating that specifications are intended to challenge industry to “meet the span of the users' requirements.”

The Army official questioned whether malfunctioning weapons during OIF can be directly attributed to the lubricant itself. More likely, he said, a weapon will fail to work because proper preventative maintenance checks and services (PMCS) have not been performed.

“In my opinion, malfunctioning weapons, particularly small arms, historically have had more to do with a lack of PMCS on the weapon than a lack of Militec-1,” he said.

Any changes to PMCS, a function of leadership at the tactical level, would be made by TRADOC and field commanders. The lubrication review will focus only on materiel fixes.

“Inadequate small unit leadership is often the elephant in the living room and, therefore, often lost in the debate when evaluating lessons learned,” said the official, a former small unit leader. “It's seldom a one-dimensional problem of hardware . . . or lubrication.”

* Reprinted with permission from Inside Washington Publishers. Copyright 2003.

This is something I've written on before, in connection with the report on the 507th Maintenance Company ambush. "Soldiers For The Truth" has also had some good reporting on this, along with blogger colleagues One Hand Clapping and Winds of Change. Few things are more important in combat than having small arms which work when they're needed. I'm not sure if Militec is the right answer here, but I'm pretty sure that CLP is less than adequate. Of course, no weapons lubricant will work when soldiers fail to do the necessary weapons maintenance, a trend which also appears in the 507th report. However, we owe it to our soldiers to give them the best materiel that our defense dollars can buy. I hope this investigation pushes the Army a little bit closer to that product -- whatever it is.

Update: I recently updated this post with the full text of the article from Inside the Army, which is an independent publication which covers the Army and is associated with several other such publications about the other services. The original article was quite balanced, but I made the editorial decision to only post certain excerpts which criticized the Army. I received a note asking me to post the entire article, as well as permission to do so from the publisher, in the interest of fairness. I thought it was the right thing to do. For more outstanding coverage of this issue and others, I recommend making Inside the Army a regular stop. Their reporters consistently do a good job of reporting on this kind of stuff -- which as we see from this story, has a direct effect on the way our soldiers perform in combat.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:26

 
Every generation has its heroes

Sunday's Washington Post has an extremely moving story about the men who suffered some of the most grievous wounds during the war with Iraq, and who now are recovering from their wounds at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. (The Post also has the photos from the article available online.)

On TV, the war was a rout, with infrared tanks rolling toward Baghdad on a desert soundstage. But the permanent realities unfold more quietly on Georgia Avenue NW, behind the black iron gates of the nation's largest military hospital.

Here, the battle shifts from hot sand to polished hallways, and the broad ambitions of global security are replaced by the singular mission of saving a leg. Ward 57, the hospital's orthopedics wing, is the busiest. High-tech body armor spared lives but not necessarily limbs.

The night President Bush declared the end of major combat, the soldiers on Ward 57 slept, unaware of victory.

Garth Stewart was curled in a miserable ball of blue pajamas.

First Lt. John Fernandez, the West Point graduate, was beginning married life from a wheelchair.

Pfc. Danny Roberts was wishing for Faulkner instead of a glossy guide about adapting to limb loss.

Their war was not yet over.

Walter Reed has been treating wounded soldiers since the beginning of the century, expanding and contracting with the rhythms of war. During World War I, the number of patient beds grew from 80 to 2,500 in a matter of months. Three generations later, the soldiers from Operation Iraqi Freedom arrive, some so fresh from the battlefield they still have dirt and blood beneath their fingernails.

Each morning, across the sprawling grounds of the 147-acre compound, reveille is sounded at 6. But up on the hospital's fifth floor on Ward 57, the fluorescent dawn is indistinguishable from the fluorescent night. Two long halls flank the nurse's desk, the command center of the ward. Doctors begin their morning rounds at dawn.

Some thoughts... The human cost of war is always one of the most troubling things to accept, because it really calls into question our reasons for the war itself. When you look at a wounded combat veteran, the question stares back at you: "Was this man's injury worth it?" I will reserve judgment on that question, given all that has come to light in the last few weeks regarding our casus belli in Iraq. However, I believe that we owe these answers to the men and women we sent to Iraq, and to the families of those who will not return. Our nation should never fight for an unworthy case; the cost in blood and treasure is too high.
posted by Phillip Carter at 19:00

 
Two memorials in Santa Monica

I took my dog Peet for a walk today to the Third Street Promenade, and walked through two memorials to Wednesday's horrific incident at the Santa Monica farmer's market. One was what you might expect from the city of Santa Monica -- a multicultural, non-sectarian gathering to mourn the dead and give thanks for our existence. I've been a lot of memorial services, but this one didn't move me in any particular way.

The second memorial was the Saturday farmer's market itself, which promoters and farmers decided to hold today despite Wednesday's tragedy. Every vendor commemorated the incident in some way, whether with black cloth around his stand or black ribbons in front of his table. But the overall message was: we will persevere through this tragedy. That was a powerful message, and I think it was the best way to memorialize those who died on Wednesday.
posted by Phillip Carter at 13:51

 
Tony Blair: a great American

The British have been blessed in our time to have great orators like Winston Churchill and Tony Blair for national leaders. In times of crisis, these men lift their citizens' morale and spirits with moving words. Speaking before a joint session of Congress yesterday, Prime Minister Tony Blair turned his words towards us, his somewhat reluctant allies across the Atlantic.

Members of Congress, if this seems a long way from the threat of terror and weapons of mass destruction, it is only to say again that the world's security cannot be protected without the world's heart being won. So America must listen as well as lead. But, members of Congress, don't ever apologize for your values. (Applause.) Tell the world why you're proud of America. Tell them when "The Star-Spangled Banner" starts, Americans get to their feet -- Hispanics, Irish, Italians, Central Europeans, East Europeans, Jews, Muslims, white, Asian, black, those who go back to the early settlers, and those whose English is the same as some New York cab drivers I've dealt with -- (laughter) -- but whose sons and daughters could run for this Congress. Tell them why Americans, one and all, stand upright and respectful. Not because some state official told them to, but because whatever race, color, class or creed they are, being American means being free. That's why they're proud. (Cheers, sustained applause.)

As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible, but in fact, it is transient. The question is, what do you leave behind? And what you can bequeath to this anxious world is the light of liberty. That is what this struggle against terrorist groups or states is about. We're not fighting for domination. We're not fighting for an American world, though we want a world in which America is at ease. We're not fighting for Christianity, but against religious fanaticism of all kinds. And this is not a war of civilizations, because each civilization has a unique capacity to enrich the stock of human heritage. We are fighting for the inalienable right of humankind -- black or white; Christian or not; left, right or merely indifferent -- to be free -- free to raise a family in love and hope; free to earn a living and be rewarded by your own efforts; free not to bend your knee to any man in fear; free to be you, so long as being you does not impair the freedom of others.

That's what we're fighting for, and it's a battle worth fighting. And I know it's hard on America. And in some small corner of this vast country, out in Nevada or Idaho or these places I've never been to but always wanted to go -- (laughter) -- I know out there, there's a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happily, minding his own business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country, "Why me, and why us, and why America?" And the only answer is because destiny put you in this place in history in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do. (Sustained applause.)

And our job -- my nation, that watched you grow, that you fought alongside and now fights alongside you, that takes enormous pride in our alliance and great affection in our common bond -- our job is to be there with you. You're not going to be alone. We will be with you in this fight for liberty. (Sustained applause.)

We will be with you in this fight for liberty. And if our spirit is right and our courage firm, the world will be with us.

Words like these remind us of our ideals, and of what it means to be an American. I can't help but feel pride when a national leader like Tony Blair speaks this way about America and its role in today's world. Now all we have to do is live up to these expectations -- a task which is easier said than done.


posted by Phillip Carter at 11:16

 
Planning for success?

The Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times has a very interesting (and very lengthy) report today on what went wrong with America's planning for post-war Iraq. This is more than your typical "first draft of history" journalism -- the Times reporters painstakingly lay out the pre-war planning process, and the various ways that nation-building planning was neglected by the Administration.

Since the fall of Baghdad on April 9, U.S. and British troops have struggled to bring order from chaos. Water, electricity and security are in short supply, fueling resentment among many Iraqis. A guerrilla-like resistance has taken shape against the occupation; U.S. casualties mount almost daily in an operation that is costing nearly $4 billion a month and stalling the withdrawal of American forces.

The Bush administration planned well and won the war with minimal allied casualties. Now, according to interviews with dozens of administration officials, military leaders and independent analysts, missteps in the planning for the subsequent peace could threaten the lives of soldiers and drain U.S. resources indefinitely and cloud the victory itself.

Rivalry and Misreadings

The tale of what went wrong is one of agency infighting, ignored warnings and faulty assumptions.

An ambitious, yearlong State Department planning effort predicted many of the postwar troubles and advised how to resolve them. But the man who oversaw that effort was kept out of Iraq by the Pentagon, and most of his plans were shelved. Meanwhile, Douglas J. Feith, the No. 3 official at the Pentagon, also began postwar planning, in September. But he didn't seek out an overseer to run the country until January.

The man he picked, Garner, had run the U.S. operation to protect ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Based on that experience, Garner acknowledged, he badly underestimated the looting and lawlessness that would follow once Saddam Hussein's army was defeated. By the time he got to Baghdad, Garner said, 17 of 21 Iraqi ministries had "evaporated."

"Being a Monday morning quarterback," Garner says now, the underestimation was a mistake. "But if I had known that then, what would I have done about it?"

The postwar planning by the State and Defense departments, along with that of other agencies, was done in what bureaucrats call "vertical stovepipes." Each agency worked independently for months, with little coordination.

Even within the Pentagon there were barriers: The Joint Chiefs of Staff on the second floor worked closely with the State Department planners, while Feith's Special Plans Office on the third floor went its own way, working with a team from the Central Command under Army Gen. Tommy Franks.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's civilian aides decided that they didn't need or want much help, officials in both departments say.

Central Command officials confirmed that their postwar planning group — dubbed Task Force Four, for the fourth phase of the war plan — took a back seat to the combat planners. What postwar planning did occur at the Central Command and the Pentagon was on disasters that never occurred: oil fires, masses of refugees, chemical and biological warfare, lethal epidemics, starvation.

The Pentagon planners also made two key assumptions that proved faulty. One was that American and British authorities would inherit a fully functioning modern state, with government ministries, police forces and public utilities in working order — a "plug and play" occupation. The second was that the resistance would end quickly.

posted by Phillip Carter at 05:21

 
Great initiative... not so great judgment

Every month, the Defense Department General Counsel's Standards of Conduct Office publishes a monthly advisory on ethics within the Pentagon and the military services. SOCO has responsibility for promulgating ethics regulations, training guidelines, etc., for the Pentagon. Their staff takes it really seriously too, however, they often find ways to teach their lessons in humorous ways. Here's an excerpt from their July 2003 advisory:

In yet another remarkable case of bad judgment, a Marine Corps company commander who was deployed in Iraq asked a tobacco company to send his men its products for free. After receiving the free goods, he sent a "thank you" note that was used as part of the tobacco company’s advertising. The letter implied that the DoD endorsed the product, and, eventually, garnered the attention of two Congressmen. Please remember the standards of conduct apply in Iraq, too.

It's hard to suppress a smile at this Marine captain's initiative. If I was his commander, I'd probably recommend him for a Navy Achievement Medal for this sort of thing, while chiding him privately about the thank-you note. These are the kinds of things we expect of our junior leaders, who we entrust with the lives of our finest sons and daughters. I hope his chain of command took care of him the way he took care of his Marines.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:53

 
Federal judge says legal mission to Iraq was a sham

USA Today reports today that 6th Circuit Judge Gilbert S. Merritt has blasted the American government in Iraq for impeding a mission arranged by the Justice Department to restore Iraq's legal institutions. The DoJ-sponsored mission included federal judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys who had the charter of advising Iraq on its Constitution and the establishment of a new legal system.

Senior U.S. District Judge (sic) Gilbert Merritt said the 25-member delegation's hopes of assessing Baghdad's judicial and law enforcement institutions were hindered by the chaos in the city of 5 million people. Guerrilla warfare continues, water and electricity service are limited, police forces are barely functioning, and many courthouses are bombed-out shells, he and other members of the delegation said.

But Merritt was particularly annoyed by the U.S. occupation authority's attempt to control information by limiting what his group and others involved in rebuilding said to the news media.

Merritt is a former chief judge of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. He said members of his delegation were given a directive authorized by the chief U.S. administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer. It said all contact with the news media had to be cleared by top officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).

Merritt said the order seemed odd for a group of judges, lawyers and law enforcement experts who had been sent to Iraq by the Justice Department to help put Iraqis on a course for more individual freedom. "When I read it, I thought it must be a joke," said Merritt, 67. "It's clearly unconstitutional. It's a hell of an irony, given that we were there teaching them the value of liberty and free speech."

posted by Phillip Carter at 08:41

 
Pentagon to call up two National Guard brigades for Iraq

Greg Jaffe reports in this morning's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) that the Defense Department has decided it must call up two brigades of National Guard soldiers for the Iraq mission, since it has been unable to enlist America's allies in the effort there. Two brigades equates to roughly 10,000 soldiers, which does not seem like a lot for the 480,000 active-duty Army to manage. However, as the article points out, nearly all of the Army is committed to operations in Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Korea and Afghanistan right now, leaving the Guard as America's only option.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to sign off on a plan later this week that would establish a rotation to relieve Marine and U.S. Army soldiers deployed in Iraq, a Pentagon official said. After training, it would be March or April by the time National Guard soldiers would be deployed, likely for stints of 13 to 16 months including the training. Even so, demands on the active-duty Army would remain intense. Asked if he had ever seen the Army stretched so thin, one senior defense official recently said: "Not in my 31 years" of military service.
* * *
The U.S. has 148,000 troops -- Army and Marine Corps -- on the ground in Iraq, with 33,000 support troops in Kuwait. There are an additional 11,000 U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan. No National Guard combat brigades are in Iraq, though Air National Guard personnel are flying missions.

The two brigades probably would be called up this winter, the Pentagonofficial said. They would be given about 30 days to get their affairs in order and then go through two to three months of training before being deployed. The earliest they would arrive in Iraq would be March or April 2004.

Currently, 21 of the Army's 33 active-duty combat brigades are deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea and the Balkans. Three more brigades are in the process of modernizing and can't be sent abroad. That leaves nine brigades -- or 45,000 troops -- to relieve all of the Army forces deployed around the world.

This is going to be a challenge. America's National Guard has already been stretched thin by consecutive homeland security deployments since Sept. 11, known as Operation Noble Eagle. In the California Army National Guard, nearly every combat arms unit has already deployed once. The units which have deployed have returned in deplorable condition, with most soldiers opting to leave the Guard. There are a number of National Guard units which have been left alone for homeland security, and these are the likely units to deploy to Iraq. However, even that is a finite supply. If America is to stay in Iraq for the long hall, this solution won't work.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:28

 
Painful lessons in Santa Monica

Yesterday's tragic incident in Santa Monica which left nine people dead is a tragic reminder of how quickly accidents can escalate into mass-casualty situations when crowds are involved. The incident (not an accident -- nothing is ever accidental; it always has some cause) happened a short walk away from where I live. I go to 3rd Street a lot, and I've been to that farmer's market a dozen or so times. Suffice to say, it was hard to work yesterday afternoon as the story unfolded.

It appears that this driver had no evil intent. Details are still emerging, but it looks like he tried to pump his brake pedal, but instead found his accelerator pedal. That doesn't change the carnage he caused. He still killed 9 people, and left dozens more hurt. Despite the apparent lack of evil intent, this incident holds many lessons learned for us as we think about how we might respond to another kind of mass-casualty event -- a terrorist attack. This is just my thinking, as a former anti-terrorism plans officer, but I think it's what a lot of folks in the Santa Monica Police Dept. are probably thinking about right now.

1. Large groups of people are targets. The reasons are many fold. First, large groups of people maximize the chances for large casualty counts, and that's usually a goal for terrorists. Second, the proportion of people who have been to a place where lots of people are is high, thus, lots of people will say afterwards "I've been there before -- that could have been me." This increases the fear factor of an attack, adding to its psychological impact. Finally, large gatherings of people tend to be media magnets -- there's often a camera crew there already to catch the news. As Brian Jenkins said 30 years ago, "terrorism is theater."

2. Simple measures can work. A threat assessment for the farmer's market in Santa Monica would have noted the threat of an inbound car or truck-borne explosive -- either one of which would be deadly. The proximity of this market to traffic makes that a possible threat, though not a probable one. Moreover, mitigating this threat would not have been hard. Parking two cars to physically block the street at either end of Arizona Ave. would have been sufficient; so too would have been placing "jersey bounce" barriers (concrete barriers that can stop a speeding car) at either end. (This would've been more costly, and entailed a crane to move them every time.

Ironically, the 3rd Street Promenade has retractable, sunk-in metal barriers at all ends, but those devices were never installed for the farmer's market area -- which has become somewhat of a permanent fixture. Perhaps the City Council should consider those before they reopen these markets.

3. Mass casualty plans and mutual aid plans work. The city of Santa Monica does not have the ambulance or medical capacity to deal with this kind of event. Luckily, the larger West L.A. area does. Within minutes, reports indicate, ambulances from other jurisdictions sped to Santa Monica to help, as did Life-Flight helicopters. Emergency rooms elsewhere in the area also pitched in, adding to the capacity of UCLA-Santa Monica Hospital and allowing the most urgent patients to be seen at the closest hospital. These measures save lives.

California (and the L.A. area in particular) are actually quite good at this kind of anti-terrorism preparation. Our region has been cursed with natural and man-made disasters like earthquakes, wildfires, floods and riots. In response, our "consequence management" agencies (fire, medical, public health, etc) have developed great plans and working relationships for these kinds of incidents. Those plans and coordination paid off yesterday in Santa Monica.

There are more lessons to be learned, but those are my initial thoughts on this morning after. More to follow as the story develops.
posted by Phillip Carter at 06:36

 
Pentagon to loan Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to homeland security effort

The trade journal Aerospace Daily reports today that the Defense Department plans to loan some of its high-tech unmanned aerial vehicles ("UAVs") to the Department of Homeland Security for border security. The loan will include military personnel and equipment. It's not clear whether the DoD personnel will merely train and familiarize DHS personnel with UAVs, or whether this loan will include some operational use of the UAVs for actual border security missions.

The deployment, set to take place within the next few months somewhere along America's southern border, comes at the request of Gordon England, deputy secretary for homeland security at DHS and former secretary of the Navy.

"This is a technology - UAVs - that we need in the Department of Homeland Security," England said July 14 at Naval Air Systems Command's (NAVAIR) second public UAV demonstration here at the Webster Field annex of Naval Air Station Patuxent River.

"We've asked the DOD folks if they could just do some training missions with us, so we can gain some familiarity with UAVs, particularly our border and transportation security people," England said. "We just want to let our people see them in operation, understand their resolution, how they might operate, [and] how they may augment us in the future."

The platform and exact location for the training exercise have yet to be chosen, according to England. DOD personnel will operate the UAVs.

Analysis: This raises some of the same legal questions that I wrote about in Slate last year when the Pentagon loaned surveillance aircraft to look for the D.C. sniper. Federal law bars the use of military personnel for law enforcement, although a number of exceptions exist.

So, when, exactly, can soldiers help the cops?

Almost always, so long as they don't directly engage in police work. The Army can offer intelligence, transportation, and logistical assistance to cops, but it can't conduct searches or make arrests.
* * *
In the 1980s, Congress mandated even more ways the military could provide support to local law enforcement. The main exceptions grew out of the "War on Drugs," allowing the military to do things like fly surveillance planes on the U.S. border with Mexico, train police officers in various military specialties, or provide radar data to the U.S. Border Patrol and Customs Service. A federal law also allows the military to share intelligence with local law enforcement officers, provided the intel is collected during normal military operations. Another major exception, created in 1996 after the Oklahoma City bombing, authorizes the military to provide support to local cops in the event of a chemical or biological attack.

The Army's current plan to fly reconnaissance planes in Maryland is covered by these exceptions: Army personnel will fly the planes and operate the equipment, but civilian police will ride along to analyze any evidence gathered while in flight.

As a matter of law, this UAV plan may be different from the case of the D.C. sniper. Arguably, the Department of Homeland Security is a national security agency more than a law enforcement agency. Its primary purpose in guarding the border is to prevent entry and secure the nation, though it certainly has the secondary purpose of prosecuting those who might break the law entering the U.S. The Posse Comitatus Act bars the use of military personnel and equipment for law enforcement -- it does not bar their use for national security functions. In addition, a number of exceptions exist, such as 10 U.S.C. 372, which states:

(a) In General. - The Secretary of Defense may, in accordance with other applicable law, make available any equipment (including associated supplies or spare parts), base facility, or research facility of the Department of Defense to any Federal, State, or local civilian law enforcement official for law enforcement purposes.

Ultimately, these exceptions are limited by 10 U.S.C. 375, which states that such assistance shall not include "direct participation by a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps in a search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity unless participation in such activity by such member is otherwise authorized by law."

Bottom Line: It looks to me like this UAV loan program will be covered by the exceptions to Posse Comitatus. The interesting thing will be whether the loan program will be covered by two provisions in the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which created the DHS. Sections 876 and 886 expressly limit the military activities of the new department, and reaffirm Congress' commitment to the Posse Comitatus doctrine. Sec. 876 states:

Nothing in this Act shall confer upon the Secretary any authority to engage in warfighting, the military defense of the United States, or other military activities, nor shall anything in this Act limit the existing authority of the Department of Defense or the Armed Forces to engage in warfighting, the military defense of the United States, or other military activities.

There's a pretty good argument that this deployment of UAVs violates the spirit -- if not the letter -- of the Homeland Security Act. If Congress wanted a military homeland security effort, they would have simply told the Pentagon to make it happen without creating a Dept. of Homeland Security. Instead, I think that Congress wanted a civilian effort on the domestic security front.

Eventually, I think that DHS probably plans to buy its own UAVs to run its own border security operations. But in the interim, I think they need to answer some tough legal questions about their plan to borrow them from the Pentagon.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:07

 
Judicial deference and national security

I have a piece today in Writ, Findlaw.Com's online journal of legal commentary, which criticizes judicial deference to the Executive Branch on national security grounds as somewhat anachronistic and out-of-step with modern reality. The piece tries to paint a picture of Constitutional tension between individual rights on the one hand, and the President's power to command the military on the other. Ultimately, what's needed is more of a balancing approach, rather than a strict policy of deference by the courts whenever national security is involved.

Does the judicial deference doctrine still make sense today? For a number of reasons, it may not be as well-justified as it once was.

Recall that one early justification for the doctrine was the Executive Branch's superior national security knowledge and expertise. In the modern era, however, judges are more knowledgeable about foreign policy than they may once have been. The information asymmetry which used to exist between the Executive and Judicial branches has been wiped away, thanks to CNN and the rise of the modern media establishment.

Moreover, to the extent that there are gaps in judges' knowledge, the executive branch can provide them with sensitive national security information through various means spelled out in the Classified Information Procedures Act. Judges can review this information "in camera" - outside the presence or access of the parties - if necessary to preserve secrecy and security.

Over time, the military itself has also changed in ways which are relevant to the issue of judicial deference. Our all-volunteer force is a more diverse cross-section of our society than any employer or university. To the extent that society has become more tolerant of gay persons and more inclined to honor their rights, so too has the pool of young men and women joining today's miltiary.

These young people are the product of a society that recognizes certain fundamental rights and liberties for all Americans. When they enlist, they choose a life that involves sacrifice and hardship. But they never fully leave behind the values and beliefs they had when they joined the service.

For this reason, deference to military policies that infringe individual liberties on this, and other issues, can create tremendous dissonance between the values of the military and civil society - leading servicepersons to question and doubt the military's institutional values.

The dissonance and doubt add other variables with which commanders have to contend as they train, assimilate, socialize, and lead soldiers. Thus, the very policies intended to bolster morale and unit cohesion, good order, and discipline, may end up detracting from all these values if many servicemembers consider the policies intolerably unjust.

Update: CNN.com just picked up this piece and published it on the legal page of their news site.
posted by Phillip Carter at 05:53

 
3rd Infantry Division to remain in Iraq

MSNBC and others report that the Army has delayed the return of its 3rd Infantry Division from Iraq again. With attacks on Americans growing more frequent and deadly, Pentagon leaders appear unwilling to reduce their force in Iraq to deal with those attacks. The decision is the second for the "Rock of the Marne" division, whose soldiers had been told they would return to the U.S. in June. Many of 3ID's soldiers have been in the desert for 9-12 months, and numerous stories have reported on the morale problems for both soldiers and families created by the back-and-forth over the division's redeployment.

Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount III, the division’s commander, said last week he hoped the division’s 1st and 2nd Brigade Combat Teams of roughly 9,000 soldiers could return home to Fort Stewart within the next six weeks.

But homecomings for those soldiers, as well as the division’s 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, have now been postponed indefinitely, Fort Stewart spokesman Richard Olson said Monday.

"Now, that time frame has basically gone away, and there is no time frame," Olson said.

"It’s damned obvious why they’re not coming home as promised — there’s no stability in place yet," in Iraq, an Army official told NBC News’ Jim Miklaszewski.

The extension order will pertain to the 1st and 2nd brigades of the Army’s 3rd Infantry division, many of whom have been in the Iraq area now for nearly a year.

The Army’s 1st Cavalry Division out of Fort Hood, Texas, was due to rotate into Iraq to replace the 3rd Infantry Division, but now it is unclear what that timetable is.

According to the 3ID website, a number of units have redeployed from Iraq, and more are on the way home. It also appears this redeployment is being done in rough reverse chronological order, based on who deployed to the desert first.

Balancing mission accomplishment against morale is a hard thing. It's the quintessential challenge for every military leader, in peace and war. Every unit finds its own balance; some are more "hard core" than others. The redeployment of 3ID is essentially a large version of this problem. The Pentagon must accomplish the mission in Iraq; we've spent too much blood and treasure to lose now. But at the same time, we must take care of our soldiers and their families -- we owe them that. I think it's time to bring 3ID home and rotate another unit over there. But I would hate to see this division come home at the cost of the mission, because that would undermine all the sacrifices these men and women have made.
posted by Phillip Carter at 21:09

 
GO LANCE!!!

Four-time Tour De France winner Lance Armstrong seized the overall lead today in the L'Alpe D'Huez stage that he has historically dominated. Although Lance didn't win the stage as he normally does, he did gain enough time on the pack to slide into 1st overall in the 21-day race. Lance now leads Joseba Beloki of Spain by 40 seconds. Winning the Tour De France four times in a row is spectactular enough, but Lance hopes to match Spain's Miguel Indurain by winning five consecutive tours.

As many people know, Lance nearly died a few years ago from testicular cancer -- a story which he tells in his extremely moving book "It's Not About the Bike". I think it's amazing for anyone to even finish the Tour De France, let alone win it. Add to that winning it four times. Add to that winning it four times in a row after near-certain death. Lance is one of my heroes, and I am stoked that he has taken the yellow jersey in the French Alps.
posted by Phillip Carter at 12:35

 
Rumsfeld orders restructuring of America's military
Policy changes would shift forces from the reserves to the active force

Esther Schrader scoops the competition in Saturday's Los Angeles Times by reporting on a memo that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sent to his senior commanders and policy chiefs which directs them to start considering radical changes to the active/reserve mix of America's military. The changes come in the 22nd month of America's war on terrorism, with its military stretched to the limit with current operations in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. The goal, Ms. Schrader reports, is to ready America's military for the next conflict -- one for which we may get only a couple of weeks warning.

In a July 9 memo to the secretaries of the Air Force, the Navy, the Army and to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Rumsfeld called for shifting a broad range of professional specialties from the reserves to the active duty force to allow the military to mobilize for a major war within 15 days.

The proposal is running into opposition from senior officials at the Navy and the Air Force, who warn that moving these jobs into the active-duty force would drive up costs. Reserve officials say they were stunned by the proposal, which they fear would shrink the role of citizen soldiers into irrelevance.

Rumsfeld's office could not be reached for comment.

Calling the effort "a matter of the utmost urgency," in the memo obtained by The Times, Rumsfeld ordered plans for implementing it to be drawn up by the end of the month.

The secretary's action was a direct result of the crisis in force strength caused by the deepening violence against U.S. forces in Iraq, sources close to him in the Pentagon said.

Before and during the war, Army officials had planned for no more than 50,000 soldiers to still be in Iraq at this point. But 148,000 are there, and with attacks against them growing in number and sophistication, senior Pentagon officials say they expect troop numbers in the country to remain at or near the same level for years to come.

As the war on terrorism continues, more than 370,000 Army soldiers are deployed away from home and family in 120 countries around the world. About 138,000 are reservists, many in certain specialties that are being called up again and again. Another 67,000 reservists from the other military services are also deployed.

Ms. Schrader's article correctly points out some of the complexities of this issue. In Vietnam, America's political leadership made a conscious decision to fight without the reserves; to use a conscription-based force of regulars instead. This was done because the reserves reach into every city and town in America. A callup of reserves requires a tremendous amount of popular support and political capital -- two things lacking in Vietnam. After that war ended, Gen. Creighton Abrams and others created the "Total Force Concept", in which critical functions would be put into the reserves so that their callup would be necessary for any future wars. The idea was to force the President to only fight wars where he had the political capital to callup the reserves.

Acting on that idea, the active-duty services moved many of the specialties needed to fight a war - security, intelligence, transportation and logistics - over to the reserves and National Guard.

But the force that resulted was not designed to be in a state of constant mobilization. It currently takes from one to three months to mobilize most reserve units. Although some units are designed to deploy quickly, most must first undergo intensive training in the United States before being shipped out.

"The type of war that we're in, the war on terrorism, is going to be something that is going to require long-term commitments of our armed forces. And the way that we're structured right now is to have conflicts where you send people over, they fight, and they go home," one Pentagon official said. "The war on terrorism is a much longer, twilight struggle."

That struggle is putting unprecedented strains on the military - and the Army in particular, which shoulders the burden of peacekeeping and nation-building operations more than any other service. In recent weeks, Army officials have repeatedly and insistently told Rumsfeld that the service needs more soldiers to handle its new duties.

Before the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Army officials had openly voiced concern that Rumsfeld would seek to cut as many as two of the Army's 10 divisions. After the attacks, Rumsfeld has continued to insist that Army troops should be deployed in different places around the globe, and in new ways, but he has not proposed slashing troop numbers.

At his retirement ceremony June 11, departing Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki warned to "beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division Army."

The Bottom Line: America has missions is has to accomplish with its military. Its military is stretched to the limit. Our leaders can influence the ledger on either side of this equation. We can increase the size of our military, or we can decrease our mission commitments. It looks like our war on terrorism will last for the foreseeable future, and the same can be said of our occupation in Iraq. Therefore, we must figure out a way to bolster our force. The Pentagon has relied on a steady stream of reservists for some time to do this, but those reserves may be running out. The Rumsfeld plan may be the best available option. More to follow...
posted by Phillip Carter at 19:16

 
The myth of the monolithic Pentagon:
SecDef's office opposes move to give health coverage to reservists

The AP reports today that the Secretary of Defense's office has written Congress to request deletion of a provision in the defense budget bill that would give full medical coverage to reservists and their families. This provision was designed to extend the benefits of the military health-care system to thousands of reservists (like me) who do one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer. It would also have the side benefit of making mobilization easier, since these soldiers/families would already be integrated into the military health care system when the call to active duty came.

However, the SecDef's office warned Congress that the policy would be enormously costly -- to the detriment of the Pentagon's already bloated $380 billion budget.

[Rumsfeld] said he would recommend that President Bush veto the defense authorization bill if it included a Senate plan to expand TRICARE, the military health program. He estimated the change could cost $5 billion per year; Democrats disputed that figure.

"These unfunded entitlements would drain resources from important programs benefiting our military, such as continued improvements in pay, quality of life, readiness, and other pressing requirements," Rumsfeld said.

At issue is a plan approved by the Senate in May to allow inactive members of the National Guard and reserves to be covered under TRICARE, the health-care program offered to active-duty soldiers. National Guard members and reservists are now covered by the program while on active duty.

"It's only a matter of fairness," Sen. Tom Daschle (D., S.D.) said yesterday. "As we speak, members of the Guard and reserves are still on active duty... . I believe that as they come home, having sacrificed so much, at least we ought to give them the opportunity to pay for their own health insurance under TRICARE."
* * *
The Pentagon said 204,100 members of the reserves or National Guard were on active duty as of Wednesday.

One in five National Guard members or reservists do not have health insurance, and the TRICARE measure could allow them to be healthier when called to active duty, said John Goheen, spokesman for the National Guard Association of America.

Analysis: I think both sides have a point here. The SecDef is correct about the financial impacts this would have on the current military health-care system, and the cost for the Defense Department. However, that may be a cost worth bearing. America has relied on these reservists more in the last 22 months than anytime since the Korean War. Medical coverage would be one way to show the reservists and their families that America cares about them. It would also boost reserve readiness, since a major mobilization problem has been getting soldiers up to active-duty medical standards. There may even be a tangential recruiting benefit here, if joining the reserves carried the benefit of full medical coverage.

Bottom Line: I think the benefits outweigh the costs here. There's enough fat in the Pentagon's budget to pay for this; taking care of soldiers and families is more important than a lot of things in the $380 billion bill.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:45

 
Recommended reading: The El Paso Times has uploaded a scanned version of the Army's report on the 507th Maintenance Company ambush. This is an extremely well-written executive summary of what happened to these soldiers, and I think it supports my conclusions below.
posted by Phillip Carter at 14:06

 
Report: Unit's weapons didn't work during convoy ambush
Breakdown in basic soldiering skills led to disastrous capture of American POWs

The Washington Post reports tonight on a report (also reported by the NY Times and LA Times) that identifies the main reason why PFC Jessica Lynch and five other soldiers were captured by Iraqi guerrillas on the road to Baghdad -- faulty weapons training and maintenance. The report indicates that soldiers had difficulty firing both their personal weapons (the M16A2 rifle) and their crew-served weapons (the M2 .50 caliber machine gun) at the enemy when fired upon. Few things will end a firefight badly more easily than weapons that won't shoot. Unfortunately, it appears from this report and others that the culprit was poor weapons training and maintenance.

"These malfunctions," the report says, "may have resulted from inadequate individual maintenance in a desert environment" where sand, heat and improper maintenance combined to render the weapons inoperable.

The report on the incident, scheduled to be released this week, adds new details to the circumstances reported last month by The Washington Post, which described how the 18-vehicle convoy got lost in the southern Iraqi city after its company commander, Capt. Troy King, did not receive word that the larger column it was following had changed routes. The convoy then made several navigational errors, which required the slow, lumbering vehicles to make two U-turns in the middle of hostile territory.
* * *
The unit's 18-vehicle convoy had broken into three clusters as the unit retraced its route. "Most soldiers" in the first group reported that their M-16s malfunctioned as they tried to "return fire while moving," the report said.

When Cpl. Damien Luten, sitting in the passenger seat of a 5-ton tractor trailer in the second group, attempted to fire the unit's only .50-caliber machine gun, it failed, the report said. Luten was wounded in the leg while reaching for his M-16. Spec. James Grubb, in the passenger seat of a 5-ton fuel truck, "returned fire with his M-16 until wounded in both arms, despite reported jamming of his weapon," it said.

The third group of vehicles, which included the Humvee in which Lynch was riding, also had weapons problems.

After Lynch's Humvee crashed, Sgt. James Riley ran with two other soldiers to see if the vehicle's occupants could be saved. His weapon jammed. Riley reached for 1st Sgt. Robert Dowdy's M-16 to use instead. Dowdy had been killed instantly in the crash. Riley ordered the two soldiers with him to take cover and then tried to use each of their M-16s against the Iraqis. "But both jammed," the report said.
* * *
Spec. Joseph Hudson attempted to fire his M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon as he drove a huge wrecker towing a 5-ton tractor-trailer that had broken down. But the weapon malfunctioned. After driving past obstacles and debris strewn in his path, the vehicle broke down on the southern edge of the city as he neared safety. Iraqi forces fired on the stalled wrecker, killing Hudson's passenger, Chief Warrant Officer Johnny Villareal Mata.
* * *
U.S. officials also said recently that Lynch's weapon may have jammed during the ambush. Because she was seated between two other soldiers, however, it is also possible she did not fire it, one Army official said yesterday.

Analysis: I'm going to revert back to my NTC Observer/Controller training to pick out some issues that seem obvious from this story. These may seem like harsh criticisms, but if these things happened during a rotation at the National Training Center, these are exactly the things that would be discussed in the After Action Review. A causal link exists between each of these failures before combat and what happened in combat.

(1) Weapons Maintenance. Rifles and machine guns require a lot of tender loving care to work properly -- they require even more TLC in the harsh desert environment. Despite popular conceptions, the M16A2 rifle is a fairly intricate piece of machinery with lots of small moving pieces. It takes regular cleaning and lubrication in order to work. In the California desert, my platoon made a standard practice of field cleaning our rifles once a day -- more if possible. The sand is even more fine in Iraq. I have been told it resembles an awful form of talcum powder that gets in everything. In those conditions, the rifle would need to be cleaned and lubricated more than once a day. The rifle would also need to be protected in some way from the elements, such as with a plastic cap or latex balloon over the muzzle. Leaders must check their soldiers' weapons constantly to ensure this is being done. As the old maxim says: "Soldiers do what leaders check."

(2) Lubrication. It's not enough to clean the M16 rifle, M249 squad automatic weapon, or M2 .50 cal machine gun -- you also have to regularly apply lubricant in order to keep the metal parts moving against each other. The standard military lubricant for small arms is called "CLP" (See this discussion regarding CLP at Winds of Change). It worked okay for me in Korea and Texas, but not well. My platoon sergeant (an avid hunter) liked to use special commercially-available lubricants that he knew worked better. Apparently, he knew more than the Army's procurement folks. In the weeks since the war, several after action reviews have concluded that the Army's standard weapons lube was inadequate for the job in the desert.

Lubricant: Soldiers provided consistent comments that CLP was not a good choice for weapons maintenance in this environment. The sand is as fine as talcum powder here. The CLP attracted the sand to the weapon. ?… Soldiers considered a product called MiliTec to be a much better solution for lubricating individual and crew-served weapons.

Various current and former military officers echoed this report, saying that CLP was one of the worst lubricants the Army could buy for the desert:

"The CLP and Breakfree brand oil the military purchases is worthless," said Aaron Johnson, a 10-year veteran of the Army and Army Reserve, and author of a DefenseWatch guest column on the Army M9 sidearm "How to Save the M9 Beretta"; June 16, 2003). "I'm sure large amounts are acquired [by the Army] at relatively low cost, but that's why it should be done away with. That oil is too rich, and has little effectiveness at keeping weapons clean."

"The troops will tell you, CLP attracts dirt and grit," Johnson continued. "It is also so thick it can reduce recoil speed, resulting in stoppages. It thickens in the cold, and when in hot weather areas it is usually attracting dust and sand."

In an e-mail forwarded to DefenseWatch, retired Lt. Col. Robert Kovacic, who works for a defense contractor in Kuwait that trains U.S. military units, echoed Johnson's remarks. "I can say with complete assuredness, from many, many observations of training exercises], that CLP does not work. I did not use it at Fort Polk (cause it did not prevent rust)... I don't care what the government says... and it sure as hell does not work here."

What is bewildering to veterans such as these is that there is a product that has proven effective in desert combat. MILITEC-1 Synthetic Metal Conditioner, manufactured by the company of the same name, has been approved for Army use and is already widely used by the U.S. Coast Guard, FBI and a host of other federal police agencies. But the Army apparently is still shipping CLP en masse to the troops and has resisted ordering the synthetic lubricant, forcing unit commanders to pay out of their own pockets to acquire it.

The problem, Kovacic said, is that the Defense Logistics Agency allegedly refused to ship MILITEC to a number of units heading for combat in Iraq, despite previous approval of the product for Army weapons. "So, if front-line commanders order this product," he asked, "where does DLA have the authority to stop shipment? It is the brigade commander's butt in battle and if he wants to use a different lubricant, because the government stuff does not work, he can't"

Once again, our soldiers went into harm's way with lousy equipment because the procurement system failed them. There is some irony here, in that the original M16 rifle went into combat in Vietnam with many flaws that were learned at the cost of American lives. Today, we appear to have the best military in the world. Yet we are forced to learn lessons about our equipment the hard way.

3. Weapons Training. Weapons maintenance and lubrication are often a function of weapons training. Soldiers who know their weapons well will take care of them, because they are familiar with the effects of not doing so. Moreover, at least one part of the 507th Maintenance Company report indicates a probable failure of weapons training:

King [the company commander] then split the company into three groups, according to the Army investigation.

He took Group One, and they fought their way south through the city. Iraqis tried to block their exit with vehicles and debris. "Most of the soldiers in this group report that they experienced weapons malfunctions," the Army said. "These malfunctions may have resulted from inadequate individual maintenance in a desert environment."

But they made it out, and soon joined a Marine Corps tank battalion.

In Group Two, Cpl. Damien Luten "attempted to return fire with the 507th's only .50-caliber machine gun but the weapon failed," the report said. "Luten was wounded in the leg while reaching for his M-16."

Small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades burst around them. Their escape route also was partially blocked. Five soldiers were wounded, including Spc. James Grubb, who "returned fire with his M-16 until wounded in both arms, despite reported jamming of his weapon."

Marines also rescued Group Two.

The M2 .50 caliber machine gun doesn't just fail -- it fails for a reason. It's one of the most venerable weapons in the Army inventory; its basic design has not changed for decades. The most common reason for failure is the operator's failure to properly set the head space and timing. The internal parts of the .50 cal have a certain amount of play, and these parts have to be set right in order to work. If you set the headspace or timing wrong -- or fail to reset it after a while -- the weapon will malfunction. In some cases, this means it will fire one shot and then stop. In others, it may cause the weapon to misfire more severely, or even blow up.

In any case, this is the most probable reason for the .50 cal's failure in the 507th convoy. And it traces directly back to a failure to train the operator on how to shoot the .50 cal. In many units -- especially support units -- .50 cal training is hard to get in peacetime. The ranges are few and the ammunition is usually short, and it's often hard to get the right guy to the range because soldiers are often rotating through positions within a given unit. In combat, all of these are just excuses. The bottom line is that the 507th's convoy didn't have its .50 cal when it needed it, and its soldiers paid the price.

4. Land Navigation and Fieldcraft. It appears that Captain King got his convoy lost in the desert. Either he failed to properly copy the route, failed to follow the route, or failed to adjust the route based on information from his higher headquarters. The results were fatal. Soldiers in the Army don't do enough training on basic land navigation. Indeed, in many units, they simply rely on their Global Positioning Systems for this skill, as Captain King appeared to do:

The 507th, based at Fort Bliss, Texas, was not a combat unit; its members included cooks, mechanics, technicians and clerks. On March 21, the company crossed into Iraq from Kuwait as part of a convoy supporting a Patriot missile battalion. But early into the deployment, the company's commander, Capt. Troy King, misread his assigned route, the report said.

According to the Army findings, King relied primarily on his Global Positioning System device and an annotated map on which he had highlighted "Route Blue." King "believed in error that Blue was his assigned route," the report said.

King could not be reached for comment Wednesday. A spokeswoman at Fort Bliss said he was on routine leave.

As the convoy sped north, the 507th, with 18 vehicles, "bogged down in the soft sand," the report said. "Drivers from many units became confused due to the darkness, causing some vehicles to separate from their march columns."

And the route King chose, the report said, "proved to be extremely difficult, over rough terrain."

Getting lost in peacetime is embarassing; it usually means you have to buy the beer or do pushups. Getting lost in wartime can be fatal. I learned this lesson in Korea when I misread the terrain once and wound up driving up a long canyon that led straight to the DMZ -- it took an extra 2 hours to back up the canyon and drive home. I never got lost again as an Army officer. My unit, a division MP company, trained a lot on land navigation because we knew that logistics units like the 507th would rely on us for this skill. As flattering as that was, it's the wrong answer. Every soldier and leader must be capable of moving from point A to point B in a way that gets them there alive. And they need to be able to do it without gadgets like the GPS, at night, with just a map and a compass (see FM 3-25.26 for more on the basics of land navigation)

Summary: I don't want to keep picking on support units, but in this case, I see a trend. Support units work hard in peacetime to keep our equipment running, often to the neglect of their own field training. The result is that they do not meet the standard for basic soldiering and warfighting skills. Of course, they learn through trial and error just like every unit. But the result of waiting to learn these lessons in wartime is that young Americans die as the unit climbs the learning curve. Our Army needs to embrace the warrior ethos in all units -- not just the combat arms -- and it needs to ensure that every unit can fight its way out of an ambush like this one.

In the end, none of this may have made the crucial difference and saved the convoy. War is chaotic, and bad things happend to good units who do everything right. But commanders strive to set their units up for success; to do everything possible to make the fight an unfair one -- for the enemy. Training, maintenance, pre-combat checks, pre-combat inspections, and fieldcraft are what enable good units to execute when the time comes on the battlefield. The 507th Maintenance Convoy failed in these areas, and the effects were devastating.
posted by Phillip Carter at 22:09

 
Enemy combatant asks court for release

Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, who has been deemed an "enemy combatant" by President Bush, filed suit in federal court today seeking release from that status and from Defense Department custody. Like Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi before him, Al-Marri contends that such a status is unlawful and unconstitutional.

Lawyers for the student, Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, argued in an appeal filed in federal court in Illinois that Mr. Bush's June 23 order declaring Mr. Marri to be an operative for Al Qaeda and an enemy combatant represented an act of "unbridled authority" that was illegal and unconstitutional.

Specialists in military law said that the legal challenge, coming just days after the Bush administration announced it was considering the use of military tribunals against six terrorism suspects, could present an important test of the executive branch's power to imprison suspects outside the reach of the civilian court system.

Mr. Marri, 37, had been scheduled to go on trial this month in Illinois on charges that he lied to the F.B.I. soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, about his travels and engaged in credit card fraud. But in a surprise decision last month, the Bush administration instead had him removed from the court system and jailed in a Navy brig in South Carolina as an enemy combatant. Officials said recent intelligence indicated that he had visited a Qaeda terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and that he was prepared to help "settle" operatives in the United States for further attacks after Sept. 11.

Bush administration officials declined to comment on the legal challenge today. "If we have any response, we'll respond in court," said Bryan Sierra, a Justice Department spokesman.

Indeed they will... If the Hamdi and Padilla cases are any indicators, the Bush Administration will vigorously contest this case in court to uphold its authority to designate enemy combatants and detain them as such. This is another issue where the courts have been very deferential to the Executive Branch. However, the deference hasn't been perfect. A federal judge in New York ordered the Pentagon to allow Padilla to meet with his lawyer in Dec. 2002, and the government has lost other legal battles in the Moussaoui case relating to its power to sequester combatants who may also be material witnesses. It's likely that the Al-Marri case will follow the path of the others, and end at a brick wall for Mr. Al-Marri.

That may be right outcome. Nation-states have had the authority to designate their enemies for centuries. If Al-Marri is an enemy of the United States, then our President has the inherent power as the leader of a sovereign nation to take military action against him. Normally, that would entail killing him. But we have chosen in this instance to take him prisoner and interrogate him for intelligence. That is a perfectly lawful act as a matter of international law. Indeed, the Third Geneva Convention precludes the trial of a combatant in civilian court for the lawful acts of a soldier (war crimes are a different matter).
posted by Phillip Carter at 18:17

 
Plaintiff files first post-Lawrence challenge to the military

Today's New York Times reports that a former Army lieutenant colonel has filed suit in federal court against the Army challenging his discharge for being gay. Loren S. Loomis was forcibly discharged one week before his 20-year retirement after firefighters found tapes of him having sex with another man while responding to a fire at his residence near Fort Hood, Texas. Emboldened by the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence, Mr. Loomis has filed suit challenging the legality of his discharge.

The Army discharged Mr. Loomis, who was wounded in the Vietnam War, in which he won two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart, under "other than honorable" conditions, a move that deprived him of pension and benefits that he says are worth more than $1 million.

Mr. Loomis appealed his discharge through the military's administrative process, petitioning the Army Board for the Correction of Military Records, but the board declined to reinstate him or award him retirement benefits.

"A soldier's sex life should be private and protected by the Constitution," Mr. Loomis said in a interview. "Too often, the Army denies those who have sacrificed in its service the basic protection of law."

Mr. Loomis, who now runs a land development company in Albuquerque, says he kept his homosexuality a private matter. It became an issue to the Army only after his home, near Fort Hood, Tex., was burned in 1996. The arsonist, an Army private who had posed for nude photographs for Mr. Loomis, said he was trying to destroy the pictures.

Analysis: The discharge of gay servicemembers is governed today by Title 10, Section 654, United States Code, which states:

"A member of the armed forces shall be separated from the armed forces under regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Defense if one or more of the following findings is made and approved in accordance with procedures set forth in such regulations:
(1) That the member has engaged in, attempted to engage in, or solicited another to engage in a homosexual act or acts . . .
(2) That the member has stated that he or she is a homosexual or bisexual . . .
(3) That the member has married or attempted to marry a person known to be of the same biological sex."

To win, Mr. Loomis will have to get the court to rule that this statute places an unconstitutional burden on his fundamental right to intimate conduct, as stated by Justice Kennedy in his Lawrence opinion. Once a fundamental right is implicated by a law, the court must ask two questions:

(1) Does the law further a compelling government interest?
(2) Is the law narrowly tailored to further that compelling government interest?

Lots of things can affect this calculus, and it's by no means easy to predict how courts will go. However, the burden clearly lies with the government to justify its exclusion of gays from the military. Laws which burden fundamental rights are presumptively unconstitutional, unless the government can show why the law should survive. I think they have the "compelling interest" prong down cold -- America needs an effective military with cohesive units. But it's not clear that this policy is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. It may be both underinclusive and overinclusive in the sense that it requires an overt statement, act or marriage to trigger the exclusion.

So will the law survive here? It's hard to tell. The reason is that the courts have historically given great deference to the Executive Branch and the military on matters of national security. See, e.g., Korematsu v. United States; Doe v. Bush. Such deference will be given to the military on both prongs of the fundamental rights analysis. The courts will most likely defer to the military on the issue of whether this policy furthers a compelling government interest. And the courts will also give weight to the military's judgment about whether this is the best tailored policy possible for achieving the compelling interest of a cohesive and effective military.

In any other context, the law would certainly fail. But the doctrine of military deference affects the fundamental rights calculus in a weird way, as seen in military cases on religion and speech. In addition to the military deference doctrine, there's also a doctrine of deference to the political branches on issues best resolved by Congress and the President. The legislative history of 10 U.S.C. 654 indicates that this statute was hammered out as a compromise between the two political branches after an extremely contentious political debate. The courts may not be willing to step into that fight.

Bottom Line: Military deference and political deference can only go so far. At some point, the court may decide this issue is too important to decide on those bases. The court may also decide the Constitutional rights at stake are too important to leave to military decisionmaking and political arm-wrestling. I honestly don't know how this will turn out, because I don't have the Constitutional Law expertise to offer an intelligent answer to these questions. Lawrence put this issue into play, after a series of courts had ruled against such challenges in the 1990s, but it's not clear how it will be resolved this time. Good arguments exist on both sides -- it's now up to the judge to decide.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:56

 
Army contracts for 100,000-soldier barracks in Iraq

In what seems like deja vu from our deployment to the Balkans, Inside the Army reports that the Army has contracted Kellogg Brown & Root to build barracks for 100,000 soldiers in Iraq. This is a major step towards a long-term, institutionalized, semi-permanent U.S. presence in Iraq. Permanent bases are easier to secure, better for the soldiers, and more conducive to long-term deployments. I think this is an indicator that the Pentagon is planning for a long-term occupation of Iraq -- perhaps up to 10-30 years.

While some of the housing might be as crude as tents, Army officials say the project could provide more durable structures and describe accommodations similar to those found at longer-term peacekeeping spots around the world, like Kosovo.

Approximately 146,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq. President Bush last week said the United States faces a “massive and long-term undertaking” there, although military officials have been hesitant to say how many troops will stay and for how long.

The $200 million order for housing in Iraq was tasked to KBR in Arlington, VA, on June 13 through a long-term contract called the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program.
* * *
The latest task order under LOGCAP is designated for V Corps: $200 million for “the setup and operation of all housing and logistics to sustain task force personnel.”

Dan Carlson, a spokesman for the Field Support Command, said the order would provide “temporary housing services” for 100,000 troops at various locations throughout Iraq. The housing structures might be just tents in some spots, Carlson said. However, more substantial housing facilities, including wood structures, could be built depending upon requirements in the area, he said. Plans have not been finalized, Carlson added.

Plywood structures, or “SEAhuts,” are commonly used by Army peacekeeping personnel elsewhere, including the Balkans. The name stands for “Southeast Asia huts” -- because they were used by soldiers in Vietnam -- and are regarded as suitable for “temporary operational use.”

Joan Kibler, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Transatlantic Program Center, which oversaw construction of SEAhuts in the Balkans, said temporary construction is defined more by the “length of the military operation than the strength of the structure.” If maintained properly, the SEAhuts can house soldiers for several years, or be dismantled, she said.

So far, the military has not built any living facilities for soldiers in Iraq beyond providing tents and a few “trailer-type” structures, according to a spokeswoman for the Coalition Forces Land Component Command at Camp Doha in Kuwait.

posted by Phillip Carter at 08:47

 
The ugly face of war
Embedded reports from the Marines' 1st Reconnaissance Battalion

A lot has been made of the reports that came from embedded reporters in the recent war with Iraq. For the most part, I think they did a good job of reporting on a part of war that has often been neglected for operational security reasons. Some reporters, such as the Washington Post's Rick Atkinson and William Branigin, and the LA Times' Tony Perry and David Zucchino, did a particularly good job of covering the units they were with. But until now, I haven't read any stories that hit me the force of some first-person accounts I've read.

Evan Wright's reports in Rolling Stone are different. For the entire war, Mr. Wright traveled with a platoon of the elite 1st Reconnaissance Battalion of the U.S. Marines. The 1st Recon Marines were not used as stealthy infantry scouts, the way such a unit might normally be employed. Instead, these Marines were employed like an Army light cavalry unit, fighting their way in Hummvees north from Kuwait to Baghdad. Mr. Wright reports on the entire journey of these men, over the course of three outstanding pieces in Rolling Stone magazine. Here's an excerpt from the second piece:

It's not a good day for god in Iraq. Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Bodley, chaplain for the First Reconnaissance Battalion, is trying to minister to fighting Marines, now resting for the first time since the invasion of Iraq began more than a week ago. They have set up a defensive camp by the airfield they seized near Qal'at Sukkar, in central Iraq. After their initiation into urban-guerrilla warfare in An Nasiriyah to the south, followed by three days of continual fighting against an enemy they seldom actually saw, the 374 Marines of the elite battalion have been given forty-eight hours of downtime to recuperate. Their camp is spread across two kilometers of what looks like a fantasy Martian landscape of dried-out, reddish mud flats and empty canals. Each four - to six - man team lives in holes dug beneath camouflage nets placed around its Humvee. Throughout the day, Bodley walks around the camp and attempts to minister to his flock of heavily armed young men. Although the Marines in First Recon have already killed dozens, accidentally wounded civilians and taken one casualty of their own (a driver shot in the arm), the chaplain encounters few troubled by war itself. "A lot of the young men I talk to can compartmentalize the terrible things they've seen," he says. "But many of them feel bad because they haven't had a chance to fire their weapons. They worry that they haven't done their jobs as Marines."

Bodley is new to First Recon, and he confesses that he finds these Marines tough to counsel. "The zeal these young men have for killing surprises me," he admits. "When I first heard them talk so easily about taking human lives, using such profane language, it instilled in me a sense of disbelief and rage. People here think Jesus is a doormat."

Over by Sgt. Brad Colbert's Humvee, the Marines lounge under the camouflage netting, enjoying a few idle hours on a hot afternoon. Cpl. Joshua Person, the team's driver, lounges with his shirt off, trying to roast the "chacne" -- chest zits -- off his skin in the harsh Iraqi sun. Gunnery Sgt. Michael Wynn, the senior enlisted man in Bravo Company's Second Platoon, stops by to pass the latest gossip. "Word is," he says in a mild Texas accent, "we might go to the Iranian border to interdict smugglers."

"F*ck, no!" Person says. "I want to go to Baghdad and kill people."

I hope that Mr. Wright takes this material and writes a book about the experience these Marines went through. I suspect his detached view would make a great companion to first-person accounts like that of Anthony Swofford in Jarhead. If he writes it, Mr. Wright's book will join Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down on my bookshelf as two of the best journalistic accounts of war that I have read. Rolling Stone has also put the first and third articles online; I recommend them to anyone who wants to see the ugly face of war up close, without censorship.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:54

 
Attacks on U.S. troops raise specter of guerilla war
Was an urban insurgency the Iraqi strategy all along?

Tom Ricks, probably the best defense reporter out there, reports today in the Washington Post (along with Rajiv Chandrasekaran) that Iraqi attacks on American troops in recent days have spurred concerns about the conflict that just seems to keep going in Iraq. Despite the declaration by the President that major combat operations have ended (see below), and the repeated declarations by Pentagon officials that we are not in a guerilla war, that seems to be exactly the case.

Recent Iraqi attacks on U.S. troops have demonstrated a new tactical sophistication and coordination that raise the specter of the U.S. occupation force becoming enmeshed in a full-blown guerrilla war, military experts said yesterday.

The new approaches employed in the Iraqi attacks last week are provoking concern among some that what once was seen as a mopping-up operation against the dying remnants of a deposed government is instead becoming a widening battle against a growing and organized force that could keep tens of thousands of U.S. troops busy for months.

Pentagon officials continue to insist that the U.S. military is not caught in an anti-guerrilla campaign in Iraq, that the fighting still is limited mainly to the Sunni heartland northwest of Baghdad and that progress is being made elsewhere in the country. "There's been an awful lot of work done," Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told "Fox News Sunday" in an interview taped last week. "A lot of the country is relatively stable."

But a growing number of military specialists, and some lawmakers, are voicing concern about trends in Iraq. There is even some quiet worry at the Pentagon, where some officers contend privately that the size of the U.S. deployment in Iraq -- now about 150,000 troops -- is inadequate for force protection, much less for peacekeeping. The Army staff is reexamining force requirements and looking again at the numbers generated in the months before the war, said a senior officer who asked not to be named.

"If you talk to the guys in Iraq, they will tell you that it's urban combat over there," the officer said. "They all are saying, 'What we have is not enough to keep the peace.' "

Keeping the peace is just one problem. Fighting the war is another. Peace and war are not like pregnant and not-pregnant -- it's not a binary choice. Conceptually, I think there's more of a spectrum from peace to war, along which you have law enforcement, peacekeeping, peace enforcement, low-intensity conflict, and war. (This isn't just my thought; it's also what official U.S. Army doctrine says.)

So what are we seeing in Iraq? I don't think we're just seeing criminal activity or the activity of out-of-work soldiers. I think we're seeing the start of a real guerilla war, in which we will fight a determined, well-equipped and organized enemy in the streets of Iraq for some time. Ricks' article alludes to this trend:

Retired Army Col. Richard Dunn, a former head of the Army's internal think tank, agreed, saying, "I'd like to be wrong on this, but we may be seeing a classic insurgency situation developing." At the same time, he said, it is possible that "we may just be seeing a surge of activity that they're unable to sustain."

Last week, 45 armed men began a concentrated assault against a U.S. convoy north of Baghdad. And attacks in the capital appear to be more effective.

In one incident, an Iraqi stood up in a moving car and fired a rocket-propelled grenade at an Army Humvee. In addition, snipers have been hitting troops in Baghdad. Over the weekend, one 1st Armored Division soldier guarding the National Museum was shot and killed, and another died in a similar attack at Baghdad University, in a neighborhood that had been considered quiet.

With the two weekend deaths, the U.S. toll grew to 209, including 70 troops killed since President Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1.

Overall, some U.S. soldiers at fixed points such as road checkpoints and outposts say the attacks on them are far more widespread and persistent than is reflected in the casualty figures.

In contrast to the head-on charges that some Iraqi fighters launched against U.S. tanks in the war, the attacks now tend to focus on more vulnerable parts of the military, such as isolated checkpoints and slow-moving convoys, and not against strengths, such as armored units.

Analysis: What if this was their strategy all along? What if, instead of fighting America in the desert, the Iraqi command authority made a conscious choice to suck us into their cities and fight us 1 platoon at a time, with small-unit ambushes and such? This looks an awful lot like classic insurgency warfare; what some call 4th Generation Warfare. It reflects an old maxim most recently stated by Chinese leader Mao Zedong: "The reed bends with the wind, and then snaps back up again."

I do not think we're seeing low-level criminal activity anymore; I also don't think we're seeing uncoordinated attacks. I think that our enemy has coalesced into something larger and more menacing. Of course, I don't have the on-the-ground intelligence to make this assessment, nor do I have access to anything but open-source reports. But the tea leaves look clear to me. The Iraqis have strategically withdrawn from the desert and regrouped in the cities, and instead of fighting us where we are strong (the desert), they are now fighting us where we are weak. Their ultimate goal is to mimic Somalia. The Iraqis hope to inflict enough casualties on us that we will go home with our tail between our legs. Ultimately, this is a dubious strategy, given our national level of commitment to Iraq as compared to our commitment to Somalia. But in the short-term, it means that Iraqi guerillas will seek to kill as many Americans as possible wherever they present targets of opportunity.

If I were a planner again... I'd recommend three main courses of action:

(1) Boost the U.S. troop presence, because you're going to need a lot more boots on the ground in order to properly secure the American footprint in Iraq.

(2) Ratchet up the force protection level significantly, to the point where U.S. troops conduct their nation-building operations as if they are still at war. This will hamper and delay much of the nation-building, as it's more difficult to conduct business at rifle's length that an arm's length. But we cannot let our guard down like we have been in recent weeks.

(3) Go on the offensive, as we did with Operation Peninsula Strike and Operation Scorpion. Find the Iraqi guerillas, their weapons caches, and their leadership -- and take them out. Again, these offensives require more soldiers, because you have to have enough for basic security and offensive missions. But if you let the enemy seize the initiative, you're toast. We absolutely have to take the fight to these Iraqis before they take the fight to us, and fight them on terms favorable to us.

Update: I've been asked to comment on this issue and the situation in Iraq tomorrow morning between 9 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. on WCTC, New Brunswick, NJ (AM 1450). If you're in that area, I hope you can tune in.

Update II: David Adesnik at Oxblog has some thoughts on the relationship between stories like this and soldier morale. For what it's worth, I think that criticizing the mission and the cause can create a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. We ought do that for the sake of the mission and our soldiers in the field. But I think we should recognize this conflict for what it is -- something in the gray area between peace and war -- and devote the resources necessary to win it.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:36

 
Back from the holiday weekend... blogging will resume at my regular summer pace. Thanks for stopping by; more to follow.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:20