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

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posted by Phillip Carter at 17:35

 
Update to Pentagon plans to reduce combat pay
Top DoD official says the plans were misconstrued, and pay will not drop

Undersecretary of Defense David Chu gave a press conference yesterday explaining this reversal a little further. In Dr. Chu's words, this isn't actually a reversal at all -- the original story was wrong. The Pentagon never intended to cut "total compensation" for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, it intended to shift around different kinds of pay to more selectively target those actually in a combat zone -- as opposed to those in support of a combat operation in Qatar. Here's an excerpt from the press conference:

Q: Just to be clear, there was never any intention on the part of the Defense Department to even look at eliminating these increases. Is that correct?

Chu: I want to be careful about the reference to "these increases". The department's position is to maintain compensation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now how we --

Q: At the same level?

Chu: At the same level. Total compensation. What counts is the bottom line. Remember the typical person -- E-5, E-6, E-7 in Iraq/Afghanistan is being paid $4,000 or $5,000 a month. So what's at issue here is around $200 a month in these changed levels in these allowances.

We're going to try to maintain total compensation. Now we would prefer to do it with a different set of authorities than are at stake in this authorization issue. From that difference, unfortunately, this rumor has that we’re going to cut compensation in Iraq and Afghanistan. No, we're not.

Q: Is there also a difference in criteria? In other words where you may be reducing combat danger pay but increasing something else?

Chu: It could be. We haven't decided which instrument to use. Obviously it's a bit contingent on what Congress does. So if they do something we have to be sure we're thoughtful in responding to that direction.

Earlier in the press conference, Dr. Chu described the legislative and legal differences between what was being reported, and what was being done by the Pentagon:

Chu: No, no, no, no. I don't mean to be a technocrat here, but we have plenty of authority that we think is frankly better suited to the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan to maintain that compensation at the level it now stands without this power. And what we're saying in this document is we don't need this authority. What Congress really would do if they extend this is actually pay it to a lot of people who aren't in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So we said look, we're just fine, guys. We have plenty of authority. We have never said we're going to cut -- I couldn't believe this rumor getting started. We have never said we are. We haven't touched this issue. In fact the whole debate inside the department has been the other side. What do we need to do for the people serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially those there for long periods of time.

Q: So if that money goes away you would make up for it in some other way, is that what you're saying?

Chu: Well you're dealing here not with money. You're dealing here with authority. This is not an appropriation. This is the authorization bill. This gives us authority. In fact actually this mandates, this is a bit of entitlement kind of thing, this mandates pay. We're saying we've got plenty of authority. We'll use that authority. In fact we are busy debating how best to use that authority. We haven’t come to our conclusion yet. All we're saying in this appeal document which actually is a much larger document, all sorts of issues in it, is we don't need this authority, guys. Don't muck it up.

Okay, I understand now... Congress has created an "entitlement", for lack of a better word, that authorizes certain troops to certain pay under certain conditions. The Pentagon thinks those conditions are overly broad, and would rather use other kinds of pay with other conditions to pay our troops in harm's way. The current model probably authorizes Family Separation Pay for anyone on any deployment -- whether in harm's way or not. And the current danger pay may include folks in Qatar, Kuwait, and elsewhere. The Pentagon's position is that it cannot afford to pay those folks not actually in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The defense authorization/appropriations process is one of the most over-legislated, hyper-technical areas of the policy process imaginable. The annual National Defense Authorization Act is the largest piece of legislation considered by Congress, and it can run into the hundreds of pages. Often times, small provisions are inserted that may or may not mesh with the rest of the defense budget, the priorities of the President, or the priorities of Congress. But since it's part of this bill, it's the law of the land and it must be implemented somehow by the Pentagon. It's a policy nightmare.

Bottom Line: If we take Dr. Chu at his word, the "total compensation" for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will not drop -- it will change. Instead of receiving $225 and $250 for "imminent danger pay" and "family separation pay" respectively, soldiers may now receive $475 in some other special-purpose category. However, there will undoubtedly be friction in this process, and some soldiers will fall through the cracks. Some of this pay may lag, or hiccup, since the defense pay system is quite large and complex. It remains to be seen whether "total compensation" will actually stay the same, notwithstanding the comments by Dr. Chu. More to follow...

posted by Phillip Carter at 14:08

 
Using government plastic to buy... well... plastic

Defense Week, a Pentagon trade journal, reports that a Marine Corps staff sergeant was convicted in June of using her official DoD credit card to buy, among other things, a breast augmentation.

Staff Sergeant Sherry Pierre, an active duty Marine who worked for Marine Forces Reserve headquarters command in New Orleans, used her Pentagon plastic to rack up $129,709 in goods, services and upgrades to her physique, a command spokesman confirmed.

Pierre's previously unpublicized surgery may have given her a lift, but the tale is hardly uplifting. It is among the more egregious examples of a military employee abusing a government purchase card that is meant to increase efficiency, not waste. Her story illustrates a larger problem: A lack of management controls on nearly $7 billion in annual Pentagon credit-card purchases. The Pentagon has made strides to solve the problem, but many of the solutions are just now taking root.

Pierre's scheme transpired between 2000 and 2001, a period that, the Pentagon points out, pre-dates its major initiatives to rein in credit-card waste.

Pierre's rip-off was detected by the experimental use of data-mining techniques, which can detect telltale trends and anomalies in large databases. But these monitoring methods are only now being made part of the military's regular oversight of its credit-card purchases. So similar cases may not have come to light-though they soon could be unearthed as the technique is more widely used.

Analysis: This really is the tip of the iceberg where credit card abuse in DoD is concerned. There are two categories of cards which have been heavily abused by DoD employees --

(1) Government credit cards where the individual can purchase goods and services in Uncle Sam's name, subject to a long list of regulations;
(2) Government-backed travel credit cards, where the individual can charge travel expenses to bridge the gap between the dates of travel and the date of reimbursement.

Staff Sergeant Pierre's case falls in category (1) -- she used Uncle Sam's credit card to buy personal stuff, and charged those things to the taxpayers. This is a clear-cut case of larceny, and I think the service made the right decision to prosecute her. Luckily for us taxpayers, these cases are fairly infrequent, because there are a number of management controls on these government cards -- controls which unfortunately broke down in this case.

The tougher cases fall into category (2), and these are much more common. Military personnel often legitimately use their cards, only to have problems on the back end when they seek reimbursement. That can put them into arrears. The more disturbing problem is the heavy use of these cards by military personnel for personal charges totally unrelated to official travel. I can remember anecdotes from Fort Hood, Texas, where soldiers were caught using the card at strip clubs, car dealerships, hotels in Austin, and other unauthorized uses. At one point, I think a statistical analysis showed that 80% of all government travel-card transactions were done within a 25-mile radius of the installation. Clearly, those cards were not being used for travel.

The good news is that the Pentagon has really cracked down on this problem. Some would say the Pentagon is being too Draconian here, but I'm inclined to think this is one area where the system needs to be tough. The Defense Department has an enormous budget, and it owes the American people no small measure of fiscal responsibility.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:58

 
About face!

After taking heavy artillery fire from critics for its decision to downwardly adjust its family separation and imminent danger pay for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon abruptly reversed course today -- saying it would maintain such pay "at least at the current levels." Here's what the Pentagon press release had to say:

IMMEDIATE RELEASE
No. 600-03
August 14, 2003

DoD Statement on Family Separation Allowance and
Imminent Danger Pay

In April, after the President's Budget was submitted, Congress authorized an increase in both the Family Separation Allowance (on a worldwide basis) and Imminent Danger Pay and legislated that these increases would expire on Sept. 30, 2003. The department is aware of the problem that would result for those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan if these allowances were allowed to expire. This is an issue of targeting those most deserving, and certainly people serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are in these categories. We intend to ensure they continue to receive this compensation at least at the current levels.

The administration's official stance on this issue was that the two forms of special pay cost too much to maintain over the long haul. I imagine this was doubly true because the Pentagon has had to keep more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than it expected, to deal with problematic situations in both nations. According to Ed Epstein of the San Francisco Chronicle:

The Defense Department supports the cuts, saying its budget can't sustain the higher payments amid a host of other priorities.
* * *
Last month, the Pentagon sent Congress an interim budget report saying the extra $225 monthly for the two pay categories was costing about $25 million more a month, or $300 million for a full year. In its "appeals package" laying out its requests for cuts in pending congressional spending legislation, Pentagon officials recommended returning to the old, lower rates of special pay and said military experts would study the question of combat pay in coming months.

Analysis: Despite its $380 billion budget, the Pentagon does have to contend with finite resources. It must choose between using its money for personnel, equipment, research, and other areas. In theory, the money from this special pay could be transferred to one of the SecDef's other priorities -- missile defense, for example. But is that really more important that this special pay? I don't think so. I suppose if you had to choose between extra body armor for soldiers in Iraq and special pay for them, you might have a tough decision. But clearly, there is enough largesse in this year's Pentagon budget to spare the money to pay our sons and daughters in harm's way.

When faced with recalcitrant bureaucrats who simply wanted to buy gadgets, the late-Col. John Boyd used to thunder "People, ideas, and hardware -- in that order!" at his audiences. Col. Boyd was onto something. Or as Gen. Creighton Abrams (creator of the all-volunteer force) said: "People are not in the Army, they are the Army." It's time we recognized this basic truth, and put our money into our most important military asset: America's sons and daughters in uniform.
posted by Phillip Carter at 16:12

 
The case of Faith Fippinger

With a name like that, you'd think I was decribing a law school exam hypothetical. Unfortunately, I'm not. The U.S. government is currently seeking to fine Ms. Fippinger under various Treasury and State Department regulations governing sanctions against pre-war Iraq. Ms. Fippinger went to Iraq before the war to act as a "human shield" against American military action.

From a policy perspective, I agree with the U.S. government's sanctions against pre-war Iraq, and think this method of enforcement is proper. However, as Julie Hilden points out in today's FindLaw column, there are some serious First Amendment issues to contend with:

Before packing her bag for prison, Fippinger should visit a lawyer. Her lawyer should then move to have the charges against her dismissed, among other reasons, because they violate the First Amendment. The government's treatment of Fippinger may well outrage a judge enough to grant that motion.

Fippinger might also have a claim against the government - either under the federal civil rights statute that allows citizens to sue for damages when their constitutional rights are violated, or under the theory that she suffered from selective prosecution. Were other Americans who spent minimal money in Iraq, and did not speak out against the government, pursued under the unconvincing "trade violation" theory? If not, then Fippinger may have a strong case against the government.

Selective prosecution arguments are always hard to win. But this case might be an exception: It seems so obvious that it's Fippinger's speaking out that has made her a target. Why else would the government bother to enforce obsolete sanctions against a retired schoolteacher who did no real harm with her tiny purchases, and plainly lacks the money to easily pay the fines?

Many nonviolent protesters before this have gone to jail for their beliefs. But Fippinger need not necessarily be one of them.

So what do I think? I think there's a balance to be struck here, and that courts are pretty good at weighing individual rights against governmental interests in cases such as this one. Ultimately, I think Ms. Fippinger will lose because of the tremendous deference accorded the executive branch by the judicial branch in matters of foreign policy and national security. But this will be a close call.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:50

 
Torts, cigarettes and french fries

Slate's brilliant legal columnist Dahlia Lithwick has a great essayon the new wave of litigation over fast food. I think Ms. Lithwick has one of America's finest legal minds, and she's certainly one of the legal journalists in the business. This piece, like her others, is worth a read. Here's her conclusion:

The best solution doubtless lies someplace between the absurd extremes. As Ben Kelly points out in today's Washington Post, Big Food will likely survive just by moderating its behavior, posting warnings, and taking it easy on peddling their junk to the kiddies. But we may want to keep an eye on the John Banzhafs of the world, who have observed that their next target may well be "Big Milk"—full of saturated fats and cholesterol and not nearly as healthy as those moustache commercials would suggest.

Got a lawyer?

posted by Phillip Carter at 08:55

 
DARPA -- an American version of Hogwarts school for wizards?

The Los Angeles Times has a great Column One piece on DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which has taken fire recently for its Total Information Awareness and Policy Analysis Market programs. In the piece, Charles Piller looks at some of the great successes -- and great failures -- of the Pentagon agency.

Over the years, millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on a variety of projects, from telepathic spies and jungle-tromping robotic elephants, to its most recent fiasco - FutureMAP, an online futures market designed to predict assassinations and bombings by encouraging investor speculation in such crimes.

"Morally repugnant," said Yale University economist Robert Shiller.

A "sick idea," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

"Unbelievably stupid," said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.).

It's the type of criticism that DARPA is not only used to, but also lavishes on itself. "When we fail, we fail big," said former DARPA Director Charles Herzfeld, summing up the agency research disasters in an official 1975 history of DARPA.

Such is life on the absolute bleeding edge of technology.

The whole article is worth a read. Besides inventing the Internet (originally called "ARPANet"), DARPA has had a hand in a number of other key innovations in American society. The article details some of those, as well as the the current debate over TIA and other programs.

For more on DARPA and its newest project to digitize the human body, see this Wired article by Noah Shachtman.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:42

 
Prof. Krugman: "Critics, do your homework!"
Critic to Prof. Krugman: Quotation does not necessarily equal fact-checking

In response to my criticisms and those of others, Princeton economist Paul Krugman has posted a page on his personal website citing two letters from Stars & Stripes and a Financial Times article to back up his position on heat casualties in Iraq. As a young law student at UCLA, I'm flattered and surprised that a Princeton professor would take the time to do this. But since he did, I think it's only fair for me to "do my homework" and respond to Prof. Krugman, who doesn't appear to have done his homework.

1. The Water Issue

Prof. Krugman starts by quoting two letters -- one from PFC John Bendetti of the 220th MP Company (Colorado National Guard) and one from SPC Jason K. Sapp in Kuwait. PFC Bendetti's letter contains the part about receiving two 1.5 liter bottles of water per day:

Due to more attacks on convoys, more items are becoming rare. Two examples are mail and bottled water. Our mail has been reduced to two times a week. Due to a lack of bottled water, each soldier has been limited to two 1.5 liter bottles a day. We’ve had two soldiers drop out due to heat-related injuries.

A person with common sense knows that a normal person can’t survive on three liters of water a day. One would think that the Army could coordinate with the Air Force and have supplies flown in from Kuwait. All I’m saying is that we’ve been “climatized” to the heat, but new troops have not. There will continue to be more heat casualties until something is done.

There's a lot in here. First, I should say that PFC Bendetti's gripes are legitimate, in the sense that mail and food and water are things that a soldier should care about. (Whether he should write Stars & Stripes with them instead of using his chain-of-command is another matter) That said, mail twice a week in a combat zone is not unreasonable -- it's 1/3 of the delivery rate in the United States. The critical metric for mail is not frequency of delivery, but how long it takes for mail to get to the soldier and get home from the soldier. In those areas, the military has made great improvements since April, largely by consolidating delivery and shifting resources to other parts of the postal chain. Prof. Krugman, as an economist, could have written a great column on the way the military postal system works, and some of the infrastructural/systems issues therein.

PFC Bendetti mentions that he only gets two 1.5 liter bottles of water a day. Again, I don't dispute this fact -- I've seen it in Pentagon press briefings, and I've talked to Army logisticians who say this is true. But what he doesn't say is that his unit also has a supply of unbottled water -- "tap" water if you will. I stand by my original contention, because I've fact-checked it, that a soldier will die in a desert environment on 3 liters/water a day. (The same is true in a cold weather environment, actually) I've led soldiers in the frozen hills of Korea and in the hot Mojave Desert, and I know how much water it takes to keep them alive under body armor and full battle rattle. 3 liters/day would result in a lot more than 2 heat casualties in one MP company -- it would result in a dead MP company.

Prof. Krugman should have fact-checked this quote by calling someone at Princeton -- say another professor at Princeton -- to ask if it's even possible to survive on 3 liters/day. Or he could've picked up the phone to call a New York Times staffer who's knowledgeable on such matters, like C.J. Chivers, a former Marine who now writes for the paper. He could've even called the Princeton Army ROTC department, and talked to an active duty officer or NCO there with experience surviving in the desert. (The Princeton Army ROTC cadre includes at least two Desert Storm veterans)

I know, I know... I'm a hard a** because I think soldiers should drink water from their "water buffaloes" instead of from a plastic bottle. Heaven forbid soldiers should drink "tap" water instead of bottled water. But this boils down to a simple matter of military logistics. PFC Bendetti suggests that the Air Force somehow fly in the requisite number of water bottles for the occupation force. A grand idea, to be sure, but one that's unsupportable. America has a finite amount of "strategic lift", which includes all the big aircraft which can move men and materiel around the world. Water, at 8 pounds/gallon, is very heavy; bottled water is very bulky; it's incredibly inefficient to move it by air. That's why the Army has "reverse osmosis water purification units", or "ROWPUs", and other means for producing water in the field. Granted, the water doesn't taste as good as Evian, but it's still water and it will still keep you alive in the desert.

We'd all love to drink bottled water, but until the French decide to donate Evian by the pallet and the airlift to get it to Iraq, that's not going to be a viable option. Once again, Prof. Krugman could have checked this fact by calling up a logistics expert -- either in the military or in a company like FedEx. But he failed to do so, because it made his column sound better to include this factoid about bottled water.

2. Mobilization of reservists

The second letter, from SPC Jason Sapp, blasts everyone in his chain of command from lieutenant colonels on up to the National Command Authority. SPC Sapp doesn't identify himself, but it looks like he's a reservist stuck in Kuwait as part of a unit mobilization. He's clearly bitter about the mobilization.

There are thousands of soldiers in Kuwait who were never supposed to be here. My unit was told that we weren’t supposed to be here. We were told by a lieutenant colonel on our second day in country that we were supposed to demobilize and return home. We asked if we could return. He laughed and said, “No. We got you here. Now we will find something for you.” As with tens of hundreds of other units, we were without a mission. How do readers think our morale was as of day two in country, let alone all the other units that sat here waiting for a job but never got one? Like us, they are still waiting for a way home.

Griping about mobilization is a reservist's pastime, and it's something that is to be expected. (The words "mobilization" and "demobilize" are reservist terms; active duty guys speak of "deployments" and "redeployments") In all fairness to SPC Sapp, I agree that the mobilization plan for reservists has been somewhat disjointed. Initially, as I wrote in The Washington Monthly, the Pentagon intended to fight this war with a lighter, faster, 21st Century force that had less boots on the ground. Part of this was that the Pentagon did not want to call up large numbers of reservists, for political and practical reasons. After the post-war situation deteriorated, this calculus changed, and the Pentagon changed its planned force structure in Iraq. The new force included a lot more troop units than previously expected, and that affected the number of reservists who could be demobilized, as well as the number of troops who could be redeployed. This is the reason why 3ID was held in country for so long.

Mobilization is a stressful experience; it tears reservists away from their families, jobs and communities. But it's also something which is foreseeable, particularly since the 1990s when reservists have increasingly borne the brunt of missions from Bosnia to Afghanistan -- and now Iraq. I sympathize with SPC Sapp, but I think his complaints are disingenuous. He signed up for the reserves; he received the benefits of reserve service; his nation called him when it needed him. If he's in Kuwait, he doesn't have it that bad compared to my friends who are in Baghdad, Tikrit, Mosul, and elsewhere in Iraq.

3. Military contracting

Finally, Prof. Krugman cites an article from Financial Times, which itself cites an article by David Wood of the Newhouse News Service. (Give Mr. Wood some credit -- his Pentagon beat reporting has been exceptional over the last several months.) This article is supposed to stand for the proposition that privatization of military functions is bad, and that it's indicative of a larger, more dangerous trend towards privatization in the Bush Administration. Generalization is what great columnists love to do -- to paint large, sweeping themes with small facts. Unfortunately for Prof. Krugman, his foundation lacks adequate support, and thus it falters.

Here's an except from the FT story:

But the growing dependence on such private sector support concerns some military experts. Part of the problem is that contractors are not subject to military discipline and could walk off the job if they felt like it. The only thing the military could do would be to sue the contractor later on - the last thing on the mind of a commander on the battlefield.
* * *
"We thought we could depend on industry to perform these kinds of functions," Lt Gen Charles S. Mahan, the Army's logistics chief, was quoted as saying by Newhouse News Service this month. He said it got "harder and harder to get (them) to go in harm's way".

This is interesting stuff... and that's why I flagged Mr. Wood's story in early August when it ran. (Maybe Prof. Krugman's reading Intel Dump...) But it still appears that Prof. Krugman is drawing the wrong conclusions from LTG Mahan's statement and the problems we're having with military contractors. Much of this owes to a misunderstanding of the way that government contracts work, and the clauses that these contracts probably had.

As a matter of federal law, most clauses in a government contract are set by the Federal Acquisitions Regulation -- the "FAR". (Each agency has its own subset of regulations, such as the "DFAR" for the DoD) These clauses are incorporated into any government contract, and they're non-negotiable. The government usually gets to choose which clauses it puts into a contract ahead of time, and that is the contract which is put out for bids. The contract then becomes a take-it-or-leave-it proposition for the government contractor.

This is informed speculation on my part, based on interviews I've done with several people in the Pentagon, State Department, and USAID. (I try to fact-check, not just quote) But I think these contracts for post-war services were developed in early 2003 during the planning phase of the war, when senior Pentagon officials thought we'd be greeted as liberators. All of their time-phased troop deployment plans and operations plans included the assumption that the post-war situation would rapidly stabilize, and that security would not be a continuing problem. That assumption was probably built into these contracts as well, such that the contractors did not get coverage for things like security costs, added insurance costs, etc.

We know now that those assumptions were flawed; a guerilla war continues in Iraq to this day. This presents government contractors with a choice. They can perform the contract under the new conditions, and subsequently make a claim against the government for a constructive "change" in the contract. Let's assume they try to make the claim before they perform, and the government says no. Then the contractor can decide between losing money in contractual damages, and getting its employees shot up in Iraq and losing money on insurance costs and security costs. What would any rational corporation do? Prof. Krugman could have written a brilliant piece on the economic calculus of a government contractor, and how rational choices are made in this situation. But he didn't. He ignored these details of government contract law and corporate decisionmaking to paint the corporations as the villain. That's sloppy reporting, as far as I'm concerned.

Bottom Line: I respect Prof. Krugman; I even have one of his books ("Pop Internationalism") on my bookshelf. But I think that he should stick to what he knows when he writes, because it's clear that he's too far afield here. Prof. Krugman could have written a brilliant piece analyzing any aspect of this situation from his perspective as an economist -- and I probably would have linked to it with praise. Instead, I think he was forced by the NYT editorial board to stretch himself beyond his expertise, and it shows.

Coda: While running with my dog Peet on the beach this morning, I clarified my thoughts a little. Prof. Krugman and I are actually in agreement about one thing: privatization of military functions can be problematic. LTG Mahan's comments about contractors going to war have a great deal of merit, and I think it's fair to say that the decision to outsource certain military functions carries a great deal of strategic, operational and tactical risk. However, I don't think you can arrive at that conclusion merely from the points that Prof. Krugman cites. I think you really need to dig into the contingency contracts from Iraq, find if/where they broke down, and buid an argument based on the facts.

Ultimately, I think most of the problems trace back to poor planning -- which resulted in poorly drafted contracts based on flawed assumptions. Consequently, I would put the burden on the Pentagon's planners -- not the contractors. These contractors had very little leverage in the negotiations because of the way the FAR works. And to borrow a term from economics, these contractors faced an "information asymmetry" -- the Pentagon simply knew more about the situation on the ground in Iraq than they did.

The Pentagon could have drafted contracts with cost provisions and contingency provisions to cover the eventualities which did occur -- namely the deteriorating security situation after 9 Apr 03 -- but they didn't. The contractors made the only rational business choice they could be expected to make.

A larger question looms about the wisdom of contracting our certain military functions in the first place (a question which Tapped raised yesterday). Outsourcing certain support functions -- such as mail service, food service, tank repair, etc -- is risky, because contractors aren't soldiers and you can't order them into combat on pain of criminal punishment. On the other hand, it can be more cost-effective to outsource these functions, largely because of the institutional costs inherent in training, equipping, leading and maintaining soldiers and military units. At the end of the day, America has a finite amount of money it can afford to spend on defense, even if that finite amount reaches nearly $400 billion. We can't afford to internalize every defense function -- from mail service to depot-level tank repair. Privatizing certain functions enables the military to focus its resources on the critical functions which must be done by "green suiters". If we can make our trigger-pullers more effective, more efficient, or more lethal by privatizing certain support functions, then the risk of privatization may be justified. (For more on the calculus of defense spending, see this book by Michael O'Hanlon and Military Readiness: Concepts, Choices, Consequences, by Richard Betts.)

In theory, that's the way it's supposed to work. It's possible that the system may have broken down at some points, but I think the general wisdom of privatization has been proven over time in Gulf War I, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. Now we just need to make it work better in Iraq.
posted by Phillip Carter at 06:00

 
As if Korea wasn't tense enough . . .

The English-language Korea Times reports today that American and South Korean officials are in disagreement about how and when to move the U.S. Army's 2nd Infantry Division to new locations south of Seoul. 2ID currently sits astride the main corridors of advance from the DMZ to Seoul, as a "tripwire" to deter any North Korean attack on the Seoul. Earlier this year, American and South Korean officials agreed to a strategic redeployment of the 2nd Infantry Division, as a step to free up real estate in near the DMZ and to make 2ID less vulnerable to a North Korean first strike. Now, there's a row over how to make that happen.

"The U.S. expressed its hope that the construction of new camps will be finished by 2008 during the bilateral military consultations in Hawaii last month," ministry spokesman Hwang Young-soo said. "It was an expression of their wishful thinking," Hwang said.

Despite their agreement to relocate the frontline positioned U.S. camps, Seoul is eager to delay it as long as possible to soften the impact on the public’s sense of security, ministry officials said.

For the relocation to go as planned, South Korea must first purchase land in southern Kyonggi Province, Hwang said.

The two nations agreed to combine smaller U.S. camps near the border into two camps at Tongduchon and Uijongbu by 2006 as the first phase to be followed by a second southward repositioning. But they have not revealed the exact timetable for the relocation to Pyongtaek and Osan in southern Kyonggi Province.

And in other news, the Korea Times and New York Times both report on an incident that's sure to inflame the Korean public. An American military officer has been arrested by Korean authorities on suspicion of murder after he was caught dumping a woman's body off a bridge near Seoul.

Police said they had placed the 45-year-old U.S. Army major under arrest after he was caught throwing a vinyl bag containing the body of his wife off the Yeongjong Grand Bridge into the Yellow Sea at 3:40 a.m. The 4.4 km-bridge links Seoul to Yeongjong Island, where Incheon International Airport is located.
* * *
Under a bilateral pact governing the 37,000 U.S. troops stationed here, South Korea has jurisdiction over American servicemen who commit serious crimes such as murder or rape, except for cases that take place while suspects were conducting their official duties or if the crime was committed between U.S. soldiers themselves.

In Tuesday’s case, Korean police must hand over the major to the U.S. military forces soon according to the Status of Forces Agreement. However, if the victim is found to be a civilian and her death is found not to be linked to the suspect’s execution of official duties, the Korean authorities will have jurisdiction over the U.S. officer.

Analysis: We have a very delicate relationship with our South Korean allies, and these two stories are not going to help matters. It's pretty hot over there right now, and when college students return to their campuses, I imagine we'll see another wave of protests across the country. To an extent, that's to be expected, and it's a good thing. Protesting is almost the national sport in Korea, and it's a great way to let off steam for a vibrant young democracy. If, however, sustained protests go on for a while, they could start to affect the way South Korean politicians act on these issues, which may further complicate regional security issues.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:36

 
Operation Ivy Lightning... or OIL

Dana Milbank, the Washington Post's White House reporter, has a tongue-in-cheek piece this morning about the latest campaign in Iraq to root out insurgents. This one is named "Operation Ivy Lightning," and is spearheaded by my old unit the 4th Infantry Division.

Yesterday, U.S. Central Command issued a news release announcing lightning raids in the remote towns of Ain Lalin and Quara Tapa "to isolate and capture noncompliant forces." The name of the mission: Operation Ivy Lightning. Or, if you prefer the acronym: OIL.

The military has had all kinds of far-out names for its strikes -- last week brought Operation Soda Mountain -- but it has been careful to avoid embarrassing acronyms. In fact, it was rumored that the overall action was called Operation Iraqi Freedom rather than Operation Iraqi Liberation to avoid the very acronym Centcom produced yesterday for the strike by the 4th Infantry Division (or IV Division -- hence the Ivy).

A military spokesman joked, "We struck a dry hole when we tried to find someone to take credit for this one."

Brief History: The Roman numeral "IV" was used for the division a long time ago, and the division picked up the moniker "the Ivy division" during WWI. Today, 4ID soldiers wear a patch with 4 ivy leaves pointing north/south/east/west on their shoulder.

Today's 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized) also calls itself the "Ironhorse" division, in a not-too-subtle reference to the armored vehicles it rides on into battle. The division plans team (of which I was a member) names every operations plan using a convention that incorporates either Ivy or Ironhorse into the name -- e.g. Operation Ironhorse Venture or Operation Ivy Lightning. Unfortunately, this means that every 4ID operation that ends in "L" will result in the acronym "OIL".

Bonus: There is actually an art and science to the naming of operations. For more on this subject, see this article in Parameters, the Army War College quarterly.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:23

 
Rumsfeld's priorities for the military

Joe Katzman has a great note at Winds of Change discussing SecDef Rumsfeld's priorities for the military -- as briefed to the Army's new class of 1-star generals at their indoctrination and training seminar. The list looks like most doctrinal statements -- broad, sweeping, vague language that doesn't necessarily mean one thing or another. Joe does a good job of explaining each of Rumsfeld's priorities though -- example:

1. Successfully Pursue the Global War on Terrorism
* Reset the force
* High value target plan
* Global Peace Operations initiative

Reset the force... yeah, they need that. I think I like the "high value target plan." To those asking: "does this mean al-Qaeda, Iran, or North Korea?", my answer would be "yes."

This GPO initiative looks interesting... seems Liberia may be a test case for something greater. See yesterday's AfricaPundit Regional Briefing, and esp. Part 3 of The Buggy Professor's materials in Top Topics.
* * *
9. Streamline DOD Processes
* Shorten PPBS and acquisition cycle time
* Financial Management Reform
* Shorten DoD processes by 50%
* Output metrics built around balanced risk and President's Management Agenda

The budgeting and acquisition cycle time is a major problem - weapons systems are taking 10-15 years from planning to fielding, and that's just too long.

Unfortunately, fixing it will require a major mindset shift. For example, this mindset will accept cutting the Marine helicopter fleet to equip it with V-22 Ospreys. Yeah, yeah, longer range, more speed, more capacity, great. Also more maintenance, more expense if you lose one, hence more protective systems and doctrines focused on protecting the investment, hence even higher cost, longer development time, less availability, and sometimes even reluctance to take risks with the equipment. Bad idea. Personally, I'd rather replace the CH-53s and CH-46s with updated version of conventional helicopters (the EH-101 is an example), which work just fine and use proven technology. That way more Marines can be air-transportable, which lets the Marines do more interesting things with concepts like seabasing and widens their choice of tactics on the ground.

As we've found with the Internet, availability = capability too. Against low-tech opponents "more good enough" has advantages of its own, numbers make a difference when surges are required, and they also allow U.S forces to absorb losses without making the next mission unviable. But the procurement culture of the Pentagon rarely thinks that way, and despite scattered successes like the JDAM broader change will be difficult.

If Rumsfeld can actually make a dent in that mindset, he'll be one of the greatest Defense Secretaries ever. This "Pentagon Procurement Death Spiral" is the major problem at the heart of more and more monies going for fewer and fewer resources, and that long-term trend needs to turn around.

The whole thing's worth a read, and I imagine we'll see more on this subject in the near future. More to follow...
posted by Phillip Carter at 05:48

 
A cartoonist with a sense of humor

Daryl Cagle, who for some time has run Slate's political cartoon section, has a weblog. From what I see so far, it's great -- Cagle's weblog belongs at the top of every reader's list for morning news & views.

No stranger to controversy, Daryl Cagle reprints this letter and rebuttal cartoon from LA Times cartoonist Michael Ramirez. The new cartoon is a response to a previous cartoon from Mr. Ramirez which caricatured President Bush as the victim in a famous Vietnam War photo of a public execution. Following a visit by the Secret Service, Mr. Ramirez had this to say:

"The controversy over this cartoon is ridiculous. As political cartoonists, we are supposed to push the envelope to try to engage the reader in debate. I intentionally chose to use a disturbing image to convey a very salient point. President Bush is the target of a political assassination because of sixteen words which he uttered in the State of the Union speech that were, by the way, accurate. The cartoon was obviously not meant to encourage violence but was a reference to a famous photograph from the Vietnam era. There is a parallel between the politicization of the Vietnam war and the deconstruction of the success and the politicization of the current Iraq war. That photograph is one of the most powerful images from the Vietnam era . It was perceived as an a unjust act in an war mired in politics. Metaphorically, there are people currently engaged in the political assassination of our president. Those with political motivations are using the uranium story to attack the president. The photo is a very disturbing image. The editorial cartoon is meant to be a disturbing image. But the current manifestation of attacks on the president driven by political ambition rather than fact is far more disturbing then my cartoon. "

"PS from Michael: the weather in GITMO is beautiful. Life is good but I have to have all my cartoons screened by John Ashcroft before publication now..."

You really have to see the cartoon that Mr. Ramirez penned to go with this letter...
posted by Phillip Carter at 15:44

 
Another 3ID brigade comes home

The Associated Press reports that the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, has returned home to Fort Stewart, Georgia.

The last of the division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team landed at Hunter Army Airfield to turn in their weapons and the rest of their combat gear before being released to their families. Only the division's 1st Brigade remains in Iraq, and it is scheduled to begin heading home in the next few weeks.
* * *
The infantrymen flew home on a chartered Delta Airlines flight decorated with red, white and blue streamers, U.S. flags and yellow ribbons. After months in the desert, surrounded by drab camouflage gear, the soldiers smiled broadly at the flight attendants as they boarded the plane.

"You are now in the United States. This plane is officially U.S. territory. It may not be the state you want to be in, but you're already home," Connie Teitel, one of the attendants, told Spec. Kenneth Clark.

"Thank you, it feels good," Clark replied.

posted by Phillip Carter at 09:31

 
One veteran's battle for disability benefits

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has a brilliant article this morning on the case of Jason Stiffler, an Army soldier who was seriously injured in Afghanistan. Following his fall from a watchtower, Stiffler went through several hospitals and medical evaluations before being given a partial disability by the Army -- good for $731 a month. Stiffler appealed that adjudication, but ran headlong into an Army and VA bureaucracy seemingly designed to frustrate veterans.

Mr. Stiffler's story shows the human toll when critical benefits judgments are delayed, and the confusion veterans and their families often feel when they're forced to confront bureaucracy. It also illustrates some of the flaws in the $60.4 billion veterans agency, and how those problems could prove overwhelming as veterans of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq start to enter the VA's rolls.

The roughly 175,000 military personnel who have served in the war against terror have not begun to apply for VA services in big numbers. But about 50,000 of them will file disability claims in coming years, if the 30% rate of VA utilization after the Gulf War is any guide.

That will place added burdens on a system that has been swamped for years. The average wait to get a medical appointment with the VA is seven months, according to a recent survey by the American Legion. There's a backlog of 280,000 veterans awaiting a disability rating, which determines how much they should receive in benefits; 108,000 veterans are waiting to hear back on appeals of rating decisions.

One reason for the backlog: a 1996 Congressional decision that expanded benefit eligibility to all veterans. Previously, the VA had been open only to indigent veterans and those wounded or injured during service. Since the change, the number of veterans seeking VA medical services has doubled to 6.8 million, while VA spending has risen 56%.
* * *
The VA system is particularly slow when it comes to assessing veterans with permanent disabilities. The agency is divided into separate medical-care and disability bureaucracies, which have a history of not communicating effectively with each other on disability cases. So, when a veteran is treated at a VA hospital, changes in his or her condition aren't automatically reported to officials who consider disability claims. As a result, those changes can't immediately be factored into claims decisions.

Moreover, in making disability decisions, the VA relies heavily on military records. But these largely consist of paper files that must be located and shipped when a request is made, slowing response times. Often files are misplaced or incomplete. "Stuff just goes into a big black hole sometimes," says Mr. Principi.

Under Mr. Principi, the VA has made a priority of fostering better cooperation and communication between its Veterans Health Administration, which operates VA hospitals, and the Veterans Benefits Administration, which makes disability and pension decisions. Last year, the VA centralized management of the two entities' information-technology operations. And, to streamline the transfer of files, the Department of Defense has begun sending certain military medical records into an electronic database that VHA doctors can tap into. But most Defense medical records are still kept only on paper and must be transferred by hand.

Thoughts... I can sympathize with Mr. Stiffler, as a veteran who has gone through the VA process to seek a disability rating. (I have a 10% disability for leg injuries sustained on active duty) The process is Byzantine, and I can only imagine how it treats lower-ranking soldiers who don't have the legal or bureaucratic experience that I do. In fact, I sought my VA rating at the same time I took Administrative Law at UCLA, and I found that knowledge to be invaluable in dealing with the VA. There's something wrong with a VA system that takes a law degree to navigate.

VA Secretary Principi is doing a good job of pushing the VA to become more responsive to the veterans who need the care the most. His proposal to shift resources to lower-income and service-disabled veterans -- to the detriment of higher-income, non-disabled veterans -- is the right thing to do. Secretary Principi has also pushed an aggressive program of privatization to purchase more medical resources for each dollar of VA funding, and I think that's also the right thing to do.

The VA's mission is clear: it must be ready to deal with the bow wave of veterans about to leave the service after fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Historical data suggests that the majority of those who have fought in these wars will not reenlist at the end of their enlistments, and that hundreds of thousands of combat veterans will soon reenter the civilian world. Many will leave the service with injuries from combat, or conditions that merit a VA disability rating. The VA must be ready to serve these men and women when they come home.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:59

 
Krugman: Privatization partly to blame for American problems in Iraq?
NYT columnist/economist takes on the Pentagon, but his ducks aren't all in a row

Paul Krugman takes the Bush Administration and Pentagon to task in his New York Times column today. Some of this is certainly justified, but Krugman takes some license with the facts to make the ultimate argument that privatizing certain military functions has led to problems for the military in Iraq. Here's his basic argument:

The U.S. military has always had superb logistics. What happened? The answer is a mix of penny-pinching and privatization ?— which makes our soldiers' discomfort a symptom of something more general.
* * *
Military corner-cutting is part of a broader picture of penny-wise-pound-foolish government. When it comes to tax cuts or subsidies to powerful interest groups, money is no object. But elsewhere, including homeland security, small-government ideology reigns. The Bush administration has been unwilling to spend enough on any aspect of homeland security, whether it's providing firefighters and police officers with radios or protecting the nation's ports. The decision to pull air marshals off some flights to save on hotel bills ?— reversed when the public heard about it ?— was simply a sound-bite-worthy example. (Air marshals have told MSNBC.com that a "witch hunt" is now under way at the Transportation Security Administration, and that those who reveal cost-cutting measures to the media are being threatened with the Patriot Act.)

There's also another element in the Iraq logistical snafu: privatization. The U.S. military has shifted many tasks traditionally performed by soldiers into the hands of such private contractors as Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary. The Iraq war and its aftermath gave this privatized system its first major test in combat ?— and the system failed.

Analysis: Krugman's first mistake is to rely too heavily on the reporting of Col. David Hackworth. I respect Col. Hackworth a great deal, both for his military record and his criticisms of Washington. But Col. Hackworth has a particular agenda that includes a lot of stuff that Paul Krugman probably doesn't know about -- or doesn't agree with. Moreover, Hack's criticisms provoke such a visceral reaction in the Pentagon that anything citing him will immediately be rejected by the Pentagon establishment. Even if this was a more accurate piece, its citation to Col. Hackworth would diminish its credibility in the halls of the Pentagon. Citing authority with that effect can be risky.

History also matters. Military history is conspicuously absent from Krugman's column. In the realm of military affairs, history matters a great deal because you rarely want to advocate for things that haven't been done successfully before under fire. In fact, privatization has been used with some success by various nations at various times in the world. "Mercenary" armies are one example, though an unsavory one. Another example could be the way industry was co-opted in the mass mobilization efforts of WWI and WWII. There is a fuzzy line between contracting out for services from industry, and simply enlisting industry in the cause. Krugman fails to account for this gray area.

Here are some other points that leaped out at me while reading Krugman's piece:

1. Krugman starts his column with a description of American woe in Iraq -- based on the griping of a soldier about food.

A few days ago I talked to a soldier just back from Iraq. He'd been in a relatively calm area; his main complaint was about food. Four months after the fall of Baghdad, his unit was still eating the dreaded M.R.E.'s: meals ready to eat. When Italian troops moved into the area, their food was "way more realistic" ?— and American troops were soon trading whatever they could for some of that Italian food.

This should bring a smile to any veteran's face, because it's a time-honored tradition in the Army to gripe about food. In fact, they taught us as new lieutenants that your soldiers probably had a real problem if they weren't griping about their food, and that such gripes about Army chow were a sign of good morale. Frankly, I'm not a fan of eating MREs for 4 weeks straight, let alone 4 months. But I'm not too concerned when I see this gripe in the news... in the pantheon of Army b*tching, it's pretty low.

2. Krugman cites to some letters on Hack's website, including one where soldiers complain about water supplies.

One writer reported that in his unit, "each soldier is limited to two 1.5-liter bottles a day," and that inadequate water rations were leading to "heat casualties." An American soldier died of heat stroke on Saturday; are poor supply and living conditions one reason why U.S. troops in Iraq are suffering such a high rate of noncombat deaths?

This is a flat-out false statement. The truth is, according to Sergeant Major of the Army Jack Tilley during a recent press conference in Iraq, that soldiers are being issued two 1.5 liter plastic bottles of water today in addition to their regular water supply, which is provided in 500-gallon "water buffaloes" and other means. In fact, the planning factor for a soldier in a desert environment is something like 10 gallons of water per day -- plus between 10-50 pounds of ice per day (Note: a lot of this ice goes to food preparation and bulk water cooling, not directly to the soldier). A significant portion of the logistical effort goes to pushing this "Class I" supply forward to soldiers in the field, and distributing it. The physiology of this is obvious. If soldiers in Iraq were being forced to live on 3 liters/day, they would die.

Clearly, there is other water out there. Some soldiers are simply whining because they can't get an unlimited supply of Evian bottles, the way they did in Gulf War I when the Saudis footed the bill and the American supply lines weren't set up yet. I say: "Tough". Get your water in bulk from the water buffalo, fill your CamelBak, and deal with it.

A note on CamelBaks: I could write a book on this subject, from my active duty experience in the desert, but I won't. Suffice to say, the CamelBak is the best tool for hydration available, and every soldier should have one -- but doesn't yet. The Army has not procured these for every soldier in every unit. Many units have taken the initiative to spend their own funds on a commercial purchase, and many more soldiers (like me) have bought their own. Personally, I would buy enough CamelBaks to had one to every soldier in CENTCOM. Krugman could have written a great column (like this one) on the private gadgets that soldiers have bought for themselves because the military failed to buy them.

3. Next, Krugman tries to link military cost-cutting to homeland security cost-cutting, to make a more general argument about the Bush Administration. Once again, his argument falls flat:

Military corner-cutting is part of a broader picture of penny-wise-pound-foolish government. When it comes to tax cuts or subsidies to powerful interest groups, money is no object. But elsewhere, including homeland security, small-government ideology reigns. The Bush administration has been unwilling to spend enough on any aspect of homeland security, whether it's providing firefighters and police officers with radios or protecting the nation's ports.

Not quite. The Bush Administration has poured money into the new Department of Homeland Security, and has given quite a bit of money to local fire/police departments for things like chemical-protective gear. But structurally, our domestic anti-terrorism effort is structurally impaired by the fact that it depends on state/local funding, not federal funding, and most state/local governments are strapped right now. (See, e.g., my home state of California) This is an unintended consequence of the 10th Amendment, which reserves general powers to the states. Nearly all of America's anti-terrorism capacity -- save the FBI and CIA -- resides at the state/local level. Krugman, as an economist, ought to understand these structural issues and be able to explain precisely why domestic security goes underfunded. Instead, he simply blames the Bush Administration's penchant for privatization -- something which I think is inaccurate and unfair.

4. Going back to Iraq, Krugman says the military's contracts in Iraq have been a failure. He writes:

The U.S. military has shifted many tasks traditionally performed by soldiers into the hands of such private contractors as Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary. The Iraq war and its aftermath gave this privatized system its first major test in combat ?— and the system failed.

Interestingly, he cites to the same article from Newhouse News Service that I wrote about here and here. First, Krugman's wrong that this is the first major performance by contractors in a battle zone. Civilian contractors played an enormous role in the first Gulf War, sparking a great deal of argument in the policy and academic sector over the wisdom of privatization. (Legal scholars also debated the Geneva Convention implications of this trend) Second, contractors like Kellogg Brown & Root have followed the U.S. military for some time, such as to places like Bosnia and Kosovo. They've done a good job in those places, often with similar dangers (e.g. landmines), and they know the operational environment. Krugman fails again to understand the details of the problem here, which largely are a matter of government contracts law. (See this note) No business is going to take a contract where the costs outweigh the benefits. In government contracts law, there are ways to shift the risk and extra costs (such as insurance) to the government, but those weren't done in Iraq initially because of faulty assumptions by the government about the post-war situation. The contractors in question made a business decision to back away from contracts they thought were too risky. But ultimately, it's the government that bears the responsibility to build a contract (since the clauses are all imputed as a matter of law with little negotiation) that works for both parties. Once again, Krugman ought to know this as an economist, or at least pick up the phone to call a government contracts lawyer who can explain it to him.

Bottom Line: Krugman's column adds little to the debate over America's endeavor in Iraq. I could spend more time picking his column apart, but I won't because I think you get my general point. There are problems in Iraq, most of which trace back to poor planning before the war that was predicated on bad assumptions about the post-war situation. But those problems are steadily being fixed, and we are steadily making progress. As an economist, Krugman could provide great insight into the Iraqi economy and its failings, rather than going out on a limb to write about military affairs. This column falls flat because he doesn't provide the detailed analysis necessary to connect each of these issues to the problems in Iraq.

Update: I've been tapped as a member of the "Krugman Truth Squad" by Donald Luskin in his National Review Online column. I try to avoid taking political sides, as NRO does, but I'm flattered by the quotes nonetheless. Mr. Luskin has an interesting column, summing up some of the other authors (such as Robert Musil) who criticized Prof. Krugman's column on privatization. It's worth a read.
posted by Phillip Carter at 06:49

 
WSJ: Guilty pleas expected in first military tribunals

Jess Bravin reports in Monday's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) that 2 British citizens and an Australian citizen are expected to plead guilty before a military tribunal in order to avoid harsh punishment -- possibly including the death penalty. The three men are currently being held as "unlawful enemy combatants" in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and have been put on a short list of 6 individuals who are under consideration for the tribunals. Pleas are being hashed out for these three between the U.S., British and Australian governments. Two other defendants are expected to face adversarial tribunals in the near future.

British subjects Feroz Abassi and Moazzam Begg and Australian David Hicks are among six prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba that President Bush decided last month could be prosecuted before the tribunals. The three, currently subject to indefinite detention as unlawful enemy combatants, have been providing information to intelligence agents, and officials say they wish to reward the prisoners with a clear resolution of their futures.

Although the prisoners -- captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan after fighting alongside Taliban and al Qaeda forces -- initially were defiant, "they've all, shall we say, mellowed over time," a U.S. official said.

The Bush administration prefers to inaugurate the tribunals with relatively simple proceedings to record a guilty plea, rather than a contested trial likely to see aggressive challenges from defense attorneys. Officials say plea bargains would show the tribunals can be used as leverage to gain cooperation from prisoners. They hope statements from defendants expressing remorse and attesting to their good treatment will help stanch foreign criticism of the tribunals.

"You renounce terrorism, you renounce Osama bin Laden, and, by the way, you say, 'The Americans treated me very well in Guantanamo' -- that would be a phenomenal public-relations coup for the United States," said a person familiar with the cases. "And by the same token, a defendant who was willing to say something like that would probably be favorably viewed by the government."

Analysis: Mr. Bravin's article has a lot of other good stuff. Unfortunately, I can't reproduce the full text here because of copyright laws. I highly recommend buying the Monday issue of The Journal, or waiting until Tuesday to read the post-scoop story in the NY Times or Washington Post. This is a big story, and one that should hit the American Bar Association's annual meeting in San Francisco with a tremendous "thud".

On the merits... It's not clear whether justice is being served here. On the one hand, taking prisoners and trying them for war crimes is an accepted part of war. On the other, we have not scrupulously followed the law with respect to these prisoners (See Art. V, Third Geneva Convention, requiring a "competent tribunal" to determine the status of any prisoner). And there are legitimate legal questions as to whether the President has the authority to order military tribunals under his 13 Nov 01 order. These tribunals will live under a cloud as long as these questions linger.

The Economist ran a strongly worded editorial last month excoriating the Bush Administration for its use of military tribunals. Such trials diminish the moral and political capital that the U.S. enjoys in the world, and diminish the values that stand in stark opposition to our enemies. I'm not sure what the right outcome should be here, since I'm not privy to the actual facts of these cases. But I think The Economist raises valid concerns about the fallout from our choice to use military tribunals. We should weigh this step with a great deal of caution.
posted by Phillip Carter at 22:14

 
Soldiers who criticized SecDef get "a good talk"

In a sign that our junior leaders know how to lead their soldiers, the Washington Post reports today that soldiers who spoke out in the media against various political leaders have received no formal discipline -- but a stern lecture from their senior sergeants instead.

"Those soldiers were not formally disciplined per se," said a senior Army officer in Washington who declined to be named. Instead, the soldiers received "a good talk" from senior noncommissioned officers who "reinforced their obligations as soldiers to respect their military and civilian chain of command," the officer added.

Sounds about right to me. Senior NCOs are the "backbone of the Army", and the good ones have more informal authority than their officers could ever dream of. A stern talk from a senior Command Sergeant Major -- even to a lieutenant or captain -- can be extremely effective. I am impressed by the discipline of the chain-of-command to, not to do anything formal which might be seen as retaliation against these soldiers. This was the right course of action, and I imagine these soldiers will keep their thoughts to themselves and their mates in the future.
posted by Phillip Carter at 11:28

 
DoD IG: Soldiers may encourage foreign trade in sex slaves

The Los Angeles Times reports in a pithy 2-paragraph wire-service piece that a new Pentagon report blames American soldiers for the continued sex slavery trade in South Korea. The report comes from the Pentagon's Inspector General, who is responsible for internal investigations in the Defense Department.

U.S. soldiers visiting South Korean brothels may have encouraged sex slavery because of a lack of understanding about human trafficking, the Defense Department's inspector general reported. Military patrols were sometimes too friendly with bar owners and often didn't report sex slavery because of a misperception that they needed solid evidence, the report said.

U.S. military officials in South Korea have barred servicemen from more than 25 establishments.

That's all that was reported. Having recently served in Korea for a year with the 2nd Infantry Division, I can add a little bit more information.

1. The connection between soldiers and brothels is not a new one, and probably not one that the U.S. or Korean government can do a lot about. The same connection exists in the U.S. near major military bases, and I imagine it does for other nations as well. Without passing moral judgment on this, I think I can say the two things go together as a matter of economics, demographics, and sociology.

2. American soldiers typically serve a one-year, unaccompanied, "hardship" tour in Korea. The overwhelming majority of American soldiers in Korea are male, due to the higher-than-average concentration of combat units in the 2nd Infantry Division, and due to military rules preventing pregnant soldiers from moving to Korea -- and requiring their redeployment before they come due. Speaking as an economist, this means a large customer pool unencumbered by their families, who might normally act as constraints on their behavior.

3. The Korean economy has responded to the U.S. presence in a myriad of ways, from the establishment of bars and restaurants off base, custom tailoring shops, and brothels. The lines between bars, clubs, dance clubs and brothels are quite blurry, and it was never clear to me as a Military Police lieutenant how these businesses were regulated by the Korean authorities. The Koreans nominally outlawed prostitution, and U.S. commanders also issued edicts against the practice. But that's not to say it didn't happen.

4. The real problem here is the way the Korean (there are very few foreign nationals in the Korean club business) club owners staff their establishments. Unfortunately, that's a matter beyond American control (though we can certainly influence the Korean government in this regard). Korean businesses choose various forms of low-wage employment, to include forms of indentured servitude, to staff their businesses. The regulation of this activity falls squarely on the shoulders of the South Korean government. However, the South Korean government has been reticent to regulate these employment practices because of the spillover that might have into other low-wage employment areas, such as manufacturing and agriculture.

5. American forces provide the customer base for these bars. By failing to lock-down soldiers on post, it can be argued that U.S. commanders contribute to their prosperity. But American MPs are charged with the mission of keeping soldiers out of brothels, and with preventing prostitution to the best of their ability. Commanders often discipline soldiers for failing to follow orders, and STD detection often leads to some sort of administrative action against soldiers. More than that, I'm not sure what else can be done.

Bottom Line: The U.S. has a moral obligation to oppose human slavery wherever it can. In pure economic terms, our soldiers contribute to the practice in Korea by providing the demand -- which drives Korean businesses to purchase the supply. I'm not sure what the U.S. can do itself to stop this practice, short of lock-down or redeployment. But we have an awful lot of influence with the South Korean government, and we ought to use that influence to stop this horrible problem.

Update: I asked Mark Kleiman for an economist's thoughts on the problem, and he was kind enough to post them on his weblog. Mark writes about some of the complexities of the matter, particularly with regard to enforcement and its unintended effects on the "legal" prositution trade. Definitely worth a read.

Update II: The Pacific Stars & Stripes reports on the U.S. reaction to this report. Top American officials in Seoul have pledged to take a "hard look" at what's going on with respect to American soldiers and sex slavery in Korea.

Lt. Gen. Charles C. Campbell, 8th Army commander and USFK chief of staff, said in a written statement to Stars and Stripes that the command is encouraged by the inspector general’s “positive response to our aggressive actions so far in addressing these illegal and wholly unacceptable activities.”

But at least one Korean official working on the issue was skeptical that any unilateral action by U.S. commanders could make a significant difference.

The reality is, though, the trafficking situation may be beyond USFK capacity to solve, said Yu Yong-nim, head of My Sister’s Place in Uijongbu, a nongovernmental organization that helps women who have been involved in the sex trade. The military presence exacerbates the sex trade problem, but the issue is one that needs to be addressed on a higher level by both the U.S. and South Korean governments, she said.

More to follow...
posted by Phillip Carter at 11:17

 
Light Blogging: My laptop hard drive crashed this week. Until it returns from the manufacturer, I will not have my normal 24/7 access to the newswire or the 'net. Intel Dump will resume regular updates as soon as possible. Until then, I will be able to write 3-5 times per week.

In my absence, please continue to visit my friends and supporters, both listed below and on my blogroll:

- The Volokh Conspiracy

- DefenseTech by Noah Shachtman

- Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall

- Mark Kleiman

- Dynamist by Virginia Postrel

- Winds of Change

- One Hand Clapping

- TAPPED

- KausFiles

- Balkinization

And last but not least, for the best streaming legal news on the web, check out Howard Bashman's How Appealing
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:38

 
Arnold's in

The LA Times and NY Times websites both carry the banner that Arnold Schwarzenegger has decided to run for Governor of California in the Oct. 7 recall election.

My prediction: we're about to be deluged by trite Arnold-related headlines, metaphors, and leads by the media. Who wants to bet that some paper will run the headline tomorrow "Total Recall"? Or that someone will use "terminate" as a verb in their story with respect to Arnold's intentions towards Gray Davis? Or that the phrase "true lies" will be used to describe Arnold's campaign literature? Or that some political cartoonist will borrow the Conan motif for a cartoon? Or that "hasta la vista, baby" will be printed on t-shirts by the Recall Gray Davis crowd?

Update: It appears that Arnold has drawn first blood (trite Stallone action movie reference) by invoking several of his own lines on Jay Leno, according to the LA Times:

The studio audience whooped and cheered after he made the surprise announcement. In the course of his interview with Leno, the popular movie star and former body builder invoked several of the lines that made him famous, including, "Say hasta la vista to Gray Davis," and "When I go to Sacramento, I'm going to pump it up."

Ouch... I hope that Mr. Schwarzenegger has a good speechwriter in the wings who can ween him off these lines as quickly as possible -- for the good of California.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:18

 
Military blood supplies run low -- Pentagon launches blood drive

The Pentagon announced today that it desperately needs more Type O blood to support continued operations in Iraq. The Armed Services Blood Program is currently running a campaign to gather blood donations from service members who meet its donor criteria. The ASBP's situation is complicated by the fact that it only accepts donations from active duty service members, government employees, retirees and military family members. Additionally, DoD policy proscribes blood donations from soldiers who have recently redeployed from Operation Iraqi Freedom, Korea, or any other area where malaria is endemic. In particular, the ASBP says it needs Type O blood.

"Type O donors are the first line of defense for trauma victims. Until a blood type can be verified, Type O blood is used to keep trauma victims alive," said Air Force Lt. Col. Ruth Sylvester, Armed Services Blood Program director. "Once their blood type is determined, type-specific blood is transfused. But without Type O blood available, many patients would never make it until the test results came back."

A single battlefield injury victim can require more than 40 units of blood in an emergency. Type O donors are especially important to readiness because their blood can be transfused safely for all blood types, especially in remote areas where it's not possible to test for blood type.

The Armed Services Blood Program also needs Type O blood to maintain its frozen blood reserve. The military maintains a supply of frozen red blood cells to use when fresh blood is not immediately available. Since frozen blood can be safely stored for up to 10 years, it ensures that blood is always readily available to meet the military's needs worldwide.

Bottom Line: If you have a DoD affiliation, give blood to help your brothers and sisters in arms. If you don't have a DoD affiliation, you should contact your local Red Cross to give blood there instead. It's one small thing that we can do to help those in need.
posted by Phillip Carter at 14:37

 
TIA becomes a reality... in Florida

The Washington Post reports that Florida , in conjunction with the the federal Department of Homeland Security, has plans to field the "Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange", or "Matrix" program. At its core, this system is a database designed to integrate information from several different sources, correlate it, look for non-obvious relationships, analyze it, and produce intelligence for police and security agencies to use in the war on terrorism.

Organizers said the system, dubbed Matrix, enables investigators to find patterns and links among people and events faster than ever before, combining police records with commercially available collections of personal information about most American adults. It would let authorities, for instance, instantly find the name and address of every brown-haired owner of a red Ford pickup truck in a 20-mile radius of a suspicious event.

The state-level program, aided by federal funding, is poised to expand across the nation at a time when Congress has been sharply critical of similar data-driven systems on the federal level, such as a Pentagon plan for global surveillance and an air-passenger-screening system.
* * *
Some civil liberties groups fear Matrix will dramatically lower the threshold for government snooping because other systems don't allow searches of criminal and commercial records with such ease or speed.

"It's going to make fishing expeditions so much more convenient," said Ari Schwartz, associate director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that monitors privacy issues. "There's going to be a push to use it for many different kinds of purposes."

The Justice Department has provided $4 million to expand the Matrix program nationally and will provide the computer network for information sharing among the states, according to documents and interviews. The Department of Homeland Security has pledged $8 million, state officials said.
* * *
Matrix is short for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange. The name was chosen somewhat whimsically by a Florida law enforcement officer, an agency official said. Florida officials say the system will be used only by authorized investigators under tight supervision. They said it includes information that has always been available to investigators but brings it together and enables police to access it with extraordinary speed.

Technical challenges include ensuring that data are accurate and that the system can be updated frequently.

"The power of this technology -- to take seemingly isolated bits of data and tie them together to get a clear picture in seconds -- is vital to strengthening our domestic security," said James "Tim" Moore, who was commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement until last month.

Put simply, this is a local version of the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program. It does almost the same things, except the Matrix does not integrate as much information from as many sources. Matrix also does not tie-in to the intelligence community the way TIA was supposed to. Nonetheless, the concept is the same: to use a large, sophisticated database to sift through large numbers of "indicators" in order to put the dots together for counter-terrorism analysts. I think this is a good system and that the civil liberties risks can be managed. I also think it's a great idea to put this system in the hands of local police where the real anti/counter-terrorism takes place. More to follow...

Update I: Thanks to Instapundit for the link.

Update II: DailyKOS has some interesting comments and predictions on this system, and what may result from its implementation in Florida.

While proponents claim this information is already available to law enforcement, none of it is available correlated. Simply put, the Matrix will combine your credit history, criminal record and address into one, easy to read database and your inclusion has nothing to do with your criminal history. An abusive police officer husband could use this to track and terrorize an ex-spouse as easily as it could track a supposed terrorist. Information could be illegally sold to criminals, detective and other interested parties as well.

TIA was rejected by Congress because of its potential of abuse. Now, DOJ is funding a project by someone who's already lost federal contracts and is now willing to create a deeply intrusive database with massive potential for abuse.
* * *
We assume that this capacity exists, mainly because of set designers in movies. Hit a buttun, up comes a dossier and current address. In reality, it can take days and court orders to compile all this information. The problem is that the potential for abuse is tremendous and there is no guarantee that this information will not be turned against the government by corrupt officials.

This is an unwise program, one which, in the end, will be subject to Congressional investigation and lawsuits. Instead of relying on common sense and trust, yet another dubious, politically dangerous techological solution is drawn up.

I think DailyKOS's factual propositions are correct, but I don't agree with his conclusion. Fundamentally, I think the difference is this: there are people who trust the government to use this data, and there are people who don't trust the government to use this data. I've worked in the security community long enough to trust the people who would be invested with this authority, and to trust the institutional mechanisms which would police that use. But I also recognize that many Americans distrust those same individuals and agencies -- often for legitimate reasons. Support for TIA and TIA-like programs usually boils down to a matter of trust -- either you have it or you don't.

Update III: An intelligent reader wrote me to suggest that this Florida program may in fact be a DARPA program in sheep's clothing. I hadn't considered that yet, but it's possible that the Pentagon, DoJ and DHS have decided to farm out TIA to local authorities who could test and prove their concept on a smaller, local level. This does not sidestep any of the legal, ethical, operational or political issues; it merely outsources them to the state/local agencies. But it does reduce the project to a manageable scale, and that's important for operational testing reasons. Testing a TIA-like program in some local setting will also help answer the legal, ethical, practical and operational questions were raised in Washington over TIA.

Bottom Line: I don't know that this is an intentional test of the TIA concept, or if this is connected to DARPA and TIA in anyway. The concepts look similar enough for me to make that leap, but it's still a guess.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:22

 
Rumsfeld's new Army chief fires several top Army generals

InsideDefense (subscription required) reports (and the San Antonio Express-News confirms) that Gen. Peter Schoomaker has asked several top officers in the Army to step down early in order to make way for his new team. Schoomaker was plucked out of retirement by SecDef Rumsfeld to serve as the Chief of Staff of the Army, and he has been widely seen as someone who will kill a few sacred cows in order to serve the SecDef's the hamburger he wants. This story is the first major indicator of his intentions, and if this story is true, I think it's a pretty bold move.

High-ranking officers asked to leave the service, these sources said, include Lt. Gen. John Caldwell, military deputy to the Army's civilian acquisition director; Lt. Gen. Joseph Cosumano, commanding general of the Army's Space and Missile Defense Command; and Lt. Gen. Dennis Cavin, commanding general of the Army Accessions Command. Caldwell and Cavin have told their staffs they are retiring, but Cosumano has not, Army officials said.

Those told to retire are just the first wave of nearly a dozen Army generals on Keane and Schoomaker's list, according to a number of senior defense officials.
* * *
Gen. Paul Kern, who commands the Army Materiel Command, is also among those tapped for early retirement, according to one defense official. Kern will have served just two years at his four-star rank as of late October, and is already appealing for an exception to being taken down a notch in rank upon retirement, the official said this week.

Keane also asked Lt. Gen. Johnny Riggs, director of the Army Objective Force Task Force, to retire, according to senior officials. But Riggs, who was promoted in August 1999, has spent more than three years “in grade” and thus is eligible to retain his full rank after retiring.

Sig Christenson, a veteran Pentagon beat reporter, gives us the Pentagon's response in the San Antonio Express-News:

The Pentagon contended Tuesday that the personnel actions and others apparently in the wings after Gen. Peter Schoomaker took command Friday don't translate into friction between Rumsfeld and senior Army leaders.

A top Army spokesman, Col. Joe Curtin, said about a dozen lieutenant generals will retire this year. Over the past five years an average of 11 three-stars have retired annually, he said, adding 2003 is not unusual "based on the statistics."

True . . . but this is still an abnormal spike in the number of retirements for one point in time. I think it's somewhat disingenous to say that it's just part of normal operations, and that there's no animus on display here. In fact, my friends in the Pentagon tell me there is quite a bit of animus at work here, and that these retirements are indeed being forced.

Personally, I think the SecDef ought to come out and say "Yes, I'm asking these generals to retire because I have a new vision for the military and they don't agree with it." I think the average American expects some amount of "housecleaning" by any new executive, whether its the CEO of GE or the Chief of Staff of the Army. It's not illegitimate to say these officers have served their country well, but now the time has come to bring in some new officers with new ideas. This sort of candor about personnel decisions can only help the push for transformation, by making it clear that you either get on board the train for transformation -- or get off at the next stop.

Caveat: These officers did serve their country well, and in all cases, carry a wealth of institutional knowledge. I had the opportunity to meet Gen. Paul Kern while I was in 4ID, and to brief him on FBCB2 and other digital combat systems. He really knows his stuff when it comes to transformation, and I think he's a valuable asset to the Army. In the rush to replace old officers with new ones, we should be careful that we don't cast aside some of our best and brightest simply because they don't agree with us. If that means offering these men positions at the Army War College or some other institution to keep their knowledge on tap, then I think we ought to do those things.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:56

 
An "embellishment worthy of the New York Times"?

An Air Force lieutenant colonel's letter appears in today's Washington Times to rebut an article which appeared on Aug. 4, 2003, which implied that the Walter Reed Army Medical Center was overflowing with casualties. If the letter author is right (and I imagine he is), this is a pretty bad treatment of the facts. Here's the full text of the letter:

A clear case of embellishment worthy of the New York Times was the article by Jon Ward, "War casualties overflow Walter Reed hospital" (Page 1, Monday).

I have stayed in the Mologne House. This is not an outpatient facility. The Mologne House is an on-post hotel, period. The hotel is within walking distance of Walter Reed Hospital. Like any other hotel, it has a restaurant, maid service, etc. The hotel is frequently booked up, not because of the war, but because of its close proximity to the hospital and its proximity to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. The hotel is usually full of medical personnel who are on temporary duty at Walter Reed or the Institute of Pathology. The need to farm out personnel for lodging at other hotels in the area is nothing new and is frequently done on other posts, bases, etc. when the need arises. When I was there earlier this year, before the war, I often saw people arriving at the front desk and being referred for lodging elsewhere (at government expense).

While the need to give priority to outpatients from Walter Reed is not lost on this reader, what the author suggests between the lines is also not lost. Once again, the need to make things read worse than they really are has taken precedence. The hospital is not overflowing with war casualties. That it is not is testament to the efficiency, professionalism and dedication of our ground forces in Iraq (and the military medical personnel between Iraq and the United States). If the author of the piece desires a comparison to the current patient flow, I would suggest that he contact personnel that worked at Army or Air Force medical facilities in Hawaii, or the West Coast in the late '60s or early '70s. I believe they could provide some perspective on what 'overflowing' with war casualties is really like.

--Lt. Col. Thomas M. Seay, M.D., USAF, San Antonio, Texas

Post Script: If you're wondering how an Air Force physician in San Antonio could keep up with the news in Washington, you're asking a pretty good question. The Defense Department runs a great news service called the "Early Bird", which is open to DoD active, reserve and civilian personnel. The site bills itself as "A daily (duty days) concise compilation of the most current published news articles and commentary concerning the most significant defense and defense-related national security issues. Available by 0515 hrs." It's a great resource -- if you have a DoD affiliation, I highly recommend making the Early Bird your one-stop shop for news.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:36

 
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