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Guantanamo investigation nets another suspect

The AP reports that a third person was arrested this morning on suspicion of espionage in connection with the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Ahmed Mehalba joins Airman Ahmad Halabi and CPT Youssef Yee as the latest suspect in an investigation that appears to have unveiled a secret network of Syrian agents at Guantanamo, though the details are extremely sketchy at this point.

Defense Department officials described Mehalba as a civilian contractor who provided translation services, but it was unclear if he had fulfilled his contract or was still working at the camp.

Agents with Customs and Border Protection noticed documents that appeared to have come from the prison camp and that they suspected of being classified. The FBI was called in to interview Mehalba, who denied the documents were his, the official said.

After the interview, the FBI arrested Mehalba on charges of making false statements. He was being held in Boston and further charges are possible, said the official, who declined to describe the nature of the documents in Mehalba's possession.

Boston attorney Michael Andrews was appointed to represent Mehalba by U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles B. Swartwood. Mehalba was to make an initial court appearance later Tuesday, Andrews said. Andrews said he had not met his client and had not been informed of what he is charged with or any of the circumstances of his arrest.

Analysis: There are some really interesting legal issues already in this case. First, Mehalba is not a soldier -- he's a civilian. Thus, he can't be charged in the military system like Halabi and Yee, nor can he be executed for espionage as a soldier could. (There is a remote option of trying a civilian under the UCMJ in time of war, but I rate this as extremely unlikely) If Mehalba were charged with treason, in theory, he could be put to death. But there's nothing in this story to suggest that will happen, and it's extremely unlikely that his offenses rose to the level required for a Constitutional charge of treason. (See Stop the Bleating for more on this subject)

The second interesting legal issue is the choice of forum for these charges. It appears, from this AP report, that federal prosecutors are moving forward in federal court with a criminal prosecution. The President has not designated Mehalba as an "enemy combatant," nor has he transferred him to military custody. Those two things remain an option, as was done after the initial court appearances in both the Padilla and al-Marri cases. But given the political flak associated with such decisions, I think this is also unlikely. Federal prosecutors may use the threat of "enemy combatant" status in their plea bargaining negotiations, as they did in the "Lackawanna Six" case according to several media reports. But I think we'll see this man tried in federal court if the time comes for a trial of some kind.

More to follow...
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:54

 
The "BYOB" War
Reservists issued Vietnam-era flak jackets forced to purchase their own body armor

Jonathan Turley, a GW law professor with whom I typically don't agree, has an outstanding essay on the op-ed page of today's Los Angeles Times about one of his students who's been sent to Iraq as a reserve MP. The soldier was issued a Vietnam-era flak vest upon mobilization. This vest will stop shrapnel and other effects from indirect fire, but is basically worthless for stopping direct fire from small arms. This, despite the procurement of new "Interceptor" body armor for most of the active force, which has been proven to save lives in Afghanistan and Iraq. Turley writes that this is a travesty, and I agree.

The greatest shortfall in vests and plates appear to be National Guard and reserve units, though full-time soldiers like Byrd also have reported shortages. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed last week that it would not be until December before there were enough plates for all of our people in Iraq.

Murphy's reserve unit, which initially had no modern jackets, was eventually given some Interceptor vests weeks after they arrived in Iraq, but even then the new vests were missing the essential ceramic plates. That is when Werfelman went out and bought some plates for $650 — more than her weekly salary — and sent them to her son so he'd have basic protection. Workers at one armor company she called said that they had been deluged with calls from parents trying to buy vests and plates for their sons and daughters overseas.

Of course, many soldiers do not have even empty Interceptors. When they have received plates from home, they have reportedly used duct tape to attach them to the backs of their flak jackets.

This is a dangerous practice, according to William "Butch" Hancock, who recently retired from the Army after 30 years and currently consults for Point Blank, a body armor manufacturer. He says that some of these plates are designed for front pockets and will not work in such circumstances.

In speeches, President Bush has attributed the record federal budget deficit, in part, to his insistence that U.S. soldiers have the resources they need: "My attitude is, any time we put one of our soldiers in harm's way, we're going to spend whatever is necessary to make sure they have the best training, the best support and the best possible equipment." When Bush later taunted gunmen in Iraq to "bring it on," many GIs must have nervously tugged at their obsolete flak jackets.

For many GIs, Iraq appears to be a strictly BYOB war — Bring Your Own Bulletproofs.

The shortages come down to money and priorities. In 1998, Interceptors were available and issued to armies around the world. However, the U.S. military treats the replacement of body armor as any other "general-issue item." Thus, five years ago the military brass decided to implement a one-for-one exchange of new-for-old vests over a 10-year period. The military recently moved to increase production. The belated priority given to replacing the vests is particularly shocking considering their performance in Afghanistan, where they are credited with saving the lives of 29 soldiers. This is why American mothers are mailing armored plates rather than the traditional baked goods.

It is unclear how we got into this predicament, but it is worthy of a congressional investigation — particularly when it comes to the failure to equip all military units with the modern vests before the Iraq war. After all, the military brass appears to be spending in other areas.

Analysis: Procurement of basic soldier items has been a problem for the Army since its inception during the Revolutionary War. Logistics is hard stuff, and procuring materiel for soldiers to wear/use in combat has always been difficult. That said, we spend an enormous amount of money every year to buy the military what it needs (and sometimes what it wants). There's no excuse for failing to procure Interceptor body armor for every soldier and Marine on active duty -- and every reservist mobilized for duty in a combat zone.

And it's not just the body armor. We've also seen similar shortages of other critical items too, from spare Hummvee tires to Bradley tracks to SINCGARS radio batteries. Our soldiers initially deployed to Afghanistan with lousy boots that fell apart on the rocky mountains of that country. (Look at pictures from 2001/02 and you'll see 100mph tape around the boots of many soldiers.) Some of my friends in Afghanistan and Iraq have spent thousands of dollars at REI.Com to outfit themselves and their soldiers with the best outdoor equipment money can buy, such as high-altitude stoves to stave off cold-weather casualties in the mountains of Afghanistan. I think it's a travesty that a soldier would have to spend his or her own money on mission-essential equipment when we spend $400 billion a year on defense.

Prof. Turley is right -- this boils down to priorities. If the Pentagon wanted to buy Interceptor body armor for every servicemember on active duty, it could. But it chose not to, by making a phased purchase of this product over time for pieces of the force at a time. Then the department made a second choice, which was not to take the armor from some non-deployed elements and shift it to those units in contact now with the enemy. Then the Pentagon made a third choice, which was not to immediately jumpstart procurement of these vests in 2002 when it became clear we were going to invade Iraq. These choices reveal a dangerously skewed sense of priorities for the procurement executives in the Pentagon, who would place programs like missile defense and aircraft carriers above the lives of our soldiers and Marines.

One caveat: these priorities know no political allegiance. Ike may have been the first president to warn us of the military-industrial complex, but this complex has exercised its grip on Democratic and Republican administrations alike since then -- as well as their counterparts in Congress. The Interceptor program dates back to the Clinton Administration, and its officials were the ones who chose the phased purchase instead of a bulk purchase. Of course, the Clinton White Hosue didn't anticipate in the late 1990s that we would fight a second Gulf War in 2003 with nearly our entire Army and Marine Corps. But I think it's fair to say that the force that won the war in Iraq was largely the force procured and trained by previous administrations, so the blame belongs to more than just the current administration.

Notwithstanding that fact, the problem exists now. Our soldiers are in harm's way now. There is no excuse for failing to equip our soldiers with this kind of basic equipment.

Update: See also this New York Daily News article on the body armor issue, courtesy of Military.Com.

"I can't answer for the record why we started this war with protective vests that were in short supply," Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command, told Congress last week.

Abizaid asked for quick approval of President Bush's request for $87 billion in new funding for Iraq and Afghanistan, which would include $300 million for body armor and $177 million to upgrade Humvees with chassis armor.

With funding for new vests, Abizaid said, "I can tell you that by November, every soldier that's serving in Iraq will have one."

The military had no estimates of how many G.I.s lacked the new vests, which cost $517 each, about $100 more than the old variety. But Abizaid did not argue when House members - waving letters from angry constituents with sons and daughters in Iraq - charged that as many as 30,000 troops in the region were without the latest model.

November, huh? I'd really like to walk the cat back on this issue, to see exactly when these emergency orders were placed. Presumably, some logistician should have forecasted this issue in late 2002 when we were doing our operational planning for Iraq. This shortfall should have been identified, forwarded to higher headquarters, and dealt with. If that was done, and it has taken the contractor a year to produce this many vests (not impossible given production line issues and materials issues), I think the Pentagon has probably made a good faith effort to remedy this problem. But if these requisitions weren't made until sometime this year, or worse yet, until after the war ended, then this is not a good news story.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:07

 
Q: What's the most important part of the war on terrorism?
A: It's the part fought by lawyers and accountants, not soldiers

Josh Meyer has an outstanding piece on the front page of today's Los Angeles Times that looks at America's success (or lack thereof) in prosecuting the financial part of the war on terrorism. As I've written before, this part is absolutely critical because global financial networks are what give terrorists the ability to move men, materiel, and money around the world. In essence, these networks give power projection capability to groups like Al Qaeda, transforming them from local thugs to global terrorists. Mr. Meyer reports that the work is not going as well as America might like.

Two years after Al Qaeda paymasters helped fund the Sept. 11 attacks from Dubai, one senior U.S. Treasury Department counter-terrorism official says this modern financial crossroads of the Middle East, Africa and Asia remains "a central switching station" of banks, money changers and gold and diamond traders through which terror organizations move cash.

Many countries believed to be at the epicenter of Al Qaeda's re-emerging network — including Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia — are at best years away from establishing the financial and legal infrastructures needed to freeze terrorist assets or gain intelligence on how cells are raising, moving and spending money, say U.S. officials and their counterparts in other countries.

Away from the front lines, the effort to build a global coalition to staunch the flow of funds has suffered political, legal, cultural and technical setbacks so serious that some authorities fear it could fall apart. Many Middle Eastern and European countries, including Germany and France, have disagreed with the Bush administration over such basic questions as the definition of terrorism and what constitutes the financing of terrorism.

Nearly all of those who were identified by the U.S. government in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks as suspected senior financiers of Al Qaeda remain free, without ever having been detained or charged by foreign governments, and off limits to U.S. officials who want to question or arrest them.

Many other suspected financiers of Al Qaeda, other groups designated by the United States as terrorist organizations, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and dozens of regional affiliates have simply gone deeper underground or changed to tactics such as using human and animal couriers to move large volumes of cash, officials say. Others have flocked to "soft spots," or countries and cities they have identified as having little scrutiny over their front companies, charities, relief organizations and banks, officials said.

"Two years after we started all this, we don't have a clue, really, as to how they raise their money, how they move it or where it goes," one U.S. official said of Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah.
* * *
There have been many successes since President Bush signed Executive Order 13224 on Sept. 23, 2001, authorizing sweeping new powers for the Treasury Department and other agencies.
* * *
But nearly all of the asset freezes occurred in the first few months, a sign, officials say, that the money has shifted elsewhere and that many countries have overlooked or refused to freeze suspected terrorist funds. Now, senior U.S. officials acknowledge, other complications have arisen.

Analysis: Surely, one major obstacle has been the general level of international support for America in its war on terrorism. After Sept. 11, America could do no wrong in the world. Even Arab countries were willing to look the other way when we launched Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, understanding that it was necessary to excise the cancer of terrorism from that failed state. However, I believe we have squandered our international political capital since Sept. 11, and that this has cost us the ability to do what needs to be done in the financial arena. Mr. Meyer's article bears that out.

Saying this will land me in hot water, but I think there is some unfortunate irony here. Our campaign in Iraq was designed to open a new front in the war on terrorism. However, this campaign cost us dearly in world support, and that decline in world support now appears to be impeding other fronts in the war on terrorism. It's very likely that we have lost ground in this financial aspect of the war, and that those losses owe directly to our intransigence on the world stage. In an indirect way, our war in Iraq is frustrating the war on terrorism, and in net-assessment terms, it may actually be aiding terror networks abroad.

Moreover, our "flypaper strategy" in Iraq actually helps Al Qaeda remain a viable organization in at least four ways:

(1) First, this strategy, helps Al Qaeda raise money. The American occupation of Iraq inflames Arab opinion. It will help Al Qaeda raise money from moderate and radical Arabs for charitable and terroristic operations -- money which is fungible and highly moveable between the two operations. Furthermore, our war in Iraq will increase Al Qaeda's ability to recruit sympathetic persons around the world who are willing to move money around the world through the hawala system or other informal means.

(2) Our war in Iraq also helps Al Qaeda build its logistical support infrastructure. A moderate Arab may not hate the U.S. enough to be a terrorist himself, but he may not mind letting them use his address for a visa, or store something in his warehouse. To the extent that our war inflames opinion among moderate Arabs and others against the United States, it will increase the number of people willing to lend discrete support for Al Qaeda. Such support may not include actual participation in a terrorist act, but it doesn’t need to. Simply providing logistical support to Al Qaeda enables it to be a global terror network. The ability to move men and materiel across borders is a key component of Al Qaeda’s organizational strength, and this ability will likely benefit from our war in Iraq.

(3) The war in Iraq will also produce a generation of trained guerilla fighters for Al Qaeda to recruit as terrorists. One reason for Al Qaeda’s lethality today is its skill base, which was gained through combat in Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia, among others. The current guerilla war in Iraq is being fought in a complex operational environment, against a determined and sophisticated adversary (the United States and Britain). Moreover, these guerillas are learning the art of terrorism as theater, with legions of reporters and non-governmental organizations present to witness their actions. Just as Afghanistan and other conflicts provided training for Al Qaeda’s recruits in the 1980s and 1990s, so too may Iraq provide the boot camp for terrorists in the 21st Century. Indeed, these fighters may form the new cadre for Al Qaeda to replace the fighters we have killed or captured in Afghanistan.

(4) Finally, success breeds success. Al Qaeda depends on the conduct of "spectacular" operations for recruiting, financing, and other sustenance needs. Iraqi insurgents (possibly aided by Al Qaeda) have been able to successfully hit American and British forces in Iraq over and over again, producing casualties and frustrating the rebuilding effort there. These successes are much easier won than spectactular operations such as Kenya or 9/11, and they are probably helping Al Qaeda sustain itself in the Arab court of public opinion.

Before our soldiers and Marines crossed the line of departure into Iraq, the following question was raised on a military-officer listserv that I participate in:

Does an American invasion of Iraq --
(a) Make a terrorist attack on America more likely
(b) Make a terrorist attack on America less likely
(c) Maintain the same probability of a terrorist attack on America.

Our consensus was that (b) was certainly wrong, and that the right answer had to be (a) or (c). Today, six months after the war's start, I still think that's true. It's still too early to tell whether terrorists will leverage our campaign in Iraq to launch a terrorist attack on the United States, at least beyond the terrorist attacks they're launching daily against our soldiers there. And it's hard to tell how much our counter-terrorism/anti-terrorism measures have done to prevent another attack. However, I remain convinced that another attack is likely, and that we not let our campaign in Iraq distract us from the real threat to American security: terrorism.

Update: Donald Sensing points me towards a very interesting brief from the Congressional Research Service titled "Al Qaeda After the Iraq Conflict", dated May 23, 2003. CRS terrorism specialist Audrey Kurth Cronin concludes that Al Qaeda remains a serious threat to American interests despite the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns:

Most believe that the denial of safe havens and arrests of senior leaders have seriously crippled the organization when judged by its earlier form. However, it may be evolving into something new. For terrorist groups, periods of evolution can be particularly dangerous. Organizations in transition can be especially vulnerable to disruption and destruction, but they can also be less predictable and prone to lash out in order to cause additional damage, rally flagging supporters, and/or prove their continuing viability. With respect to Al Qaeda, evidence of new sophisticated operations, a possible succession plan in action, central coordination of attacks, and growing international ties, all increasingly converging on a common international agenda hostile to the United States and its allies, may give U.S. officials new reason for concern. In the short term at least, even successes in counterterrorist operations against a more decentralized organization can lead to greater difficulty in collecting reliable intelligence, as the paths of communication are increasingly unfamiliar, the personalities are changing, and the locations of operatives are more diffuse. While the long term trajectory is very difficult to assess, for the time being it seems that Al Qaeda (or its successors) has emerged from a period of inactivity and remains a very serious threat, requiring concentrated attention and vigorous countermeasures on the part of its prospective targets. [emphasis added]

posted by Phillip Carter at 15:54

 
Justice Department begins investigation of the Plame affair
Before the dust settles, this probe could claim a West Wing casualty

The Washington Post reports today on a subject that Mark Kleiman and Josh Marshall have been reporting for months -- the likelihood that a senior administration official intentionally disclosed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the media in retaliation for her husband's statements about uranium in Niger. Ms. Plame's husband, Amb. Joseph C. Wilson IV, was the individual dispatched by the Bush Administration to confirm/deny British intelligence regarding uranium in Africa -- the reports that led to those 16 little words being inserted in the President's State of the Union speech to add imminence to our reasons for attacking Iraq. Now, the Post reports, the Justice Department has launched an investigation into the leak of Ms. Plame's name and identity, which is a crime under federal law.

At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, government sources said yesterday.

The operative's identity was published in July after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore from Africa for possible use in nuclear weapons. Bush later backed away from the claim.

The intentional disclosure of a covert operative's identity is a violation of federal law.

The officer's name was disclosed on July 14 in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak, who said his sources were two senior administration officials.

Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. Wilson had just revealed that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account touched off a political fracas over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.

"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.

Analysis: Josh Marshall and Mark Kleiman really have the best coverage on this, along with Kevin Drum and Atrios. I can't add much to what they've already done. However, I will say this screams for an independent prosecutor -- and possibly even a Senate select committee investigation. If the allegations here go as high on the Executive Branch food chain as they seem to, the situation may simply be too politicized for the Justice Department to deal with. I have no doubt that the working FBI agents and federal prosecutors on this case will have the integrity to do the right thing -- whether they vote Republican or Democrat. However, I fear that their politically appointed bosses may feel pressure from the administration. Recognizing the basic fallibility of appointed officials who are beholden to their President, we should remove this from those appointees' hands.

The citation for the federal law here is 50 U.S.C. 421, and was passed as the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. It states:

Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

If a senior administration official did call a Washington journalist, presumably not cleared to receive Top Secret information about CIA operatives' names, and did reveal the name of that operative, then that senior administration is guilty of violating this law. If we're going to throw the book at CPT Youssef Yee and Airman Ahmad Halabi for espionage, then I think we should do the same thing here to this senior administration official.
posted by Phillip Carter at 13:11

 
Airman Halabi's lawyers take the offensive

The Los Angeles Times reports that military lawyers for Airman Ahmad I. Al-Halabi have released details about his case, and explanations for some of the allegations against him. Al-Halabi is being held, along with CPY Youssef Yee, on capital charges connected to alleged acts of espionage at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In their first detailed account previewing Al-Halabi's defense, the lawyers also lashed out at the Air Force for subjecting him to secret military hearings at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and for refusing to let the 24-year-old senior airman speak in Arabic to members of his family. Air Force officials have expressed fear he might be passing on classified information.

The highly unusual defense statement comes as an Air Force general at Al-Halabi's home station, Travis Air Force Base in Northern California, prepares to make a decision on whether to send the young enlistee to a general court-martial. If convicted on charges of espionage and aiding the enemy, he could receive the death penalty.
* * *
. . . the Syrian government has protested that Al-Halabi was not working on its behalf, and his military defense team — Maj. James Key III and Maj. Kim E. London, both at Travis Air Force Base — suggested in a joint statement Friday that their client is not being treated fairly.

"Al-Halabi deserves a fair and public hearing and trial, just like every American is entitled to," they said.

They said his service record describes him as a "star performer for the Air Force," and they noted that he was quickly promoted to senior airman and recognized as "the 60th Supply Squadron Outstanding Airman of the Year for 2001."

"Senior Airman Al-Halabi had just finished a nine-month tour at Guantanamo Bay," they said. "He was on his way back to his home base [Travis] in July 2003 when he was arrested by agents from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations during a layover in Jacksonville, Fla.

"He did have tickets to fly to Syria a few days later out of California, where he was going to meet with his family for a wedding ceremony in Damascus. The wedding had already been postponed because his tour in Cuba had been extended two or three times," the attorneys said.

Analysis: One thing this story does is give lie to the myth that military defense lawyers don't do their job as defense counsel. I have argued for some time that military defense attorneys tend to do a better job than their civilian public defender counterparts. For one, they're better resourced. Second, they tend to have more experience -- both as a defense attorney and as a prosecutor. Third, they usually understand the system quite well. However, I think it's really interesting that these lawyers are launching a public relations offensive on Airman Halabi's defense. If I had to guess, I'd say they're trying to raise the stakes for the government in order to apply pressure that might lead to a plea bargain. And if these facts are true, they just might succeed.
posted by Phillip Carter at 14:13

 
Moussaoui inches one step closer to a military commission

The Justice Department said yesterday in a court filing that it would not oppose "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui's motion for dismissal of charges levied against him in U.S. District Court, according to the New York Times. The move comes at a time when Moussaoui is seeking access to other terrorists being held in custody by the U.S., including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah. The government disagrees, saying that even though these men may have exculpatory information, the national security interests at stake dictate that Moussaoui should not gain direct access to these potential witnesses.

The department's announcement that it would not oppose a defense request for dismissal cleared the way for the judge, Leonie M. Brinkema, to throw out the case against Mr. Moussaoui as early as Friday.

The judge, in district court in Alexandria, Va., had already signaled that she might have no other option because of the government's refusal to allow Mr. Moussaoui and his court-appointed lawyers to interview captured terrorists from Al Qaeda who might provide valuable defense testimony.

While dismissal of the case would be an obvious symbolic blow to the Justice Department and its larger prosecution strategy against terrorists, the department insisted today that the prosecution of Mr. Moussaoui was far from over and that the government was hopeful that an appeals court would allow the trial to proceed.

The Justice Department is seeking the death penalty in the case, the most prominent terrorist prosecution to result from the Sept. 11 attacks.

Officials of the Bush administration have also made clear that if Mr. Moussaoui cannot be prosecuted in a civilian court because of the question of defense witnesses, he will be moved to a military tribunal, where he may have fewer rights to seek testimony from the captured terrorists.

In a declaration filed on Wednesday and made public today by Judge Brinkema, the Justice Department did not ask directly that the charges be dismissed, but it said dismissal was "the surest route for ensuring that the questions at issue here can promptly be presented to the Fourth Circuit," a reference to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va.

Analysis: That was the consensus of all the legal reporters at all the major newspapers, and I think it's probably right. The Justice Department is making a very safe bet here. First, the 4th Circuit has been relatively receptive to government arguments about national security in the Hamdi and Moussaoui cases, and there's no reason to think it will change course now. And even if the government loses on appeal, it has the recourse of designating Moussaoui as an enemy combatant and, if it desires, charging him with crimes in a military tribunal. Of course, that might look a little disingenuous, and someone would certainly petition a federal court for a writ of habeas corpus on Moussaoui's behalf. But I still think the administration would prevail, because of recent decisions in the Padilla and Hamdi cases which have upheld the government's right to do this (subject to a few exceptions such as access to counsel).

Does all this really matter, or is this a sideshow? Compared to the combat operations in Afghanistan or the anti-terrorism work done by the FBI and Treasury Department, this case is a sideshow. But it has important precedential value for the legal fight on terrorism, which may change course depending on the outcome of this case. If the federal government can successfully prosecute this case in federal court, they may do so in the future. That may paradoxically help defendants who might otherwise be hauled before a military tribunal or tossed in a brig as an enemy combatant. On the other hand, if the 4th Circuit delivers a smack-down to the Justice Department here, we may not see any future cases brought in federal court. More to follow.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:22

 
Rush Limbaugh gets liberal with the facts in anti-Clark column

The latest mud to get slung at retired Gen. Wesley Clark comes from Rush Limbaugh on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Rush makes a facile comparison of Gen. Clark to Union Gen. George McClellan, another military figure who ran for President as a Democrat during wartime. In doing so, he cites to some instances from Clark's career which have been, according to Rush, less than stellar. Here's an excerpt:

Gen. McClellan graduated from West Point, second in his class. Also a trained engineer, he was decorated for his "zeal, gallantry, and ability" in constructing roads and bridges over routes for the marching army during the Mexican War. McClellan had much charisma. He was considered a great administrator who reorganized the Union army into a mighty fighting machine.

But, you say, McClellan was an indecisive general who feared using his forces. As NATO chief, Gen. Clark, on the other hand, urged his Pentagon bosses to let him introduce ground troops into the war against Serbia, and he even was willing to use military force to stop the Russians from occupying an airport at Pristina, Kosovo.

But Gen. Clark was badly wrong on both counts. If he had not been overruled by his superior, there would have been unnecessary casualties resulting from the deployment of ground troops. And if his subordinate, British Gen. Sir Michael Jackson, had not refused Gen. Clark's order to confront the Russian troops--who wound up cooperating with NATO peacekeeping efforts--the outcome could have been disastrous.

Now for the debunking. I'm not sure how well Rush Limbaugh knows these issues, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he's not intentionally misstating the facts here -- he's just doing so out of ignorance. In the interests of education, I'd like to correct one major mistake in his column.

Let's analyze this excerpt from Rush's column: "As NATO chief, Gen. Clark, on the other hand, urged his Pentagon bosses to let him introduce ground troops into the war against Serbia. . . If he had not been overruled by his superior, there would have been unnecessary casualties resulting from the deployment of ground troops . . ."

I'm no Balkans expert; I didn't deploy to Kosovo or Bosnia like most Army MPs because I was in Korea, and then the experimental 4th Infantry Division. But I have read a lot on this subject, including Waging Modern War, War in a Time of Peace, The Mission, and A Problem From Hell. Gen. Clark did urge the Pentagon and White House to do two major things here: make ground troops a realistic option, and allow the use of Army aviation (Apache helicopters) to interdict Serbian ground units who were continuing their ethnic cleansing campaign.

(1) The ground troops option was necessary to make the threat of force credible to Slobodan Milosevic -- a man who Clark knew well from previous negotiations at Ramboillet and from the negotiation of the Dayton Accords. (See To End a War by Richard Holbrooke) President Clinton took this option off the table prematurely as a way to shore up domestic support and limit the scope of the conflict. Gen. Clark argued (quite correctly) that the credible threat of a ground invasion must be made to force Milosevic to capitulate. Recognizing the wisdom of this strategy, President Clinton made ground troops an option and set plans in motion that could have led to the land invasion of Kosovo. As it turned out, these plans subsequently formed the foundation for deployment plans for KFOR -- the force which eventually established peace and order in Kosovo. By leaning forward in his foxhole on this issue, Gen. Clark displayed a great degree of strategic, operational, and tactical acumen. Not only did the credible threat of ground invasion help Milosevic cave, but it also helped NATO forces quickly enter, occupy, and establish order in Kosovo.

(2) The Apache issue grew out of a basic problem: NATO high-altitude bombing could not successfully interdict Milosevic's ground forces, due to altitude, accuracy, and other issues. Interdicting Serbian units on the ground required slow, methodical, low bombing runs by aircraft with the capability to loiter on station for long periods of time: i.e. helicopters and A-10 aircraft. However, such aircraft are quite vulnerable to ground fire and surface-to-air-missiles, necessitating the use of artillery to suppress those air defenses. Clark wanted to stop the genocide, and he knew that Apaches could do the job. But to use Apaches without losing them, he also knew he had to shoot SEAD (suppression of enemy air defense). The Pentagon wouldn't let him do it. Pentagon lawyers told Clark that he could not do so because firing unobserved artillery fire would violate the Rules of Engagement. However, deploying forward observers (possibly Army Special Forces A-Teams) on the ground would have represented a serious escalation of the war and of the war's tactical risk. Clark was willing to take that risk because he felt, as I do, that we needed to stop the genocide on the ground with Apaches. Unfortunately, the White House was not willing to take that risk, advised by a Pentagon that was more concerned with force protection than mission accomplishment. The Army did eventually deploy Apaches to Albania, but they never flew one mission during the war.

Rush's column glosses over this entire issue, treating Clark as a trigger-happy general who wanted to start WWIII. I don't think the facts, as reported by journalists David Halberstam, Dana Priest, and Samantha Power, bear that out.

One other note: The long knives are coming out for Clark. At a town hall meeting in California, retired-Gen. Henry "Hugh" Shelton had some choice words for Clark in response to an audience question. Gen. Shelton is an old warrior who served his nation well, and wears both the scars and medals to prove it. He's also the man who effectively relieved Wes Clark as SACEUR, and with whom Clark clashed repeatedly during the Kosovo War. This is a clash of the titans, and it's hard for me to evaluate (from my position of relative ignorance) what's really going on here in this row between two four-star generals.

"What do you think of General Wesley Clark and would you support him as a presidential candidate," was the question put to him by moderator Dick Henning, assuming that all military men stood in support of each other. General Shelton took a drink of water and Henning said, "I noticed you took a drink on that one!"

"That question makes me wish it were vodka," said Shelton. "I've known Wes for a long time. I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart. I'm not going to say whether I'm a Republican or a Democrat. I'll just say Wes won't get my vote."

In a sense, this was to be expected. Unlike the other politicians in the race, Clark hasn't lived under media scrutiny like this before. Clark's skeletons in the closet haven't been publicly aired like all the other candidates' skeletons. Moreover, Clark appears very threatening to various groups on both sides of the aisle -- he's likely to receive a lot more mud by the time this campaign ends. However, I wish that Gen. Shelton would have left things at "Wes won't get my vote" without making the vague allusion to Clark's integrity and character. Those comments seem out of character for a man like Shelton, whose reputation as a soldier's soldier is at least as great as Clark's reputation as a soldier-scholar.
posted by Phillip Carter at 20:03

 
Official details on the Yee and Halabi cases

After letting the media guess for nearly a week, the Pentagon finally released the official word on CPT Yee and Airman Halabi, the two servicemembers suspected of espionage at Guantanamo.

Senior Airman Ahmad I. Al Halabi, assigned to the 60th Logistical Readiness Squadron at Travis Air Force Base, Calif., is being held in pre-trial confinement at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., following his Article 32 hearing last week. An Article 32 hearing is the military's equivalent of a preliminary hearing and grand jury process in the civilian justice system.

Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Jean Schaefer said Al Halabi, who was apprehended July 23 at Jacksonville Naval Air Station, Fla., is charged with numerous Uniform Code of Military Justice violations. These include three charges of aiding the enemy, four charges of espionage, and nine charges of making false statements. Four other charges allege violations of the U.S. Code relating to espionage and to executing a fraudulent credit scheme.

The six-page charge sheet against Al Halabi, a native of Syria, accuses him of activities at Jacksonville Naval Air Station on the day of his arrest conducted "with intent or reason to believe it would be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of Syria." These include delivering three e-mail messages containing classified information about the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and attempting to deliver two handwritten notes and more than 180 electronic versions of written notes from detainees to a third party to be carried to Syria.

The writings "directly concerned intelligence gathering and planning for the United States' war against terrorism," the charge sheet against Al Halabi notes.

He also is accused of e-mailing detainees' names, countries of origins, addresses, and corresponding internment serial numbers "to unauthorized person or persons whom he, the accused, knew to be the enemy" and of failing to report to military authorities that he had made contact with the Embassy of the Syrian Arab Republic.

Other charges against Al Halabi accuse him of wrongfully taking photographs of facilities in and around Camp Delta, of improperly handling classified information, of unauthorized communication with detainees and of failing to report other service members' unauthorized communications or attempted communications with detainees.

Schaefer said these activities occurred between December 2002 and July 2003, when Al Halabi was on temporary duty at Guantanamo Bay serving as a translator. He was apprehended at Jacksonville Naval Air Station when he returned to the states on personal leave. Al Halabi was transported to Travis Air Force Base the following day.
* * *
Meanwhile, a military magistrate ruled Sept. 15 that the military has sufficient reason to hold Army Capt. Yousef Yee while it continues its investigation into his case.

Duany said Yee was arrested at Jacksonville Naval Air Station on Sept. 10 and is being held at the Naval Consolidated Brig at Charleston, S.C.

No formal charges have been filed against Yee. Duany explained that the Uniformed Code of Military Justice gives the military up to 120 days to formally charge an accused service member and begin a trial.

This is a start. But it'd be nice to see redacted versions of the actual charging documents posted, so that legal experts could understand exactly what's going on down at Gitmo.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:54

 
Another soldier under suspicion at Gitmo

The Los Angeles Times reports that the Pentagon has launched a major probe at Guantanamo Bay after the arrests of two servicemembers for espionage and other charges. Speaking with reporters today, Gen. Peter Pace (Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) said that one or two specific individuals were under surveillance in connection with this investigation.

"We don't presume that the two we know about is all there is to it," Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Wednesday.

Indeed, military officials said investigators are scrutinizing at least two other individuals, including an outside contractor, in their widening security probe. The officials declined to elaborate, and stressed that there had been no new arrests.

"I do get the sense from our law enforcement guys that other arrests are imminent," said a U.S. Navy official.

While the LA Times didn't bury the lead of this story, it did bury some extremely interesting comments at the end of its story, which will run on Thursday:

Sources who have worked at Guantanamo Bay said it would not have been difficult for a translator such as Al-Halabi to be in unsupervised contact with prisoners and smuggle out classified and sensitive information.

Though there are inspection points and routine checks, the base operates on trust to a significant degree because those working there have security clearances.

"When I was there they didn't check your pockets and there was no metal detector," said William Tierney, a former Army intelligence officer who served as a civilian translator at Guantanamo in 2002 before being forced to leave after being accused of interfering with interrogations.

A former Guantanamo interrogator said that translators also have access to classified computer networks, and that documents such as flight schedules and cell configurations are widely available.

"Any one of us could walk out of there with security documents," the former interrogator said.

Analysis: There really isn't any excuse for sloppy security. It always traces to complacency on the part of security personnel, intelligence personnel, and individuals who ought to know better. If the mission at Gitmo was this important, then we should have put more command emphasis on making sure security was tight there. Maybe that means doing command inspections; maybe it means rotating troops frequently; maybe it means denying access to all but a few key personnel. But if it's true that security was lax at Gitmo, and that CPT Yee and Airman Halabi were simply doing what everyone else did there, that's going to be a pretty embarassing issue for the government to deal with at trial.

On the larger story, I'm not surprised that we have more people under suspicion. Given the circumstances, it's likely that quite a few soldiers befriended detainees, simply as a human reaction to living on opposite sides of the fence for so long. But it will shock me (as CPT Yee and Airman Halabi's arrests did) if we actually find more people who allegedly committed acts of espionage. Such a discovery will shake my faith in the fidelity of my fellow serviceperson, and give me pause to doubt the fidelity of those with whom I might serve alongside in the future. In the military, you rely on your brother (or sister) in the fighting position next to you to do his or her job in combat. Mission accomplishment in the military derives from unit effectiveness; unit effectiveness is built on unit cohesion; unit cohesion is built on trust and shared sacrifice. These traitorous acts, if true, undermine that trust, and as a result, undermine the entire American military.
posted by Phillip Carter at 19:54

 
Coda to the Max Cleland column

This note earned me a lot of feedback, for which I'm grateful. In response to comments from some extremely articulate readers, I'd like to clarify a couple of points.

(1) Max Cleland was wounded in combat, but not by enemy fire. One of his grenades exploded after falling from his Load Bearing Equipment to the ground as he exited a helicopter. Here's how Sen. Cleland recalls the incident:

I left my hometown of Lithonia, Georgia, a strong young man heading to a foreign land to fight for my country. Vietnam — another world, unlike anything I had ever seen before. I remember standing on the edge of the bomb crater that had been my home for five days and five nights, stretching my six-foot, two-inch frame, and becoming caught up in excitement. The battle for Khe Sanh was over, and I had come out of it unhurt and alive! Five terrible days and nights were behind us. In spite of dire predictions, we had held Khe Sanh. I had scored a personal victory over myself and my fears. I had become a soldier and could really look the old sarge in the face. As Stephen Crane put it in his great book on war, The Red Badge of Courage, “I went to face the Great Death and found it was only the Great Death.” My tour of duty in Vietnam was almost over. In another month I’d be going home. I smiled, thinking of the good times waiting stateside.

On April 8, 1968, I volunteered for one last mission. The helicopter moved in low. The troops jumped out with M16 rifles in hand as we crouched low to the ground to avoid the helicopter blades. Then I saw the grenade. It was where the chopper had lifted off. It must be mine, I thought. Grenades had fallen off my web gear before. Shifting the M16 to my left hand and holding it behind me, I bent down to pick up the grenade.

A blinding explosion threw me backwards.

(Credit to Ted Barlow's weblog for this quote) Some have written me to say that Sen. Cleland should not get to take credit for his war wounds, since they happened by accident. With all due respect, that's a load of manure. The essential nature of war is that it is chaos -- the very antithesis of order. Soldiers are wounded in combat all the time by friendly fire, by mistakes, and by sheer bad luck. Cleland may not have taken an enemy bullet the way Wes Clark did. But I don't think that diminishes his wounds, or his valor, in the slightest. Regardless of how he earned his Purple Heart, Max Cleland knows the human cost of war. That personal understanding of war gives him credibility on the issue. I've never been in combat, and I'm glad for that fact, but I have volumes of respect for those who have been there.

(2) A lot's been made of the Iraq v. Vietnam comparison, with partisans on both sides of the issue making good arguments for why their case is right. I tend to think that Iraq is not another Vietnam, but that Iraq is a pretty bad situation nonetheless. One extremely smart reader writes to explain why the two conflicts are different, and I generally agree with his logic:

"The Vietnam analogy is so strikingly inappropriate to Iraq that one hardly knows where to begin. At this point, our enemies in Iraq are 1) unpopular with the locals, 2) unable to deploy any heavy weapons, 3) having to pay malcontents a bounty for killing Americans, 4) without reliable sanctuary in neigboring countries (although they are able to infiltrate effectively), and 5) without large-scale support from a superpower. None of these was true in Vietnam. The problems we are having in Iraq are also problems we didn't have in Vietnam: 1) Responsibility for building up a modern infrastructure in the face of sabotage, 2) establishing civic consciousness in a society that has been terrorized out of it, 3) dealing with sectarian and interethnic conflict among our allies, 4) primarily urban combat engagements which make shooting back tricky, 5) providing police services. The only similarities to Vietnam are superficial ones: We don't have enough native speakers, there's a cultural gap, the weather conditions are very unpleasant, etc."

That said, we still face an extremely difficult situation in Iraq. Our soldiers are fighting a difficult counter-insurgency campaign against trained ex-Iraqi soldiers, foreign paramilitaries, and other partisans. They have to cope with a staggering amount of munitions that melted back into Iraqi society after the war -- talk about a gun control problem! The Iraqi people do not wholly support us, nor do they wholly oppose us -- the issue remains in doubt. Furthermore, as my reader comments, we do have to manage all the nation-building stuff at the same time that we're fighting this counter-insurgency campaign.

So in a sense, the Iraq campaign is more difficult than Vietnam was, in the sense that it's more complex. Instead of merely facing a guerilla war, or merely facing a bipolar struggle between North and South, we face an incredibly complex situation in Iraq where several sides are vying for control of the country -- or their piece of it. We have international considerations that simply weren't present in Vietnam, and we have to cope with instantaneous global reporting of these issues while we deal with them. On top of all that, we have to rebuild Iraq. I don't think that Iraq is an impossible mission, and indeed, I think we must succeed there. But succeeding in Iraq will require pragmatic policies grounded in reality, not hope.
posted by Phillip Carter at 19:43

 
Too cheap to pay the whole fare?
Leave plan for soldiers in Iraq only covers the way to BWI

The 4th Infantry Division is starting a midtour leave program for its soldiers in Iraq, according to the San Antonio Express-News. The program is designed to boost soldier morale for men and women deployed to Iraq for a year, and is roughly analogous to the midtour leave given to soldiers in Korea during the 1-year hardship tour there. In theory, it's a good idea. In reality, this plan is something that only a Pentagon bureaucrat could come up with.

The division's commander, Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, told families and soldiers Tuesday that the "midtour" leave program for troops in the U.S. Central Command had been approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Two well-placed Defense Department officials later confirmed that statement, with one saying those leaves would begin in days.

Soldiers with the 4th Infantry Division, in Iraq since late March, will take leaves through January, Odierno said in an e-mail message obtained by the San Antonio Express-News. But he warned that only 21,000 of the 27,000 task force soldiers would be eligible.
* * *
Soldiers will be able to use up to 15 days of their annual monthlong leave for trips to the United States. They'll fly from Iraq or Kuwait to Frankfurt, Germany, with U.S.-based troops then flying to Baltimore-Washington International Airport at government expense. The troops will have to pay their ways home or meet relatives in the Baltimore-Washington area.

During Vietnam, troops flew at government expense to Hawaii but had to pay their own ways home.

One of them, Lawrence Korb, an assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration, was critical of the Pentagon's decision to require soldiers to pay their own way home, saying he doubted that officials had "thought this thing through."

He also said he saw the move as a way of appeasing angry families, who might urge soldiers to leave the all-volunteer force once their duty tours end.

Analysis: In all fairness, the soldiers probably can afford to pay the rest of the way, considering that they've all been tax-free for the length of their deployment, and they've all earned supplemental pay for being in a combat zone. Of course, most soldiers have families these days, so it's not like that money goes into a bank account somewhere. But this plan still strikes me as boneheaded.

At the very least, the Pentagon could spring the extra $300 for a roundtrip flight from Baltimore. (Or less if these soldiers flew Southwest) Or, more logically, the Pentagon could fly these soldiers back to their home stations where their famiiles are -- Fort Hood, TX, Fort Carson, CO, or elsewhere. That would make sense, considering that's where these soldiers deployed from and that's where many of their families remain. But flying them to BWI makes almost no sense at all, unless you're trying to stimulate the Baltimore tourist economy after Hurricane Isabel.

Update: The Pentagon formally announced its leave policy yesterday afternoon, possibly in reaction to this story. The good news is that soldiers will not be stranded at BWI -- they'll be flown to one of a few major airports scattered around the country.

David S.C. Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, approved a U.S. Central Command request for the program Sept. 23. Participants have the choice of traveling free from Iraq to gateway airports in Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Los Angeles or Frankfurt, Germany, and return, according to Chu's approval memo. Travel beyond those points would be at the members' expense.

This is a little bit more fair. But I still think it'd make more sense to return them to their station of origin, if that's what the soldier wants. A couple of readers suggested that these soldiers might take advantage of military "space available" flights. Unfortunately, that's not really an option these days. With the exception of regular hops like Seattle-Korea, there really aren't a lot of space-A flights these days.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:22

 
Military tribunals to begin in early 2004

The New York Daily News reports, on the basis of confidential unnamed sources, that the Pentagon plans to try men at Guantanamo Bay in military tribunals at the beginning of 2004. Many of the 600+ detainees there have been held since late 2001, when they were captured in Afghanistan, and are reputed to represent a mix of Taliban and Al Qaeda guerillas.

Four detainees have been picked to face the first round of terror trials before a military tribunal, the sources said.

Their identities were not revealed, but sources told the Daily News that they are lower-ranking members of Al Qaeda or the Taliban familiar with plans for terror attacks against the U.S. or its interests.

They likely will be charged with conspiracy to commit acts of terror, with prosecutors looking to secure plea bargains and use their testimony against higher-ranking operatives.

"It gives prosecutors ammo against others because they have their potential testimony," one source said.

Charges against the suspects are expected to be announced next month, with the tribunal expected to meet in November. The trials could begin as early as January, sources said.

As a prosecutorial strategy, this makes sense. You want to prosecute the little fish in order to a) get testimony on the record, b) test your cases, c) learn what evidentiary problems exist, and d) apply leverage against the big fish. If you can get these little fish to plead guilty in exchange for testimony, so much the better. Of course, it's hard to see how anything short of the death penalty will give prosecutors leverage in these cases, since the detainees are already being held indefinitely. It's hard for me to see a way we could make this incarceration worse, while still staying within the bounds of the Third Geneva Convention. (Note: the Pentagon says these detainees are not officials POWs under the GC. Technically, that's not true until we hold Art. V tribunals to determine their status, a formal step which has not been taken. Therefore, the default rule under international law is that they are POWs, and that they deserve Geneva Convention rights. The U.S. has observed this rule in practice, but not as a matter of policy.)

Politically, the decision to launch these tribunals is another matter. I'm not sure the President has the same political capital as when he signed his 13 Nov 01 Executive Order authorizing these tribunals, and I'm not sure this is the wisest move during an election year. The White House is essentially handing the Democratic party a major campaign issue on a silver platter -- "Look, we're willing to bend the Constitution and the Geneva Convention." Though they're probably horrified too, I'm sure that civil libertarians on both sides of the aisle are salivating over the prospect of debating this issue.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:10

 
Fmr. Sen. Cleland to the White House:
"Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President. Sorry you didn't go when you had the chance."

TAPPED drew my attention today to a column by former-Senator Max Cleland which ran in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about Iraq. At first glance, some might call this a facile comparison of Iraq to Vietnam. They would be wrong. A deeper look first reveals that Cleland has the credibility to say everything in this piece. He is a decorated Vietnam veteran who was grievously wounded in combat, and who rose to serve as administrator of the Veterans Administration. Cleland knows what war is all about, and he knows the human cost of war all too well. He also knows the strategic side of war, from his service in the U.S. Senate and current service on the independent 9/11 Commission. Suffice to say, Cleland has the c.v. to back up what he writes. And this essay doesn't read like your typical critique of the White House. Cleland takes on the White House, point by point, and explains why our policy in Iraq has run aground:

Unfortunately, the people who drove the engine to get into the war in Iraq never served in Vietnam. Not the president. Not the vice president. Not the secretary of defense. Not the deputy secretary of defense. Too bad. They could have learned some lessons:

• Don't underestimate the enemy. The enemy always has one option you cannot control. He always has the option to die. This is especially true if you are dealing with true believers and guerillas fighting for their version of reality, whether political or religious. They are what Tom Friedman of The New York Times calls the "non-deterrables." If those non-deterrables are already in their country, they will be able to wait you out until you go home.

• If the enemy adopts a "hit-and-run" strategy designed to inflict maximum casualties on you, you may win every battle, but (as Walter Lippman once said about Vietnam) you can't win the war.

• If you adopt a strategy of not just pre-emptive strike but also pre-emptive war, you own the aftermath. You better plan for it. You better have an exit strategy because you cannot stay there indefinitely unless you make it the 51st state.

If you do stay an extended period of time, you then become an occupier, not a liberator. That feeds the enemy against you.

• If you adopt the strategy of pre-emptive war, your intelligence must be not just "darn good," as the president has said; it must be "bulletproof," as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed the administration's was against Saddam Hussein. Anything short of that saps credibility.

• If you want to know what is really going on in the war, ask the troops on the ground, not the policy-makers in Washington.

• In a democracy, instead of truth being the first casualty in war, it should be the first cause of war. It is the only way the Congress and the American people can cope with getting through it. As credibility is strained, support for the war and support for the troops go downhill. Continued loss of credibility drains troop morale, the media become more suspicious, the public becomes more incredulous and Congress is reduced to hearings and investigations.

Instead of learning the lessons of Vietnam, where all of the above happened, the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense and the deputy secretary of defense have gotten this country into a disaster in the desert.

Strong words from a strong-minded American who's been there, done that, and gotten the scars to prove it. I don't think that military service should be a prerequisite to political leadership. (For the record, the President served in the Texas Air National Guard and the SecDef served as a naval aviator on active duty and in the reserves.) But I do see a paucity of such experience in the White House and its command team -- as well as a lack of appreciation for the kinds of lessons that such experience brings. Sure, you can read about war and learn its impact from textbooks at the Kennedy School or Hoover Institute. But as one military historian wrote, the study of war by the uninitiated through books is like the study of sex by virgins with only pornography as their guide.

Much has been made in recent months about national service, and the extent to which our elites avoid national service -- particularly uniformed service. While I do not support conscription, I do think we need to do better as a society at voluntarily spreading the burden of military service. Our working class and middle class already do their part. The elite class does not. While doing some reading the other day, I came across this letter written by a general to a congressman during WWII about a conscript having adjustment problems. (Thanks to Andrew Olmsted) I think it expresses my point quite well.

27th Infantry Division
Office of the Commanding General
Fort Ord, California

27 February 1942

The Honorable Clinton P. Anderson, M.C.
House of Representatives

Dear Mr. Anderson:

. . . If doctors in the future are to have the privilege of practicing their profession, if archeologists are to investigate antiquity, if students are to have the privilege of taking degrees, and professors the privilege of teaching in their own way, somebody must march and fight and bleed and die and I know no reason why students, doctors, professors, and archeologists shouldn't do their share of it.

You say, "It strikes me as too bad to take that type of education and bury it in a rifle squad," as though there were something low or mean or servile being a member of a rifle squad and only morons and ditch diggers should be given such duty. I know of no place red blooded men of intelligence and initiative are more needed than in the rifle or weapons squad.

In this capacity, full recognition is given to the placing of men so that they may do the work most beneficial to the unit of which they are a part. Whenever men are needed for a particular duty, the record of all men having the required skills and qualifications are considered. I have examined the records of Private Lister and it is fairly complete. I know he holds the 100- yard dash and broad jump records in the Border Conference; that he was president of his fraternity; that his mother was born in Alabama and his father in Michigan; that his father lives at the Burlington Hotel in Washington and I suspect asked you to do what you could to get his son on other duty.

It is desirable that all men, regardless of their specialty, shall learn by doing; how hard it is to march with a pack for 20 miles; how to hold their own in bayonet combat; and how to respect the man who really takes it, namely the private in the rifle squad. . . .

Sincerely yours,

RALPH T. McPERNELL
Brig Gen, USA
Commanding

Sen. Cleland certainly understands what it means to be a private in a rifle squad. So do Wes Clark, Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, and Anthony Principi. American foreign policy might look a little wiser if we had more men like these in high office.
posted by Phillip Carter at 19:01

 
Second military servicemember detained for Gitmo security violations

The AP reports (via the NY Times) that military officials have taken an Air Force serviceperson into custody for allegedly misusing classified information in connection with Guantanamo Bay. Details are very sketchy at this point, as they are in CPT Yee's case.

The man is being held in California on security-related matters, one Pentagon official said. Neither of two officials who spoke about the matter on condition of anonymity would say whether the Air Force investigation was linked to the arrest earlier this month of the Muslim military chaplain at the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The military has classified many details about the prison camp and the detainees and has not identified any of the men being held there. Military officials have said the fight against terrorism could be hampered if terrorist groups got such information.

More to follow . . .

Update I: The AP adds some more details to its story (via the New York Times) about this second individual, who was actually arrested before CPT Yee. It's unclear whether the two men were working together, although it seems awfully coincidental if they weren't.

Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi is being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, facing 32 criminal charges, spokesman Maj. Michael Shavers said.

Al-Halabi worked as an Arabic language translator at the prison camp for al-Qaida and Taliban suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Shavers said. The Air Force enlisted man knew the Muslim chaplain at the prison arrested earlier this month, but it's unclear if the two arrests are linked, Shavers said.

The translator was arrested more than six weeks before the chaplain, Shavers said.

Al-Halabi is charged with nine counts related to espionage, three counts of aiding the enemy, 11 counts of disobeying a lawful order, and nine counts of making a false official statement.

Notes on the charges: Once again, espionage and aiding the enemy are capital offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The penalties for disobeying a lawful order and making a false official statement are comparitively light, but these sentences are cumulative in nature. I can only make a SWAG as to how these charges were chosen. The espionage and aiding the enemy counts go towards the overall plan. Each of the disobeying-an-order counts probably relates to a specific instance where the defendant did something wrong with a classified document. And if the defendant was required to sign some sort of log or register saying he had logged in documents, every signature would constitute a false official statement. A fact pattern like that could easily add up to the charges listed.
posted by Phillip Carter at 11:01

 
CPT Yee's last interview

This morning's Miami Herald carries excerpts from a 30 Jul 03 interview with CPT Youssef Yee conducted at the Guantanamo Bay base where more than 600 detainees are currently being held by the American military. These statements don't seem as defensive as those made in CPT Yee's article in "The Wire", but they are nonetheless odd for an American military officer.

''As the chaplain, what I do is focus on what the person is doing here and now in the present, rather than what a person was fighting for in order to get here,'' Capt. Youseff Yee said in a July 30 interview at the base where the Army is holding about 660 terrorism suspects from 42 countries. "What I try to do is improve a person's situation or help them with their quality of life -- what can I do to help them deal with the situation that they're dealing with?''
* * *
In his interview with The Herald at the hut that served as a mosque for the handful of Muslim soldiers at the base, Yee declined to answer questions about his feelings toward the accused members of the Taliban and al Qaeda.

''It's not my job here to brand someone as guilty or innocent,'' he said. "I look at my role as to try to help that person in any way I can deal with the difficulties thy are experiencing. This is the purpose of the chaplain.''

Yee said he had spoken to every detainee over the course of the past year, but declined to address what he termed the ''justice aspect'' or reveal what detainees told him about their indefinite detention without charges.
* * *
''I'm there as a chaplain to listen with a sympathetic ear to any concerns they may have,'' Yee said. "In terms of indefiniteness, not looking at a specific complaint in general, I would encourage any detainee to be as patient as possible with his situation. Patience is a general encouragement of the Koran.''

In ministering to the needs of the detainees, Yee said his duties included meeting with any enemy combatant who requested time to talk with him in order to pass on a complaint or a need. Guards would enter the chaplain's request in a computer system that would generate a daily printout for him. He said typical requests included talking about issues, getting religious books or a different translation of the Koran, or getting prayer beads, prayer oils or a prayer cap from a stock he kept to distribute.

One of the improvements to detainee life he said he initiated was getting prepackaged meals to be given to detainees who wanted to fast so they could eat before sunrise and after sundown.

Legal note: As a matter of law, nearly all this evidence may be excluded from the trial as irrelevant, or as inadmissable character evidence. (See Rules 403 and 404 respectively in the Military Rules of Evidence, found in part III of the Manual for Courts Martial.) All this character evidence may not be relevant at all to the issues before the military jury in CPT Yee's case. And even if it is relevant, the risk of prejudice or confusion may be too great, thus warranting its exclusion. Unless CPT Yee puts his character at issue, it will be a tough fight to get this stuff in evidence. The military prosecutors will need to show, just as they would in federal court, that this evidence is somehow relevant to CPT Yee's intent or state of mind, and that its probative value outweighs its prejudice. That will be a very tough case to make.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:31

 
Ex-spinster joins CNN to provide spin analysis

Victoria Clarke, widely regarded as one of the better Pentagon press secretaries in recent years, has accepted a position with CNN that may put her across the airwaves from her former colleagues. (See NYT report here) In addition to managing the press after Sept. 11, Clarke is credited with helping to craft and stage-manage the public persona of Don Rumsfeld, as well as developing the "embedding" program for journalists in the second Gulf War.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:07

 
Analysis of CPT Yee and the potential for a treason charge

Matt at Stop the Bleating has done substantial research into the history of America's treason law (uniquely codified in our Constitution), and has some thoughts today on how that law might apply to CPT Yee's case. As of yet, treason has not been listed in any story as a charge that CPT Yee may face. Nonetheless, I think the issues Matt identifies may be applicable to the other charges (e.g. espionage, aiding the enemy) that CPT Yee has been held over on.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:02

 
About face!
Hackworth gives green light to Wes Clark's campaign

Col. David Hackworth once called Gen. Wesley Clark a "perfumed prince", a derogatory term for a senior officer more concerned with appearances and politics than with muddy boots soldiering. In a column today, Col. Hackworth reverses course abruptly, giving Clark a pretty strong endorsement as the kind of general you'd want to have as Commander-in-Chief.

No doubt he’s made his share of enemies. He doesn’t suffer fools easily and wouldn’t have allowed the dilettantes who convinced Dubya to do Iraq to even cut the White House lawn. So he should prepare for a fair amount of dart-throwing from detractors he’s ripped into during the past three decades.

Hey, I am one of those: I took a swing at Clark during the Kosovo campaign when I thought he screwed up the operation, and I called him a “Perfumed Prince.” Only years later did I discover from his book and other research that I was wrong – the blame should have been worn by British timidity and William Cohen, U.S. SecDef at the time.

At the interview, Clark came along without the standard platoon of handlers and treated the little folks who poured the coffee and served the bacon and eggs with exactly the same respect and consideration he gave the biggies in the dining room like my colleague Larry King and Bob Tisch, the Regency Hotel’s owner. An appealing common touch.

But if he wins the election, don’t expect an Andrew Jackson field-soldier type. Clark’s an intellectual, and his military career is more like Ike’s – that of a staff guy and a brilliant high-level commander. Can he make tough decisions? Bet on it. Just like Ike did during his eight hard but prosperous years as president.

Analysis: Hack's an "opinion leader" in the military community, to use a phrase I learned in college. His weekly column gets circulated widely by e-mail, and often gets picked up by major newspapers. Hack is a bona fide war hero from Korea and Vietnam -- and his three books have earned him a great deal of prestige among soldiers and veterans. A lot of folks may see this as a signal to embrace Clark as the best pro-military candidate for 2004 -- to include the incumbent. This endorsement is very, very important for a man who hopes to sell himself as a veteran to the American public.

On the other than, this endorsement may provoke even more hostility towards Clark among military establishment types. Clark already has the reputation as an iconclastic intellectual who left others in his dust on the way to the top. Hack provokes a pretty violent reaction from many in the defense community, and his endorsement of Clark may make Clark seem like a more threatening candidate; someone who might really shake things up in the Pentagon. If that's the case, we can expect to see a barrage of character attacks on Gen. Clark in the near future. More to follow.
posted by Phillip Carter at 21:16

 
Panel releases report on US Air Force Academy scandal

The New York Times reports that an independent panel has issued its report on the sexual assault scandal which has rocked the U.S. Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs. The verdict isn't good for the youngest service academy, which comes as no surprise to those who have watched this case. (The full text of the report is available here from the Pentagon.) The most serious allegations concern the leadership of the Air Force Academy and the Air Force, who may have disregarded reports of sexual abuse at the academy for quite some time.

The commission also said that in an attempt "to shield Air Force Headquarters from public criticism," the Air Force's general counsel had largely ignored this history of official neglect when he reported on rape at the academy earlier this year.

The blistering report released here by the commission, led by former Representative Tillie Fowler, the Florida Republican, said sexual assault had been a problem at the Air Force Academy throughout the last decade, and possibly since women were first admitted in 1976.

The findings came as something of a surprise to victims' advocates, many of whom had initially criticized the panel's makeup as biased against women in the military, prompting the resignation of one member and the former director even before the panel began its work. Its members were appointed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Citing repeated warnings from the Air Force surgeon general and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, as well as the Senate Armed Services Committee, the commission concluded that, "Since at least 1993, the highest levels of Air Force leadership have known of serious sexual misconduct problems at the academy," but failed to take effective action. Instead, it made fitful and limited attempts to investigate the issue, but quickly dropped them, the commission's report said.

Quick prediction: This report will torpedo the pending nomination of James Roche to be the Secretary of the Army. He was tapped to take over the Army after Secretary Rumsfeld fired former-Army Sec. Tom White. But now, it looks like his nomination will get wrapped around the axle of this issue. Why? For starters, a fair number of Congressmen have a bone to pick with the Pentagon on other issues, and this nomination will provide a convenient battleground. But more importantly, the buck has to stop somewhere for this Air Force Academy scandal, and the Secretary of the Air Force seems like the appropriate civilian official to hold accountable.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:09

 
Wes Clark meets the press
Can this soldier crawl through the mud that's about to be thrown his way?

After declaring his candidacy last week for President, retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark has begun the long, hard, punishing campaign which may ultimately take him to the White House. Scores of profiles have surfaced of Wes Clark in the last few days, including stories in the NY Times, Washington Post (including this one and this one), LA Times, Newsweek, Slate, and the Atlantic Monthly. Most of these stories say essentially the same thing: Wes Clark was a brilliant "water walker" who shot to the top of the military (with some resentment from peers and superiors), and who ably led the war in Kosovo despite disagreements with just about everyone involved at the senior levels of NATO and the U.S. government. Consider this excerpt from Vernon Loeb's story in The Post.

Supporters and detractors agree on this much: The retired general is immensely talented, possessed of a keen strategic sensibility and the kind of gold-plated military credentials that could make him a formidable candidate in the Democratic race for president.

Clark's intense, emotional personality and his aggressive -- some say abrasive -- command style are likely to be the focus of intense scrutiny as he takes on the biggest challenge of a peripatetic career almost defined by the pursuit of challenge -- a run for the presidency in which his national security credentials will figure large in his potential appeal.
* * *
But Clark's hard-charging style, his penchant for dealing directly with the White House and his ceaseless agitation for ground forces during the Kosovo conflict -- over the wishes of Defense Secretary William S. Cohen -- caught up with him a month after the end of the war. In July 2000, while dining with the president of Lithuania in London, Clark was called by Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who curtly informed him that Cohen had decided to ease him out of his NATO command. The call stunned Clark. It meant he would have to leave his NATO post three months earlier than scheduled and without a year's extension, which he had expected.

Clark had clashes outside the administration as well. In the war's immediate aftermath, when a contingent of Russian troops moved quickly into Kosovo and occupied the airfield at Pristina, the provincial capital, a British officer, Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson, refused a direct order from Clark to block the runway so the Russians could not fly in reinforcements.

Clark, who believed additional Russian troops could have led to a confrontation with NATO and possibly jeopardized the nascent allied peacekeeping mission, insisted. But Jackson stood firm, believing the Russians were isolated at the airfield and did not represent a threat. "Sir, I'm not starting World War III for you," Jackson replied.
* * *
Clark's many supporters inside and outside the military dispute the contention voiced by critics that his ambition and drive to come out on top made him untrustworthy in the eyes of his peers.

"I have watched him at close range for 35 years, in which I have looked at the allegation, and I found it totally unsupported," said retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who taught with Clark at West Point in the 1970s. "That's not to say he isn't ambitious and quick. He is probably among the top five most talented I've met in my life. I think he is a national treasure who has a lot to offer the country."

McCaffrey acknowledges that Clark was not the most popular four-star general in the Army leadership. "This is no insult to Army culture, a culture I love and admire," McCaffrey said, "but he was way too bright, way too articulate, way too good looking and perceived to be way too wired to fit in with our culture. He was not one of the good ol' boys."

Pundits on the left and right, such as Paul Glastris and William Safire, have also jumped into the fray. The pundits see this candidacy in strategic terms, opining on what this move means for the Democratic party and larger body politic. The consensus seems to be that this will only help the Democratic party, especially if it sparks some serious debate over national security issues in that party's primary.

My prediction: Before Wes Clark reaches the White House, he'll have to low crawl through about 3,000 miles of mud. The military establishment will leak every negative detail of Clark's military performance to the press that's there to leak -- and some that aren't. These will include: his tendency towards personal tirades, his micromanagement of subordinates and abusive behavior towards subordinates, his precise job performance at key positions where he was under scrutiny, and anything else that can be spun by Clark's opponents. At some point, Clark will have to deal with that Ratko Mladic incident from the mid-1990s. (For the record, Clark met with him before his indictment for war crimes, just as he met with Slobodan Milosevic before his indictment. In both cases, these meetings produced tangible results for American foreign policy.) Democrats will fire HEAT rounds at Gen. Clark for his moderate views that may not sell well to key Democrat constituencies. Clark will respond with his wonkish side, and he will quickly formulate policies on all the important issues, but it may be too late by that point. And the press will soon stop swooning over Clark like a first date.

At that point, which I will call the "decisive point" of the campaign, Clark will have to retain the ability to raise money and raise issues. If he can, he has a chance; if he doesn't, he's toast. It's still too early to tell whether Clark will make it through this mud run, and I'll reserve judgment for now. But this will be the toughest fight of Clark's long and impressive career.
posted by Phillip Carter at 11:30

 
More facts emerge about CPT Yee's case

Rowan Scarborough reports in this morning's Washington Times about the specific documents held by CPT Yee at the time of his arrest, and why the government was so concerned. At first glance, this looks like more than a technical violation of classified-documents rules.

A law-enforcement source said yesterday those papers included a list of detainees and the names of U.S. prison personnel at Guantanamo.

If al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's terror network, were to learn the detainees' identities, it would provide valuable information on the whereabouts of operators who are missing. This information could then allow al Qaeda to change operating methods for fear the detainee provided such information to his American captors, the law- enforcement official said.

The Pentagon has refused news media requests to release the names of the 660 detainees for that very reason.

A list of American personnel at the base in the hands of terrorists could put them and their families in danger, the source told The Times. The source said there was a debate within the administration on whether to arrest Capt. Yee or keep him under surveillance.

The source declined to say which agency advocated the Sept. 10 arrest, but said the order came from "the highest levels."

"If the list of detainees got out, then you have a whole lot of al Qaeda cells go to ground," a senior Bush administration official said yesterday. This source said the Pentagon pushed to make the arrest and said the White House was involved in the decision.

The official said one document in Capt. Yee's possession was a drawing showing where certain prisoners and American personnel were located.

Analysis: There's another issue lurking in this story that I haven't seen any of the intelligence sources say in any of the major newspaper stories on CPT Yee. If this man sympathized with the enemy, and he counseled these detainees while they were going through the interrogation process, it's very likely that he hindered the interrogations in a substantial way. Interrogations depend on control, and a sense of total isolation on the part of the detainee. Any outside contact, particularly from someone with authority (as a military officer) and moral authority (as a Muslim cleric) would threaten the methods used by most military interrogators.

Consider this excerpt from the Declaration of U.S. Navy Commander Donald D. Woolfolk, given in the case of Yaser Hamdi to substantiate the government's case for holding him as an enemy combatant.

(FOUO) . . . When done effectively, interrogation provides information that likely could not be gleaned from any other source. Loss of this tool, in any respect, would undermine our nation’s intelligence gathering efforts, thus crippling the national security of the United States. The United States does not employ any corporal means of coercion to gain information from persons being interrogated. Rather, the United States has adopted a humane approach to interrogation that relies upon creating an atmosphere of dependency and trust between detainees and the intelligence gathering staff assigned to that detainee. Over time, information is learned. The United States is now engaged in a robust program of interrogating individuals who have been identified as enemy combatants in the global War on Terrorism. This is because it is recognized that they unquestionably hold critical information that is crucial to our national security. A prime example of the effectiveness of this method of interrogation through dependency and trust can be found in the announcement this week of the U.S. Government’s disruption and detention of a U.S. citizen working in coordination with al Qaida to detonate a “dirty bomb” in the United States. Knowledge and disruption of this plot may not have occurred absent effective intelligence gathered through interrogation. [emphasis added]

(FOUO) Interrogation leading to the development of meaningful and useable intelligence is not static. The collection of intelligence is active and ongoing. As new intelligence information is derived from any source, the opportunity to learn additional information through interrogation is presented. We are now living in an age where our nation is engaged in international armed conflict, we face a foe that knows no borders and perceives all Americans, wherever they may be, as targets of opportunity. Under such circumstances the need to maintain the tightly controlled environment, which has been established to create dependency and trust by the detainee with his interrogator, is of paramount importance. Disruption of the interrogation environment, such as through access to a detainee by counsel, undermines this interrogation dynamic. Should this occur, a critical resource may be lost, resulting in a direct threat to national security. [emphasis added]

This statement was made to justify the seclusion of a detainee at the same brig that now holds CPT Yee, and to specifically prevent Hamdi from having access to legal counsel. The reasoning is the same. Allowing access to legal counsel would disturb the isolation and dependency necessary for successful interrogation -- interrogation which can yield details of plans to kill Americans. (Let's not forget what's at stake here) A sympathetic chaplain can also frustrate such interrogation efforts, and impede the collection of human intelligence from the detainees. That's not a good thing. We have allowed the detainees access to a Muslim chaplain out of humanity, and compliance with the Third Geneva Convention. But we cannot allow our chaplain -- an American military officer -- to impede the collection of intelligence because of his uncertain loyalties.

CPT Yee was in a critical position; he had unsupervised, unblocked, personal access to the detainees at a time when their isolation and dependency was critical. Knowingly or unknowingly, he may have given these detainees the will to fight our interrogators, to hold onto information a little longer that might be used to save American lives. If the facts are as alleged, then CPT Yee had about as large of an effect on the war on terrorism as can be imagined. While not as spectacular or bloody as the betrayal allegedly committed by SGT Hasan Akbar against his officers in the 101st, this betrayal is probably more deadly for all of us.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:56

 
Economic slump helps military recruiting

The New York Times reports this morning that the Army is poised to meet or exceed its recruiting goals for this fiscal, largely thanks to a depressed economy and other factors that help sell the military opportunity to young Americans.

All the armed services say they will meet or exceed their recruiting goals for the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30.

But many military personnel experts say the Army's efforts are most vulnerable over time because the Army recruits more active-duty and Reserve troops than all the other services combined — 73,800 active-duty and 26,400 Reserve soldiers this year — and it is now fielding about 90 percent of the 180,000 troops in Iraq and Kuwait.

"That's the driver, the economy," said Maj. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, the head of the Army Recruiting Command here, adding that the chaotic conditions in Iraq have yet to hurt recruiting.

Army recruiters have always offered educational benefits, job security and training skills to prospective soldiers. But recently they have been armed with more logistical support and a growing arsenal of financial incentives that look even more enticing in a down market.

The Army has raised signing bonuses to as much as $20,000 for badly needed positions like intelligence analysts. It has also increased college aid. And it has nearly doubled its advertising budget, to $227 million, in the last four years, shelving its 20-year-old "Be All You Can Be" slogan in favor of the "Army of One" campaign, aimed at Generation Y youths. It has ramped up a cyberrecruiting operation, with daily online chat rooms in English and Spanish. Next month it is rolling out a 15-month enlistment option (the current minimum length for a tour is two years) aimed at college students, an increasingly important target group.

This is good news. First, the all-volunteer military (and by extension, American society) depends on a steady stream of young Americans who are willing to step into the breach. Without such volunteers, the current force structure will fail, and America will have to resort to more coercive means (read: draft) to populate its military. As recent operations from Baghdad to Belgrade show, our professional military is worth keeping around.

One note on the economic opportunity aspect. I think that Mr. Schmitt overreported that story here, in a way that almost panders to people like Rep. Charlie Rangel who argue that the military disproportionately "targets" low-income youth and presses them into service as a form of indentured servitude. I think that argument gets it absolutely wrong. Giving economic opportunities to low-income communities should be a good thing for government to do. It seems ironic that some would criticize the military for providing that opportunity when they chastise other departments for failing to. Young Americans are joining the military to take advantage of the professional, personal, patriotic -- and economic -- opportunity. This is a good news story.

Unfortunately, the news is not all good. Later in his story, Mr. Schmitt reports that the Army Reserve and Army National Guard are having less success with their recruiting efforts.

Recruiting part-time Army National Guard and Army Reserve troops, who are typically older and have civilian jobs, presents mounting challenges. Military experts warn that recruiting and retaining these citizen soldiers will get more difficult as they are repeatedly called up to serve extended tours in Iraq or Afghanistan as military police, civil affairs specialists, water-purification experts and other jobs.

"How long people will continue to be deployed will ultimately have some effect on retention," said Frank Shaffery, deputy director of Army recruiting operations here. "We're concerned about it."

Those concerns grew this month when the Army announced that 20,000 Reserve and National Guard soldiers would stay in Iraq or Kuwait for as long as 12 months, extending their tours on the ground by several months.

Army National Guard officials said this week that the Guard would probably fall short of its goal of recruiting 62,000 soldiers this year. But because fewer Guard forces will leave this year than had been anticipated, the Guard still expects to maintain its overall troop level at 350,000.

There are lots of reasons why the reserves are struggling. For starters, the benefits packages aren't as good, so they don't have the same buying power in the market for young men and women. Second, the new enlistment options (2 years) are much more attractive to someone who's not fully sold on the military, but wants the benefits that active service brings. Third, joining the reserves today is an incredibly risky and uncertain proposition. In the old days, soldiers in the reserves wondered if they would be called up. Today, soldiers in the reserves wonder when they'll be called up -- and how many times, and if their employers will take them back (notwithstanding the USERRA), and whether their families will be there when they return.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:39

 
Captain Yee -- the author?

Timothy Goddard at The Flag of the World passes on a link to something that CPT Yee wrote for "The Wire" an in-house newsletter published for the Joint Task Force servicemembers and civilians at Guantanamo Bay. I think that Mr. Goddard's summary is on target: "For the most part, is no different from most of the "There's nothing to fear from true Islam, just that nutty stuff" articles that have come out so often in the past two years. This one, however, seems a good deal more defensive than most--not to the point that you'd notice anything weird about it unless you knew that he'd just been arrested for espionage, though." Here's an excerpt from what CPT Yee wrote:

September 11th, the pending war on Iraq, and our own day to day experiences of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo mission have all contributed to the picture many of us as Americans have painted about Islam and Muslims. And now, this universal religion of more than one billion followers worldwide is scrutinized by a population that has little knowledge of its basic tenets and practices. It is with a fearful eye that Islam and its worshippers are now being examined with the notion that they have become our nation's greatest enemy. However, a truly objective look makes it quite clear that Islam is really nothing to be afraid of at all. [emphasis added]
* * *
Yes, another terrorist attack or the possibility of hidden Iraqi weapons of mass destruction are enough to strike fear in the American people. But in reality, the majority of Muslims around the world from Indonesia to America are God-loving people. So why has it been so difficult for most in our society to distinguish these millions from the extreme fanatical minority? Why are we still afraid of Islam, the religion? Answer: lack of knowledge and unfamiliarity with Islam and Muslims. In most cases, people have limited personal experiences with Muslims and know Islam only through references made towards Muslim extremism.

Analysis: Putting theological and political debates aside for a second, this is really interesting language to be coming from a U.S. Army chaplain -- regardless of faith. He may have legitimate points to make about Americans' attitudes towards Muslims, and the effect of our ignorance on our tactics and strategy. However, it appears odd to me that an Army chaplain would be the guy to make those arguments. He's part of the team, and not supposed to play the devil's advocate (in any sense).

I will put forth a theory now about why CPT Yee may have felt persecuted down at Gitmo, and why he may have written this article. This is a "SWAG" (military jargon for "super wild a**ed guess"), and not based on any independent reporting, but rather on my experience as an Military Police platoon leader and staff officer.

Guantanamo Bay is a prison. The soldiers there think of themselves as "us", and the detainees as "them". Nearly all of the detainees are Muslim. There is a natural tendency in situations like this to dehumanize the "them" population. That tendency is probably exacerbated by the nature of our war on terrorism, and the religious overtones of this conflict. It's even possible that commanders are encouraging such attitudes towards the detainees, and that such aggression has spilled over into open displays of animus, hatred, and anti-Muslim behavior. To the extent that CPT Yee represents the Muslim community in the military, he may be duty bound to speak up against such hostility, within the bounds of the command. He also may be obliged under DoD equal opportunity policy to take a leadership role in stopping such behavior. If that's the case, this article appears to be one effort towards that end.

That's just a guess. It certainly doesn't excuse the criminal acts he's accused of. But it might explain some of the things CPT Yee has been accused of, from speaking up on behalf of detainees to publishing this article. More to follow.
posted by Phillip Carter at 19:10

 
Army chaplain arrested for espionage -- update & analysis

Giving credit where credit is due, The Washington Times is the paper that came through with the scoop on Captain Yee; I picked up on the AP version of the story that originally ran on their pages. I pulled up the Washington Times story, written by veteran Pentagon reporter Rowan Scarborough, to find the details as originally reported. Mr. Scarborough didn't disappoint -- he has a report tonight on the precise charges that Captain Yee is facing.

The Army has charged Capt. Yee with five offenses: sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage and failure to obey a general order. The Army may also charge him later with the more serious charge of treason, which under the Uniform Code of Military Justice could be punished by a maximum sentence of life.
* * *
Capt. Yee had almost unlimited private access to detainees as part of the Defense Department's program to provide the prisoners with religious counseling, as well as clothing and Islamic-approved meals. The law-enforcement source declined to say how much damage Capt. Yee may have inflicted on the U.S. war against Osama bin Laden's global terror network.

The source said the "highest levels" of government made the decision to arrest Capt. Yee, who had been kept under surveillance for some time.

The military's "convening authority" — the officer who would authorize criminal proceedings — is the commander of U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which oversees the prison at Guantanamo.

Analysis: Now I have some more facts on which to base my analysis. First, if you're interested in this case, I recommend reading a primer on the military justice system. The National Institute of Military Justice has a few good primers on its site, and I would also recommend this piece I wrote on the system from last year. Also, the Manual for Courts Martial that Captain Yee will be tried under is a good reference to have for this case. Finally, the actual articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice are codified in Title 10, and are good to have as references too.

Here are some general notes and points of analysis, in no particular order:

(1) The penalty for the crimes charged is death, according to the text of the articles under which Captain Yee is charged according to the Washington Times story. The Times reports that the maximum penalty as life, but they're wrong according to what the UCMJ says. These articles include: sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage and failure to obey a general order. No military court has imposed the death penalty for these charges since Private Slovik's case at the end of WWII. But I would not say that is an impossibility in this case, if the facts are as alleged.

(2) One legal question to be asked is whether these offenses were committed in wartime or not. If they were committed in wartime, the available penalties increase dramatically. It's fairly certain that we are currently in a state of armed conflict, if not a state of declared war, but this is a legal question that will certainly be asked in this case. The government will certainly argue that we are at war, and thus the higher penalties are available. Indeed, it's hard to see how you could have "aiding the enemy" if one were not at war. But again, this is a question of law for the military judge to resolve, and one that will probably be appealed to the intermediate appellate court and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.

(3) Captain Yee will undoubtedly be pressured to plead guilty, in a quid pro quo where he gives information to the government in exchange for a life sentence. I imagine that he has already refused to plead guilty at this juncture, given the way the government is proceeding in this case.

(4) Military commissions v. military courts martial. I do not think we will see Captain Yee's case transferred to a military commission. For one, he is statutorily entitled to a general court martial on these charges as an American serviceman, and it would be very hard to overcome that in court. Second, the military system already has all the safeguards the Pentagon wants in a court -- protection of classified evidence, a jury of military officers, a secure setting, and defense attorneys with security clearances. I don't see any added value in a military commission here. Moreover, a high-profile trial (as this will be) will showcase the military justice system, which is generally regarded by experts as a fairer system than the federal criminal system.

(5) Unlawful command influence will be an issue in this case. Note this quote from the Washington Times story: "The source said the "highest levels" of government made the decision to arrest Capt. Yee, who had been kept under surveillance for some time." That means the decision to arrest Captain Yee came from 1600 Penn. Ave and the E-Ring of the Pentagon, and that prosecutorial decisions will likely have to be vetted in both places as well. Unfortunately, the UCMJ expressly prohibits command influence on the actual trial, and the actual decision to bring charges. The Commander of SouthCom will have to do his best to resist pressure from the President and SecDef here if he wants his verdict to stand. I guarantee that Captain Yee's defense counsel will raise this issue on appeal.

I plan to follow this story as it develops. More to follow...

See also the sites hosted by Donald Sensing and Winds of Change for some interesting commentary and links regarding Captain Yee. As I find more good links on the subject, I'll post them. I imagine we'll see a lot more reporting on this case than those of enemy combatants Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, because the depth of the betrayal is so great in Captain Yee's case (assuming the facts are as alleged).

And also check out Jeff Quinton's notes at Backcountry Conservative, which includes some really good research into CPT Yee and various other issues in this case. Among other things, Quinton has a State Department story on CPT Yee, a Seattle Post-Intelligencer profile of CPT Yee, and a DoD press release discussing the Muslim clerics currently serving as American military chaplains.
posted by Phillip Carter at 20:00

 
U.S. Army Muslim chaplain in custody in connection with Gitmo

The AP reports that the American military has taken one of its own chaplains -- a Muslim -- into custody in connection with an investigation involving the men detained at Guantanamo Bay. Very few details are available at this time. No charges appear to have been filed, nor has there been an Art. 32 hearing, analogous to a grand jury hearing. It's not clear whether the military plans to press charges, or if federal prosecutors will do so, or even if Captain Yee is suspected of things he could be charged with.

Captain Crosson said Captain Yee was taken into custody at a naval station in Jacksonville. But he said he did not know where the chaplain was being held.

A senior law enforcement official, said that F.B.I. agents had confiscated classified documents Captain Yee was carrying and questioned him before he was handed over to the military.

Captain Yee is a Muslim chaplain who was assigned to the naval base at Guantanamo Bay in November 2002 as the Islamic adviser to the Joint Task Force commander, Captain Crosson said.

The base, in eastern Cuba, is overseen by the Southern Command, which is based in Miami. About 650 men from 43 countries are being held there, all of them accused of having links to the Qaeda terrorist network or Afghanistan's fallen Taliban regime.

Captain Yee, a Chinese-American who graduated from West Point in 1990, converted to Islam in college and became a chaplain after spending several years in the Army.

Wow... this has the potential to be a really big story. My first reaction is that "first reports are always wrong." I really need to see more information -- from official sources -- to understand what's going on here. If I had to guess, it would be that Captain Yee committed some infraction such as failing to properly secure classified documents, and that investigators picked him up for that fact alone. I'm very skeptical that this man -- a West Point grad and experienced Army officer -- would actually do what's implied here: give documents to a member of Al Qaeda interned at Gitmo. But anything's possible.

Update: Unfortunately, it looks like my earlier skepticism may have been misplaced. According to CNN, Captain Yee is alleged to have done a lot more than misplacing classified documents. If these allegations are true, he may indeed me guilty of treason or espionage -- depending on how you construe the elements of those crimes in the context of our undeclared war on terrorism.

. . . the documents included "diagrams of the cells and the facilities at Guantanamo [Bay, Cuba]" where about 600 al Qaeda and other "enemy combatants" are being held by the military.

Yee also was carrying lists of detainees being held there as well as lists of their interrogators, the source said.

In addition to the classified documents, Yee is "believed to have ties to [radical Muslims in the U.S.] that are now under investigation," the source said. He said he could not elaborate on the basis for that belief.

Although no charges have been filed, the U.S. military is "investigating whether [Yee] may have [been involved in] espionage or treason," the official said.

posted by Phillip Carter at 15:33

 
Lawsuit filed to challenge military recruiting at law schools

On the day the Supreme Court decided Lawrence v. Texas, I predicted that we would see a wave of challenges to the law precluding gays from openly serving in the military. The first of these appeared in U.S. District Court a few months ago, and was a direct challenge to one soldier's discharge. The second appeared yesterday, in a federal court in Newark, where a coalition of law professors has sued the Defense Department over its practice of recruiting on law school campuses. Specifically, the group argues that their First Amendment rights are being unduly burdened by the law which threatens schools with a withdrawal of federal funding if they refuse access to the military.

The suit says that every accredited American law school has adopted policies that bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and that the schools have sought to apply these policies without making any exception for what the suit describes as "the military and its discriminatory policy regarding sexual orientation."

Some law schools barred military recruiters from entering their campuses. Others allowed them entry while arranging visits under conditions that set them apart from recruiters representing law firms and corporations whose practices the law schools do not consider discriminatory.

In 1995, Congress passed the Solomon amendment, named for its sponsor, Representative Gerald B. H. Solomon of New York, barring disbursement of money from the Departments of Defense, Transportation, Health and Human Services, Education and some other federal agencies to any college or university that obstructed campus recruiting by the military.

The suit filed yesterday argues that the Solomon amendment violates law schools' First Amendment rights to academic freedom.

"The plaintiffs are seeking to prohibit enforcement of the Solomon amendment," said Michael Chagares, chief of the civil division of the United States attorney's office in Newark. "We will contend that the Solomon amendment is constitutional and will seek to prohibit any limitation on its enforcement."

Analysis: I'm writing a longer piece on this, so I will reserve the bulk of my analysis for that piece. However, I think this lawsuit will fail because the Solomon Amendment itself and the law against gays in the military are two separate legal things. In theory, the Solomon Amendment would still exist without the policy on gays in the ranks, to combat general animus against the military on campuses. If some university kicked the military off because it just didn't like the service, or because it was opposed to the war in Iraq, the Solomon Amendment would still be triggered. Moreover, as a general rule, Congress can condition the funding it gives out for various purposes, even if those conditions place a burden on speech.

Ultimately, I think this case will lose. I started reporting on a story about this shortly after the Lawrence decision, and I talked with three universities' general counsel about the issue. Their feeling was that a challenge to the Solomon Amendment would fail because it would be impossible to argue that Lawrence somehow changed the constitutionality of the law -- they're separate issues. Also, the universities have mostly achieved an uneasy peace with respect to military recruiting on campus, and they're unwilling to disturb that. Finally, almost everyone recognizes the value of military recruiting for students -- particularly those with financial need (like me) who can use an ROTC scholarship or GI Bill funding to further their educational aspirations. If this lawsuit is successful, it will hurt students like me who took advantage of one of the greatest opportunities in American society: military service.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:58

 
JetBlue criticized for giving passenger information to defense contractor

The New York Times reports this morning that JetBlue, one of America's newest and most successful airlines, is in hot water for giving information about its passengers to a defense contractor working on a security system. The system itself is probably classified, and details are short in the story. But it appears to be a base-defense system, not an aviation security system, made by Torch Concepts. My best guess is that this information was used to run a program that looked for non-obvious relationships between passengers based on their names, addresses and social security numbers, among other data. Understandably, a number of passengers and civil liberties groups are upset by the disclosure.

JetBlue, a three-year-old discount airline, sent an e-mail message to passengers this week, conceding that it had made a mistake in providing the records last year to Torch Concepts, an Army contractor in Huntsville, Ala., for a research project on "airline passenger risk assessment."

"This was a mistake on our part and I know you and many of our customers feel betrayed by it," said David Neeleman, JetBlue's chief executive, in an e-mail message that the airline, based in New York, said was sent to about 150 passengers who had written in so far to complain.

Mr. Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue, which has been a rare success in the airline industry and has prospered because of its reputation for low fares and consumer friendliness, insisted that none of the passenger information was shared with the government. "The sole set of data in Torch's possession has been destroyed," he wrote. "No government agency ever had access to it."

Privacy rights groups expressed astonishment that JetBlue had shared so much passenger information with a contractor, describing the privacy breach as among the most serious reported by any American company in recent years.

JetBlue's announcement comes at a time when many civil liberties groups are warning that privacy rights are becoming victims of the government's struggle against terrorism and the desire of law enforcement and intelligence agencies for quick access to customer information that has traditionally been closely held by corporations.

The airline said it had provided Torch Concepts with records on about five million individual itineraries, reflecting the travels of about 1.1 million passengers in 2001 and 2002. The records, it said, would have included the passengers' names, addresses and phone numbers but not credit card numbers or government identification numbers commonly collected from travelers like passport numbers.

A lawyer for Torch Concepts, Richard Marsden, said that the passenger records provided by JetBlue were destroyed by the contractor earlier this week after the existence of the project was reported by Wired News, a technology-news Web site. "It's all been destroyed in the last 24 hours," he said in a telephone interview.

Analysis: It would be all too easy to lump this in with the other actions of the Bush Administration in the war on terrorism, and to say that this is just one more example of our civil liberties being abused. Unfortunately, I don't think that's what's going on here. I think this is something far more subtle, and conversely, something far less threatening to our civil liberties. Moreover, it's happening every day. If you don't think that your credit card company, your bank, your lenders, and others are using data about you to make risk decisions, you're wrong. They're sharing information all the time, often without your explicit knowledge. That itself may be a bad thing. But I think it's unfair to single JetBlue out for something that's common industry practice.

I think it's a little odd that this information would be used for a base defense system instead of an aviation security experiment. But the value of the research appears to be quite high, if you take the findings of Torch Concepts at face value. And in the larger context of the war on terrorism, I think studies like this need to be conducted, if we are to learn how to look for non-obvious relationships in large patterns of data. Programs like Total Information Awareness and CAPPS (Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System) do require us to give information to private and public officials who will then use that information. But, these programs may make us physically more secure if they can find the relevant pieces of information to help intelligence analysts put together the dots to find terrorists. I, for one, am willing to make the trade of information security for physical security, particularly when I've already given this data to my credit card companies and the government.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:40

 
Congratulations to Mickey Kaus for this flattering profile in today's Los Angeles Times. The writer liked KausFiles so much, he even imitated Mickey's style for the article, writing in short punchy paragraphs with bolded headlines.

Query: What is it about the Westside of Los Angeles that spawns so many high-profile bloggers? Mickey, Virginia Postrel, Mark Kleiman, ArmedLiberal (Winds of Change), Eugene Volokh, this author, and others all live or work in this part of L.A. My knee-jerk answer is that it's the heart of liberal intelligentsia on the West Coast, but that can't be the answer because we're not all liberals.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:29

 
Which came first -- the expert or the blog?

Congratulations to bloggers Eugene Volokh and Howard Bashman for their appearances in today's lead New York Times article titled "Experts Say Court Panel Is Less Likely to Delay California Vote". Of course, both are brilliant legal thinkers in their own right, and their expertise came long before their weblogs. Eugene is one of America's leading First Amendment law scholars, and he's uniquely qualified to comment on the recall as a Constitutional Law professor and someone who's clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski (on the 11-judge panel) and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (who may ultimately decide the case). Howard is also uniquely qualified, as an experienced appellate lawyer who's also clerked for the 3rd Circuit. So at least in these two bloggers' case, the expert came before the weblog.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:24

 
A few good books

Over the next several months, we will start to see a stunning array of books arrive on the shelves from journalists who were embedded with units in the second Gulf War. This was a foreseeable result of putting so many ambitious reporters in the thick of the action with an exclusive view of their part of the war. One of the first books already looks like something I'm going to read: The March Up: Taking Baghdad With The 1st Marine Division, by F.J. "Bing" West and Ray L. Smith. The Washington Post's review of the book was enough to pique my interest:

Sixteen years after an infamous televised exchange between Peter Jennings and Mike Wallace over whether or not it would be acceptable for a journalist to warn soldiers from his own country about an imminent ambush, Smith and West were simply and flatly covering their own guys: They were Marines, reporting on Marines. The result doesn't look the way journalism tends to look. Having extensive combat experience, Smith and West -- but especially Smith -- didn't hesitate to shout orders and give tactical advice to the Marines they were covering. At one point, Smith intervened in an argument between officers who were planning a defensive position, offering a calming gesture so they could focus and continue. Smith also offered to stand watch in a combat zone so the Marines could get some sleep, an exchange that opens the book. After the pair spotted a heavy weapon in a village during a flyover in a military helicopter, Smith carried back the coordinates to a Marine commander so the weapon could be destroyed. And so on: There apparently is, in fact, no such thing as a former Marine.

And yet for all the transparent lack of objectivity, for all their refusals to strike a journalist's blank face and neutral pose, Smith and West deliver a balanced and unblinking account that will certainly become one of the standard texts on the second Gulf War. They approached the Marines with clear and open respect but didn't hesitate to write critically; they saw combat and the terrain over which it occurs with trained and experienced eyes, and wrote sharply observed accounts of what they saw. They were not "objective" -- merely knowledgeable, intellectually curious and rigorously honest.

Being accepted on the battlefield as Marines among Marines, Smith and West were given rare access -- and a great deal of very direct help -- in observing different units and battles. They borrowed military radios and night-vision goggles, were simply given an SUV captured from an Iraqi general, and were granted armed escorts when they needed to travel through dangerous terrain. As a result, this book is a sort of microscope-telescope hybrid, moving seamlessly through many levels: Here is the division commander's view of the fight, the regiment commander's view, the battalion commander's view, the company commander's view -- and the corporal's view, slugging it out on the ground at the head of a fire team.

In addition to this book, look for one from Army Times reporter Sean Naylor on Operation Anaconda, which should come out later this year. Sean won a major journalism award for his reporting from Afghanistan, and I imagine his book will be even better. Also look for something from Evan Wright, who traveled with a Marine Corps reconnaissance platoon and wrote an outstanding 3-part series on the ordeal for Rolling Stone.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:52

 
Signs of a thaw between Washington and the world

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder has an op-ed in today's New York Times which effectively reverses his country's opposition to American operations in Iraq -- and pledges German support for the nation-building mission there. The move comes in anticipation of a UN General Assembly meeting in New York, where Schroder is expected to meet with President Bush. One official described the warmer statements from Washington and Berlin towards each other as a "mating dance" in anticipation of that meeting. Still, the promise of German troops and support for the Iraq mission is incredible.

It is true that Germany and the United States disagreed on how best to deal with Saddam Hussein's regime. There is no point in continuing this debate. We should now look toward the future. We must work together to win the peace. The United Nations must play a central role. The international community has a key interest in ensuring that stability and democracy are established as quickly as possible in Iraq. The international mission needs greater legitimacy in order to accelerate the process leading to a government acting on its own authority in Iraq.

In addition to its current military involvement in Afghanistan, the Balkans and elsewhere, Germany is willing to provide humanitarian aid, to assist in the civilian and economic reconstruction of Iraq and to train Iraqi security forces.

When we gather in New York next week for the United Nations General Assembly, we will underline that Germany and the United States are linked by a profound friendship based on common experiences and values. For Germans, the 2003 general assembly is very special. It was exactly 30 years ago that Germany was admitted to the United Nations, a milestone in our postwar history. Back then, Germans were still forced to live in two states, divided by a wall and a dangerous border. Today, Germany is united.

We Germans will not forget how the United States helped and supported us in rebuilding and reuniting our country. That Germany is living today in a peaceful, prosperous and secure Europe is thanks in no small measure to America's friendship, farsightedness and political determination.

Analysis: Clearly, Chancellor Schroder is pulling President Bush's schnitzel out of the fire. He's also making a major power play on the world stage, and I think he's going to be successful in establishing himself as a pragmatist who's willing to put differences aside to do the right thing. On the tactical and operational level, this contribution will make a huge difference. America's own Army (as well as the Congressional Budget Office and General Accounting Office) admits that it cannot sustain the mission in Iraq beyond 2004 without external support. Generals from Barry McCaffrey to Wes Clark have all said that doing so would break the force, and create another hollow Army like that of the post-Vietnam 1970s. In essence, German troops are coming to save the American army too. But that's what allies are for, and we should be grateful.

(One footnote: European armies tend to be very good at this kind of thing, and we should welcome NATO forces whenever we have a peacekeeping/nation-building mission)

Across town on another op-ed page, Secretary of State Colin Powell writes in the Wall Street Journal that we still stay in Iraq as long as it takes to get the job done. Secretary Powell's essay comes on the heels of a visit he made to Iraq, and of all the President's men, I think he has the most credibility to make the arguments he does. This is exactly the argument the White House needs to make on Iraq, and I think that Secretary Powell is the right man to make this case to the American people and the world.

Iraq has come very far, but serious problems remain, starting with security. American commanders and troops told me of the many threats they face--from leftover loyalists who want to return Iraq to the dark days of Saddam, from criminals who were set loose on Iraqi society when Saddam emptied the jails and, increasingly, from outside terrorists who have come to Iraq to open a new front in their campaign against the civilized world. But our commanders also briefed me on their plan for meeting these security threats, and it is a good one.

We also need to complete the renewal of Iraq's electrical grid, its water treatment facilities and its other infrastructure, which were run down and destroyed during the years of Saddam's misrule. Here, too, we are making progress. Electric generation now averages 75% of prewar levels, and that figure is rising. Telephone service is being restored to hundreds of thousands of customers. Dilapidated water and sewage treatment facilities are being modernized. But it will take time and money to finish the job.

Indeed, that's Iraq in a nutshell. With our support, the Iraqis have made great progress. But it will take time and money to finish the job. President Bush has asked Congress for $20 billion to help rebuild Iraq's infrastructure. Next month, the international community will meet in Madrid to pledge additional assistance for Iraqi reconstruction. With these funds, and our continued help, I know the Iraqis will take great strides in rebuilding their battered country.

How long will we stay in Iraq? We will stay as long as it takes to turn full responsibility for governing Iraq over to a capable and democratically elected Iraqi administration. Only a government elected under a democratic constitution can take full responsibility and enjoy full legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people and the world.

posted by Phillip Carter at 08:39

 
Can you hear me now?

It's not just a bad cell phone commercial anymore -- it's the mantra of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq under L. Paul Bremer III, according to Fred Kaplan at Slate. The inability to communicate, caused by problems with rebuilding the phone infrastructure and building the cell phone infrastructure, has American officials in Baghdad at their wits' end. On top of the normal problems you'd expect with this effort, add in some serious disconnects with the way the contracts were awarded, including separate contracts for a Coalition Provisional Authority system and an Army system -- that don't talk to each other. In the end, you have a recipe for pure chaos, as Mr. Kaplan aptly points out.

According to a Defense Department official, if someone working for the U.S. occupation authority needed to talk with a battalion commander, there was no way to make direct contact. He or she had to call a desk officer back in the Pentagon, who would jot down the message and call the commander himself. If the commander wanted to reply to the message, the same desk officer would jot down the response and call back the occupation authority.

This, some officers say, is why the U.S. authorities in Baghdad so often look like they don't know what they're doing—because they don't. Many of them are smart, talented, and eager. But they can't talk with the Army about security, they can't talk with Iraqi specialists about civil needs—in short, they can't find out what they need to find out—so, for far too much of their time, they sit, paralyzed and helpless.

The blame here cannot be laid on some interagency squabble between, say, the State Department and the Pentagon. Keep in mind: Bremer's office is a division of the Pentagon; he reports to Donald Rumsfeld. No, this particular foul-up falls in the same category of neglect as failing to send in military police, failing to secure power stations, failing to imagine that things might not go as planned.

Analysis: There are so many ways to frame this story; I'll just pick two. Wouldn't you think that communications would be a part of the plan for post-war Iraq? It's certainly a part of any war plan. Communications gets its own annex in an operations plan by Army doctrine, and every major staff from battalion to CENTCOM has a special section devoted to communications. When I deployed, our signal officers always had a plan for acquiring commercial cell phones, because they provided a convenient and useful non-secure mode of commo on the ground. I'm shocked we didn't have a good plan to do this for Iraq. So as Mr. Kaplan says, we clearly had a planning breakdown here -- just as we had a number of other planning breakdowns in Iraq.

There's another story here though. America's military has run on a peacetime budget since the end of the Cold War, with some minor hiccups for the Gulf War and supplemental funding that went to specific operations like Bosnia and Kosovo. Procurement budgets have been cut; R&D budgets have been cut; institutional bases have been cut -- nearly everything up to and including the fighting force has been trimmed. In peacetime, that's okay. You can manage a peacetime Army by the eaches, budgeting money and spare parts for each company-sized unit in order to keep the entire Army in the black. I clearly remember trying to buy spare tires for my HMMWVs as a young MP platoon leader and being told the money wasn't in the budget -- we'd just have to requisition them as we blew them.

War is different. You need excess parts at the lower levels of command to absorb the unexpected things that happen to equipment. Moreover, you can't allocate usage to vehicles and equipment the way you can in peacetime. In peacetime, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle is allocated 800 miles of driving per year -- to include all ranges, training exercises, and motor pool driving. That figure is chosen because of the cost associated with each mile driven, which translates into spare parts the Army must buy for every mile driven. The Army has Y number of Bradleys, and it can only afford to pay for the parts that 800 miles x Y Bradleys equals. Our Bradleys in Iraq have driven thousands of miles, literally ripping the Army's cost projections to shreds along with their tracks which now need replacement in record numbers. And that costs money. A lot of money.

Unfortunately, our defense industry has consolidated and reorganized during the last decade since the end of the Cold War. It can't efficiently rise to the occasion to produce large quantities of Bradley tracks in a hurry -- or HMMWV tires, or BA-5590 batteries, or anything else that the military needs quickly for Iraq. The defense industry can produce these things with time, and it can create new production lines, but it will cost a lot to do so. (The Economist had a great survey on the defence industry a few months ago, but I can't remember the exact cite) A major portion of the President's $87 billion funding request is set aside to pay for current operations needs like these. The Army Materiel Command is flat broke -- it can't come up with any more parts, or any more spares, to keep the Army in Iraq going. Any surplus capacity that remained in the force has been used up in Iraq.

So what does this have to do with cell phones? Not much. But there is a myth out there that America's military has everything it needs; that it operates with state-of-the-art equipment in every way; that it is overfunded in some way. Certainly, some elements (e.g. Special Forces) have the latest and coolest gadgets -- and they should. But the average unit in the active Army does more with less every day, and they don't get what they need when they need it until it's often too late. The reserves and National Guard do their jobs with even less. (My National Guard unit had FM communications systems that were older than me, and could not talk to their active duty counterparts.)

When the FY2005 National Defense Authorization Act comes to Congress, I think it's high time we asked tough questions about where the Pentagon is putting its money. Do we really need to spend all this money on future transformation right now, with so much of our force stuck in Iraq? Shouldn't we put more money into current operations, considering that we already have a 1-generation technology edge on our allies (e.g. Britain), let alone our enemies? $400 billion is a lot of money for defense, but it goes quickly when you spend $10 billion here and there for big programs like missile defense. I think we ought to spend more on our soldiers, sergeants and lieutenants, where the rubber meets the road.
posted by Phillip Carter at 18:32

 
DOJ reveals number of times it's used Sec. 215 of the Patriot Act: 0

In what must be a stunning blow to the ACLU's publicity campaign against the USA Patriot Act, the Washington Post reported today that Sec. 215 of the Act has been used 0 times to obtain an order to search through "quote". This section of the act, which was signed into law on Oct. 26, 2001, has become the focal point of criticism from civil liberties advocates who say the Bush Administration has gone too far in pursuing security at the expense of liberty. The section has even provoked a strong response from America's librarians, who have gone so far as to destroy library records lest they fall into the Justice Department's hands.

"The number of times [the provision] has been used to date is zero," Ashcroft said in the memo, which was obtained by The Washington Post.

The disclosure is the latest volley in an escalating war of words between Ashcroft and his critics, which include civil liberties groups and some Democratic presidential candidates, who have condemned the Patriot Act as an attack on individual rights. Ashcroft is in the midst of a cross-country speaking tour aimed at shoring up support for the law, which has been the focus of more than 160 protest resolutions across the country.

Section 215 of the Patriot Act, a law approved six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, expands the government's power to obtain records from a wide range of businesses as part of a counterterrorism investigation, without notifying the subjects of the probe. The potential use of the provision in libraries has generated some of the strongest objections to the law.

In reversing his position, Ashcroft told Mueller that the value of disclosing the information outweighs the potential harm to national security. Justice officials have long resisted releasing the information, saying the threat of the provision's use poses a deterrent to potential terrorists.

"To date we have not been able to counter the troubling amount of public distortion and misinformation in connection with Section 215," Ashcroft wrote. "Consequently, I have determined that it is in the public interest and the best interest of law enforcement to declassify this information."

Ashcroft's disclosure does not address how investigators have used other parts of the sprawling Patriot legislation. Justice officials have indicated in previous responses to Congress that top-secret National Security Letters used by the FBI are a "more appropriate tool" for obtaining business records in many cases. Scores of such letters have been used since the Sept. 11 attacks, sources have said.

Analysis: First, let me state my skepticism up front. This may be a "leaked memo" in the great tradition of leaked Washington memoranda. The Justice Department is waging a campaign now to bolster the credibility of the Patriot Act, complete with a roadshow by AG John Ashcroft. It's possible -- even probable -- that this memo was leaked by DOJ in order to shape the debate on the issue. I don't think that DOJ would actually fabricate such a memo, but without reading it to evaluate its precise terms, I can't make a good evaluation of its authenticity, veracity, or credibility.

Second, the AG acknowledges that "other tools" have been used in the fight against terrorism, and that there has been no real need for the use of Sec. 215. Some of those other tools, such as the use of "enemy combatant" status in plea bargain negotiations, are indeed heavy-handed. I think there remains some legitimate room for criticism of the Justice Department on these issues.

That said, this is a major blow for the ACLU's campaign if it's true. Sec. 215 was written with broad language, and it does give the Justice Department a lot of power. The ACLU and others have played on Americans' fear that this power might be abused by prosecutors with ulterior motives. If it's true that this power has not been used, let alone abused, then this may reassure the American public. Some Americans may even change their opinion of the Bush Administration on the issue of civil liberties, and once again trust the Justice Department on these issues.

One last note: If nothing else, this shows the value of open discussion of these issues for both sides. The Justice Department gains from full disclosure here because the disclosure of Sec. 215 order statistics shows that it has not abused this power. The public gains by having this knowledge of precisely what its government is doing with respect to its Constitutional rights. Even the ACLU gains, by winning a larger battle over public access to information.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:22

 
Senior military officers push for withdrawal from Balkans
Does it make sense to take soldiers from Bosnia and Kosovo for Iraq?

The Financial Times of London reports today that a group of American military officers has made a concerted effort within the Pentagon to recommend an American exit from Bosnia and Kosovo. The move would free up some American combat power -- as well as "nation building" units like MPs and Civil Affairs -- for deployment to Iraq. But, FT reports that the move has run into tough opposition from those who see the Balkans as an American success story.

"The DoD [Department of Defense] wants out," said one former top Pentagon official. "It's driven by the joint staff and the army."

Although the army has made similar arguments in the past, officers are making headway. According to a senior Bush administration official, the current debate began as part of a thorough review of all US commitments abroad, which has gained more urgency as it became clear more than 100,000 US troops would remain in Iraq indefinitely.

"The Balkans have always been essentially a European challenge more than an American one," the administration official said. "Much of Europe seems bound and determined to leave Iraq as primarily an American challenge. Perhaps, therefore, a more clear-cut division of labour is in order."

A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment. But sources said opposition from some Pentagon civilians, as well as state department officials, centres on the diplomatic impact of withdrawing, as well as whether European allies - particularly the French and Germans - can successfully take over operations.

Analysis: There are a lot of interwoven issues here, and I'll address just a few. First, the number of American troops is a finite number, and the deployment game is a zero-sum game where deployments to one place take away from the troops available to deploy somewhere else. That said, the Balkans missions do not require as much force structure as they once did, and the withdrawal from this mission will have a neglible impact on the forces available for Iraq -- even including MPs and Civil Affairs units. The Army could get a lot more out of streamlining its training and doctrine command.

Whatever gains that may be gotten from this proposal will be vastly outweighed by the political consequences of an American withdrawal from the Balkans. Europe -- and the world -- sees our intervention there as a success story; a case of American might being used for right. If we think we have diplomatic issues now with Europe, just wait 'til we pull a stunt like this. It would be short-sighted in the extreme.

Finally, let's not forget that one major sponsor of partisan guerilla warfare in the Balkans was Al Qaeda. Let's not forget that fundamentalist Muslim guerillas used Bosnia and Kosovo as another battlefield for their jihad in the 1990s, along with Chechnya, Somalia, Sudan, and Afghanistan. To this day, the financial webs of Al Qaeda continue to include parts of the Balkans, and the channels for the movement of men, materiel and money continue to run through the Balkans. If we withdraw from the Balkans, we do so at our own peril.
posted by Phillip Carter at 10:20

 
DARPA faces the Congressional budget axe

After suffering the slings and arrows of Congressional oversight, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) appears to be headed for fiscal purgatory, according to Noah Shachtman at DefenseTech, and also in Wired News. Noah reports that the Senate's version of the Defense Authorization Act has serious cuts in store for DARPA, beyond even what was expected.

Some of the cuts to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency were expected: Lawmakers have been trying for the better part of a year to excise the notoriously far-reaching Terrorism Information Awareness database program.

But others seem to have come out of regulatory left field. Widely hailed research into using the brain to control robotic limbs, and training the mind to function on little or no sleep, will come to an end if the Senate's version of the Defense Department Appropriations bill becomes law.

Noah quotes from a source with the Federation of American Scientists that DARPA may be paying the price for its advocacy of programs like Total Information Awareness. I'm sure that's the case. But we all may pay the price if DARPA's budget is slashed. The overwhelming majority of DARPA projects go nowhere -- but they do stimulate research in basic science and applied science areas that would otherwise not be funded. To some extent, we all benefit from this kind of scientific research, just as we benefit from basic science research done on the MIT or Berkeley campuses. For decades, DARPA has been one of the most vibrant federal agencies in existence with respect to innovation and out-of-the-box thinking. It has also spurred development in universities and the private sector through its creative ideas and funding grants. We will all suffer if this agency takes a big hit.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:00

 
The Citizen Soldier's Burden

Today's New York Times has an important story about the sacrifice being made by today's Army reservists in the war on terrorism. For some, that sacrifice has gotten to be too much, and they are contemplating the decision to leave the military altogether after their current mobilization ends.

. . . since the 9/11 attacks, Mr. Gorski, a staff sergeant with the 870th Military Police Company of the California National Guard, has spent 16 months away from home, first at an Army base in Tacoma, Wash., and most recently in the southern Iraqi city of Karbala. He is likely to spend eight more months in Iraq, and he has decided to leave the National Guard as soon as he can.

"It's just like being on active duty," he said in a telephone interview from Karbala, where 125 members of his company are stationed. "And there's a reason you get out of active duty. At the same time, you want to stay because of patriotism, so you join the National Guard or the reserves. All the guys are prepared for one deployment, especially in the wake of Sept. 11. But we've basically returned to active duty, and that's not what we're in for. It's too much to ask."

It is attitudes like Mr. Gorski's that have military officials deeply worried about an exodus from the state-based National Guards and the reserves of the nation's armed forces. Since 9/11, hundreds of thousands of citizen soldiers have been mobilized at a level thought to be the highest since World War II.

Those concerns grew last week when the Army announced that about 20,000 reservists and National Guard troops stationed in Iraq and Kuwait would likely have to serve a full year from the time they landed in those countries, extending their tours by several months.

"It's different from Desert Storm," said Maj. Gen. Paul D. Monroe Jr., the adjutant general, or commander, of the California National Guard, which has some 1,500 troops in Iraq. "Nobody was gone a year. Everyone went together and came home together. Now they have to think if they stay in, how many more times will they be mobilized? That's paramount on their minds, and that's never been paramount on their minds."

General Monroe, who was in Iraq over the weekend to see his troops there for the first time and spoke by telephone, added, "When I became adjutant general, I thought my biggest problem was going to be an earthquake. Nobody envisioned this."

Analysis: Having recently served in the California Army National Guard and the U.S. Army Reserve, I can testify to this problem from first-hand experience. Mobilizations are not just decimating (reducing by 10%) the personnel strength of these units -- these mobilizations are rendering units absolutely combat ineffective. One battalion I'm familiar with mobilized in October 2001 for a one-year homeland security mission. It returned in October 2002, only to lose more than half its personnel who refused to reenlist or even attend drills anymore. The only soldiers who remain in the reserves tend to fall into three categories:

(1) Soldiers who are so close to retirement that they have too much vested to get out. This tends to include senior sergeants and officers in the rank of Major and above;
(2) Soldiers who work in the civilian world for the government, and are relatively immune from the civilian-job consequences of back-to-back mobilizations;
(3) Soldiers who just joined and have yet to receive the educational benefits or other benefits they joined the military for, or cannot leave because they are still serving their initial enlistment.

Those three groups include roughly 30-40% of the reserve force. The rest will probably decide to get out after their current mobilization ends, or when their current enlistment ends. This portends a crisis of readiness for America's reserves, particularly if the war on terrorism will require their services in the near future for another conflict or another tour in Iraq. The overwhelming majority of "nation building" force structure (Civil Affairs, Military Police, Medical, Logistics, etc) resides in the reserve component. Bottom Line: If we see an exodus of reservists in the next several months, we will also see a corresponding decline in our readiness to conduct nation-building missions around the world.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:54

 
Is Secretary Rumsfeld in political trouble?

Josh Marshall has been asking this question for a while, spurred by criticisms of the Pentagon over its planning for post-war Iraq and other important matters. Privately, some friends of mine in the Pentagon and surrounding defense community have speculated as to whether he'd be asked back for a second term in the E-Ring.

Now, Tom Ricks and Vernon Loeb at the Washington Post pile on the same story, reporting that Rumsfeld's star may now be in decline. Mr. Ricks is often regarded as the dean of the Pentagon press corps, with Mr. Loeb as a senior faculty member. If they're reporting this, I think this story is a lot closer to conventional wisdom than many would think.

Having demanded full authority for overseeing the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, elbowing the State Department aside, Rumsfeld is being blamed by many in Congress and the military establishment for the problems facing the United States, which include mounting U.S. casualties and costs exceeding $1 billion a week.

Whatever else Rumsfeld achieves at the Pentagon, the outcome of the Iraq occupation will go a long way toward determining his legacy in this, his second stint as secretary of defense. It also will affect the political fortunes of President Bush, whose reelection bid could hinge on events in Iraq.

Rumsfeld's ability to weather his largest crisis will depend to a degree on his standing with three key constituencies: the White House, Congress and the military's officer corps. How he does with them will be shaped largely by whether security improves in Iraq, according to officials in the administration, Congress and the Pentagon.

At the moment, at least, Rumsfeld's standing among all three is mixed. White House officials said that Rumsfeld retains the full confidence of the president. But after a long winning streak, the Pentagon chief has begun to lose some policy battles, most notably when Bush decided to seek a new United Nations resolution on Iraq -- a course about which Rumsfeld has expressed reservations.

Rumsfeld's relations with the military have been strained since he returned to office. This is particularly true within the Army, which felt threatened by his modernization plans before the Sept. 11 attacks and where concern runs deep about the damage the Iraq occupation could do the service in the long run.

Rumsfeld appears to be losing ground most dramatically on Capitol Hill, where even some conservative Republicans are expressing concern about his handling of Iraq. "Winning the peace is a lot different than winning the war," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who counts himself as a strong Rumsfeld supporter but notes that not all his colleagues feel the same. "His bluntness comes across as arrogance, and he's made some enemies on Capitol Hill, probably because of style differences," said Graham, an Air Force veteran who serves on the Armed Services Committee.

Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the panel's chairman, struck a decidedly cool note when asked how Rumsfeld is doing. "Understandably we have some differences," he said Friday in a written response. "However, I consistently work with Secretary Rumsfeld to support the president and the men and women of the armed forces, and have a high regard for his integrity and forcefulness."

Analysis: At the very least, one has to wonder about the SecDef's continued viability in light of concerns over Iraq. As early as May, I could read the tea leaves that we didn't have the requisite plan or resources in place to do the job we needed to. Had the SecDef chosen a different style of management, this may have been the fault of planners at the lower level, perhaps at CENTCOM. But the war plan for Iraq -- and its post-war progeny -- clearly came from the SecDef's planning cell and left the Pentagon with his personal imprimatur. The logical consequence of that fact is that the Secretary should bear the responsibility for any problems in the plan.

All plans change when they're executed, but this one was fatally flawed from the start for at least four reasons:
(1) It explicitly adopted assumptions that were incredibly optimistic about the way the Iraqi people would behave after "liberation" from the Hussein regime;
(2) The plan did not allocate any resources for the contingency that those assumptions may prove to be faulty, something the CIA had been advising the SecDef for the months leading up to the war;
(3) The SecDef's plan did not change enough to reflect the deletion of Turkey as a jumping-off point for the land campaign, and it did not include a way to effectively pacify the northern part of the country and the approach routes to Baghdad after the war. Had we gone in from Turkey, the 4th Infantry Division would have steamrolled right through the "Sunni Triangle" where we're having all these problems now. That change was never fully incorporated into the plan.
(4) The SecDef's campaign plan did not anticipate rapid success as well as it should have, and this caused a gap between the date of liberation and the date when the post-war plan was ready to be executed.

There were other flaws in the plan, but those flaws were generally corrected by outstanding execution on the ground by American men and women in uniform. These flaws could not be so easily corrected, because they resulted in political decisions (e.g. how many reservists to mobilize) that could not be fixed at the V Corps or CENTCOM level. Only the President and SecDef can make those determinations, and their plan was flawed from the start.

Does this rise to the level of resignation for the SecDef? I'm not smart enough to guess that, nor am I privy to the Washington beltway buzz on this issue to be able to speculate on what movers and shakers thought. But I do think he's becoming a political liability for the White House, just as the Attorney General has become. In 2002, the average American associated the SecDef with forthright press conferences about our progress in the war on terrorism. Now, I think the average American associates Secretary Rumsfeld with continuing carnage in Iraq.
posted by Phillip Carter at 14:18

 
A war on terrorism or a war on civil liberties?
Some question U.S. tactics in the law enforcement part of the fight against terrorism

Sunday's Los Angeles Times has an interesting story on its front page about the Holy Land Foundation, which has been effectively shut down by the State, Treasury and Justice Departments as an entity that provides financial support to groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations.

The foundation's bank accounts are frozen by government edict. Its possessions, from computers to potted plants, have been locked away in government storerooms for nearly two years. The charity's sole activity is a lawsuit aimed at recovering $5 million in assets frozen by the U.S. Treasury Department.

Federal judges have repeatedly upheld the government's authority to shut down Holy Land because of its suspected ties to the Palestinian militant group Hamas. At the same time, the Justice Department is targeting the charity in a criminal investigation that accelerated last month with a round of subpoenas ordering several former employees to appear before a Dallas grand jury.

"Every day," said Shukri Abu Baker, Holy Land's Palestinian American director, "I wake up thinking: 'Is this the day they will come to handcuff me?' "

Holy Land's public transformation from almsgiver to pariah reveals a charity whose deeds were blurred by associations with suspected militants.

Wracked by a decade of internal debate over how to deal with the charity, the U.S. government veered from inaction to crackdown. There have also been missteps. The Times has learned that a secret FBI application for surveillance connected to the Holy Land case was flawed and could prompt a new legal challenge.

The government's stance against Holy Land reflects the official view that Hamas operations inside the United States require the same level of scrutiny as Al Qaeda, even though the Palestinian faction has not been known to target American citizens. Hamas cultivates Palestinian popular support and deflects international criticism by blending welfare with violence — sending bomb-laden recruits against Israeli civilian targets while showering social aid on destitute refugees.

Holy Land's fate has become a key test of the Bush administration's expanded view of terrorism: that charities can pose a threat by funding legitimate programs used to provide cover for militants. Officials charge that Holy Land secretly aided Hamas by funneling donations to Palestinian schools, hospitals and other aid programs tied to the resistance group — and to stipends that nurtured the families of suicide bombers.

"We don't deny that a lot of their funds went for good works," said Juan C. Zarate, deputy assistant Treasury secretary for terrorism and violent crime. "But they helped an organization that had a larger agenda of fomenting terrorism."

Analysis: It's hard to know what the truth is in a situation like that of the Holy Land Foundation. On the one hand, both sides agree that Hamas provides legitimate social services for the Palestinian people. It only makes sense that moderate Arabs around the world would want to give money to that worthy cause. On the other hand, however, money is highly fungible. Giving money to Hamas is like giving money to a thug who also has a worthy family. You lose control over the money once it's given, so you don't know if it's going to buy weapons or food. And at the very least, if it goes to buy food it frees up money that may subsequently be used to buy weapons.

The key, from an American legal perspective, is to quash this kind of financial activity without restricting the rights of Americans to freely associate or express themselves as guaranteed by the First Amendment. The statute in question, 18 U.S.C. 2339b, has been attacked on the grounds that it chills speech and other forms of expression (e.g. giving money) that might be regarded as providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations. (See this lawsuit by the Center for Constitutional Rights) There is some sort of line to be drawn between what is lawful and what is not, but that line is apt to be quite fuzzy. I trust our federal courts to draw the line, but many aren't so willing.

Ultimately, our efforts to dismantle the financial networks used by terrorists is every bit as important as our effort to find their weapons of mass destruction, or their leaders. Without such financial networks, these terrorists lose their global reach. Unfortunately, this aspect of the anti-terrorism fight is in jeopardy because the administration currently lacks credibility with a large part of the American public with respect to civil liberties. Pushing forward proposals (like this one) to enlarge administrative subpoena power is a bad way to rebuild that credibility. Instead, what's needed is an accounting. The American people need to know (among other things):

(a) What's being done by law enforcement in the war on terrorism, within reasonable bounds of operational security;
(b) How new powers are being used by law enforcement. If the matters themselves are too sensitive, such as FISA warrants, then perhaps a statistical summary of FISA warrants can be released along with some general explanation;
(c) A progress report on the war on terrorism. Again, it may not be possible to produce too detailed of a report for operational security reasons. However, an candid summary that's unclassified would still be worthwhile.

As with Iraq, the American public wants and needs to know our end state with respect to the legal war on terrorism. My friends and family members are quite willing to embrace some short-term actions by law enforcement, but they are not willing to start down an increasingly steep slippery slope to which there is no end. By themselves, these actions by the Justice Department generally don't frighten my friends or family members. But in the aggregate, they do frighten many people. What's needed is some sort of end state -- a point at which there will be no more balancing of liberty against security.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:59

 
Trimming the fat at the Pentagon
Should we cut missile defense to buy better body armor for our troops?

Fred Kaplan has an interesting piece in Slate about places where we could excise a little money from the burgeoning American defense budget. As the largest discretionary item in the federal budget, defense will swallow nearly $400 billion in FY2004, and considerably more when you factor in supplemental appropriations for Iraq and the war on terrorism. Kaplan suggests cutting a few weapons programs which have not cut the mustard:

The $87 billion supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan is fairly straightforward: $32.3 billion for operations and maintenance, $18.5 billion for personnel, $1.9 billion for equipment, $5 billion for security, $15 billion for infrastructure, and so on. It's a bookkeeping calculation: If you want to continue the mission, that's what it costs; if you want to spend less, you have to downgrade the mission.

But there's plenty more in the military budget that does not have the slightest connection to any clear and present (or even murky and distant) danger.

When Congress passed the military budget last spring, nobody had any idea that "postwar" difficulties would boost it by $87 billion—more than one-fifth of its original, already hefty size. Nor did anyone project that the federal deficit would meanwhile expand to nearly half a trillion dollars. When your kid's in the hospital, your roof is leaking, and your salary's just been cut, you should probably put off plans to build a pool or buy a plasma-screen television. The military budget is in a similar state, and it only makes sense to reopen the books, set priorities, and slash those programs that can safely be deferred.

Analysis: The real problem with weapons programs it that their cost tends to balloon as they age. Retired Pentagon analyst Franklin "Chuck" Spinney has done some brilliant work (see this data too) investigating weapons programs over the past 30 years, and his work indicates that every major weapons program winds up costing much more than we thought when we bought it. The reasons are simple. Defense contractors push a lot of their costs to the back end so that they can get the Pentagon to buy in when a project looks cheap. As the costs balloon, the contractors can file a claim for the costs, usually based on some sort of constructive change in the contract. The result is that large procurement programs have a deceptively small cost in the short-term, and a larger cost in the long-term, and an overall cost that's much higher than anticipated.

Clearly, we need some (or most) of these programs to field the military that fought so decisively in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. But the tough part is finding the right mix of programs, and balancing that against expenditures for personnel and current operations. I find it quite telling that the President's $87 billion request for Iraq includes a substantial purchase of body armor for American soldiers. My reporting indicates this will go to purchase individual sets of the newest body armor for all soldiers who will rotate through Iraq, and eventually for the entire Army and Marine Corps. I think this is a good thing, given the success this body armor had in Iraq. But I also think this body armor is something we should have bought a long time ago. The fact that we're buying it now tells me that we've spent far too much on long-term weapons procurement, and far too little on the short-term stuff our soldiers need.
posted by Phillip Carter at 13:09

 
Moussaoui one step closer to a military tribunal?

The Washington Post reports that U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema has given the U.S. government another order in the Moussaoui case to comply with her order allowing access to other terrorists the U.S. has in custody. Moussaoui is seeking access to Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, in accordance with the Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses, in order to gather information which might be helpful to his defense. I think the defense theory is that Moussaoui was actually not a part of the Sept. 11 plan, and these two men can prove it.

Government officials filed no response yesterday, but indicated that they were likely to defy the order and refuse to produce the two witnesses -- identified by sources as former al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, a Saudi who allegedly served as paymaster to the Sept. 11 hijackers. Both are in custody and being questioned at an undisclosed location.

Brinkema is expected, if disobeyed, to sanction the government for its failure to produce not only Mohammed and Hawsawi but also Ramzi Binalshibh, another top al Qaeda operative. In January, Brinkema ruled that Moussaoui could depose Binalshibh.

Possible punishments range from dismissing the case against Moussaoui to striking the possibility of the death penalty. Prosecutors are expected to appeal any adverse ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.

If they ultimately are ordered to produce the three al Qaeda operatives by the higher courts, government officials have said they would refuse. The case probably would be moved to a military tribunal, where Moussaoui would not have the right to interview the witnesses.

Analysis: If Judge Brinkema backs the government into a corner, I think they will remove this case to a tribunal. Few will shed a tear for Mr. Moussaoui if he's transferred to military custody, and it might even make the U.S. government look more legitimate in the sense that it's treating him like the other non-citizen terrorists it has in custody at Gitmo. (Of course, Moussaoui is a French citizen so there may be some diplomatic complications here)

But the real question is political: does the White House have the political capital (not to mention the chutzpah) to put a person in front of a military tribunal, given the heat they have taken for these trials and other issues (e.g. the USA PATRIOT Act). I don't think the White House wants that kind of lightning rod to be planted on its front lawn at this juncture (wouldn't be prudent). In fact, I think the likely fate for Mr. Moussaoui will be that of Mr. Hamdi and Mr. Padilla. An order will be signed designating him an enemy combatant, and that will be the end of it. No trial, at least not in the short term. No political risk, other than what's already been incurred for those other 'combatants'. This seems like the most likely course of action to me.
posted by Phillip Carter at 21:00

 
Two great pieces in Slate to check out

Once again, Slate has two great pieces of writing in two areas I care a lot about: law and war. The first piece comes from Dahlia Lithwick, Slate's outstanding legal correspondent, who details some of the discussion over the USA PATRIOT Act. Ms. Lithwick correctly points out the fact that too few people debating the Patriot Act actually know the minutiae of the act, and she tries to correct that lack of knowledge with her four-part series.

Second, Fred Kaplan chimes in with a great piece on the President Bush's lost opportunities after Sept. 11. Another president might have remade the world... this one did not. There will surely be lots of once-over-the-world analysis of Sept. 11 in the next few days. I'll try to find the better pieces and link to them.
posted by Phillip Carter at 20:53

 
'Training the Brains Behind the Intelligence'

This creative headline will run above a very interesting story in Monday's Los Angeles Times on the FBI's efforts to train terrorism analysts at its academy in Quantico, Virginia. Among the most significant failures before Sept. 11 was the failure to train adequate numbers of intelligence analysts who could find the indicators of terrorism and put those indicators together into a coherent picture. (Other failures included the lack of cross-talk between offices and lack of communication with the intelligence community) Now, Richard Schmitt writes in the LA Times, things are getting better.

. . . these are different kinds of recruits. They will not become FBI field agents, who come to this campus 30 miles south of Washington to hone their shooting skills and engage in cops-and-robbers exercises at a mock village that looks transported from a Hollywood back lot.

Rather, these are analysts who try to outthink their adversaries, and their training is strictly in the classroom.

Analysts "do not do the glamorous things," said Patricia Boord, the FBI unit chief in charge of the College of Analytical Studies. "They do mostly intellectual exercises."

Teamwork, communication and sifting of data — connecting the dots — are at the heart of a transformation the FBI is trying to undergo.

After the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon two years ago, the storied agency was exposed as inept and ill-prepared. Congress and the public clamored for change.

In response, the bureau is redeploying agents into counterterrorism and working more closely with the CIA and other intelligence rivals. And it is struggling to create a mind-set that thinks harder and learns more from what it knows.

The story goes onto discuss the nature of the training exercises being used by the FBI to train these analysts. (A lot gets left out, but you can understand the security reasons for why that's so) Just as America's military must transform itself to deal with the 4th Generation Warfare threat, so too must the rest of America's security apparatus -- its FBI, INS, judiciary, homeland security agency, state and local police, and many others. The FBI has built a legendary reputation for solving crimes and winning convictions, but that's not enough in the realm of terrorism. Now, the FBI has to get so good at inchoate investigations that it can prevent terrorism from happening -- that's a lot harder than catching the bad guys and trying them after the bomb goes off. The key to this transformation is intelligence. And if this story is indicative of a larger trend, I'd say the FBI is on the right track.
posted by Phillip Carter at 21:33

 
Powell: Iraq will cost more than we think

In what should come as no surprise, Secretary of State Colin Powell said today that America's mission in Iraq will cost billions more than projected -- or known -- today. Powell's statement comes as the administration heads to Capitol Hill in search of additional funding for Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the global war on terrorism.

"It's going to cost more, and there will be continued sacrifice on the part of our young men and women," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday. "Hopefully, in the very near future we'll get control of the security situation," he told CBS' "Face the Nation."

Bush was discussing Iraq and the terrorism fight in a nationally televised address from the White House on Sunday night.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the president believes the "cost of freedom and the cost of peace cannot be measured and that it is important that we put adequate resources to this task."
* * *
Rice declined to offer specifics on how much money would be needed. Congressional aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they would not be surprised if the amount the president requests is higher than the $60 billion to $80 billion figure that has been reported for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.

"I think it could be bigger than $80 billion," said a congressional aide, who is familiar with the president's work in refining how much to request from Congress. "I think the expectation is that it's going to be a very, very big number."

A second congressional aide said: "I'm thinking we're in the $70 billion to $80 billion range and I would lean to the higher end of that."

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Congress will approve the money needed to support U.S. troops, but lawmakers want the president to tell them what his "exit strategy" is from Iraq.

Analysis: Former-Army Chief of Staff Gordon R. Sullivan wrote a book titled "Hope is not a method," and that book title has become a mantra among America's military officers. That Secretary Powell would use the word "hopefully" in describing our chances of securing Iraq is not a good sign. Of all people, he understands the futility of hope as a planning method.

The real stakes here are much higher. The authorization and appropriations debate over Iraq is really a battle about who will control American foreign policy -- warmaking, diplomacy, nation-building, and everything else. Art. I and Art. II of the Constitution embody a tension between Congress and the President, and that tension has not been easily resolved for our Constitution's 213 year history. This tension typically plays out each other with the National Defense Authorization Act and its companion authorization bill, where Congress tells the President how to spend money on defense. Suffice to say, if something doesn't get funded, it generally doesn't get done -- especially where large weapons systems (e.g. missile defense) are concerned. The annual authorization bill also includes hundreds (or thousands) of small provisions which set policy for the military as a matter of federal law. Each year, this bill is the largest piece of legislation considered or passed by Congress.

The battle over funding for Iraq is obviously more important than a given year's annual authorization act. The lives of America's sons and daughters are at stake, as well as the direction of a mission that has the potential to influence our foreign policy for decades. Funding is the tool by which Congress exercises oversight of this mission. It would be easier if Congress could simply hold hearings on the wisdom or efficacy of Iraq. But that's not the way that oversight works -- funding is the hook on which the entire process hangs. The authority to fund (or defund) the mission is the leverage Congress has to ask the tough questions of the White House on Iraq:

- Why did we invade Iraq (if not for WMD), and did we accomplish the missions we set for the major combat phase of the war?
- What key tasks remain for our mission in Iraq (e.g. the capture of Saddam Hussein, restoration of electricity, holding of elections, etc)?
- What is our desired end state for Iraq?
- What are the criteria by which we will measure this end state? (And by extension, will these criteria determine our exit from Iraq?
- What is our plan for achieving this end state?

The Constitution empowers the President as commander-in-chief of the military, and it gives him plenary power in the area of foreign policy. But it gives Congress the power to raise and maintain the military, as well as the power to fund the military. Presidents typically criticize Congress for asking these kinds of questions, and for letting partisanship infect foreign policy. The Bush White House will likely say that Congressional probing is hindering our ability to persevere in Iraq. If Congress delays its funding decisions in order to hold hearings, the screaming from the White House will get even louder. That's unfortunate. The Framers intended this tension when they wrote our Constitution. If they were looking at this debate over funding for Iraq, I think they'd be quite proud that their system of checks and balances worked exactly the way they intended.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:02

 
Security v. mission accomplishment -- a really hard tradeoff

Today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has a great article by Greg Jaffe and Chris Cooper about the tradeoffs being made by commanders on the ground in Iraq between site security and other missions. In the aftermath of deadly car bombings, many have called for the deployment of U.S. soldiers as security around key sites -- police stations, large mosques, government centers, power stations, et cetera. As we have a finite number of soldiers on the ground, the dedication of U.S. troops to these sites takes away from the available pool of soldiers who can conduct offensive missions.

Careful to say they are not short of troops now, commanders conceded that they are under ever-greater pressure to siphon off troops for defense, as civilians, foreign governments and U.S. politicians clamor for better security. While a United Nations resolution just offered by the U.S. may lead to an agreement to bring foreign reinforcements to Iraq, the Pentagon is concerned the wait may be long.

Quick relief from the U.N. appears unlikely. Thursday, both French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder dismissed the U.S.'s proposed U.N. resolution as inadequate. Mr. Chirac said that while his government is "naturally ready to study" the resolution, he said it was "quite far removed from what we believe is the priority objective, which is the transfer of political responsibility to an Iraqi government as quickly as possible." Mr. Schroeder opposed the idea that the U.S. -- not the U.N. -- should oversee political developments in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez warned Thursday that international forces would be needed to help tackle looming security threats, such as Iranian fighters or possible conflict between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite Muslims. "If a militia or an internal conflict of some nature were to erupt ... that would be an additional security challenge out there that I do not have sufficient forces for," Gen. Sanchez said. "There are security challenges that are looming in the future that will require additional forces, and those are issues that with the coalition, and with time, can be resolved," he said.

Analysis: I can tell you from experience that this is a really tough balancing act. On the one hand, you have critical sites and high-value assets that must be protected. Some of these are Iraqi sites; others belong to the U.S. But if you leave these unprotected, it's almost a sure thing that the enemy will attack them. And if you lose these things (e.g. U.S. command post), you risk a major tactical or operational setback. So you have to dedicate the assets to protecting these sites.

On the other hand, you can't win a counter-insurgency fight by playing good defense. The way to win a guerilla war is to go on offense -- to gather intelligence, find the enemy, hunt them down, and capture or kill them. If you devote too many troops to this mission, you take away from your ability to prosecute the offensive part of the fight. Commanders and planners are trained to evaluate the operational risk entailed in both courses of action, and it's a safe bet that this balance is being looked at daily to make sure we get it right.

To add another level of complexity, there's a paradox in anti-terrorism planning which goes like this: The more you protect the hard targets, the more you have to worry about the soft targets. Our enemy is not stupid. Al Qaeda has typically chosen its targets after careful reconnaissance designed to determine the vulnerability of their intended target. If we protect something they want to hit, they'll either change methods or change targets. Our jihadist enemies may want to become martyrs, but they don't want to fail in their attacks.

So how do we strike this balance? As always, it's easier said than done. The most important thing is to gather, analyze and produce good intelligence to aid the commander in making these tradeoffs. The second most important thing is to have sufficient resources on the ground so you don't have to guard too few things in order to leave yourself some offensive capability. And the third thing is to constantly reevaluate these decisions in light of new threat information. I think we're doing these things, save some residual concerns about having enough troops in Iraq to do everything we need to do.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:14

 
America's 'grief corps'

Think you have a tough job? Think again. Today's Washington Post has a sobering article on the military officers and NCOs who have one of the toughest jobs in America: casualty notification. There's not much I can say here, except that I have enormous respect for these men and women who personally notify every family of every casualty no matter what the cause. This function exists in war and peace, yet since Sept. 11, it has escalated into quite a large task for America's military.

More troops are dying in Iraq and more families are requesting funerals at Fort Myer than Winborne's 10-person staff can handle. The shortage in the Army's bereavement corps is so acute that her department has started actively recruiting new casualty notification officers and casualty assistance officers -- CNOs and CAOs, the men and women who do some of the grimmest work of war, unheralded and far from the battlefields.

The notification officers have a one-time job: They deliver the bad news and the secretary of the Army's condolences. Then, within a day, the casualty assistance officers take over and spend as long as a year working with the deceased's immediate family, sometimes functioning as stand-ins. On the first visit, the CAO delivers the $6,000 "death gratuity" check. The officers walk a fine line with grieving families, taking kids out for Happy Meals and filling out tax returns but never allowing themselves to get too close.

CAOs are expected to continue with their day jobs but make the family's concerns their first priority. They take care of the funeral arrangements, the transportation costs, the casket selection, the printing of memorial cards, the endless paperwork -- as much as the family wants them to do.

"It's the hardest job there is," says [Army Capt. Rita] Winborne, 37.

posted by Phillip Carter at 07:47

 
Screaming Eagles work hard to rebuild Iraq

The New York Times has an interesting article today on the progress made by the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. The article piqued my interest because I've worked with Col. Linnington before, and his name and unit is featured prominently in the piece. But as I read down, I found some interesting things in this piece -- signs that we may be doing good things in Iraq despite the plans coming out of the Pentagon.

Col. Michael Linnington's brigade fought its way across Iraq. But one of his most unusual missions took place in this remote northwestern corner of the country.

His orders were simple — to work out agreement between local sheiks and Iraqi customs officials to restore trade with Syria. What was unusual was that the decision had been initiated not by the State Department or civilian administrators in Baghdad, but by Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of the Army's 101st Airborne Division and the dominant political figure in Mosul and the surrounding areas in northern Iraq.

Three months later, there is a steady stream of cross-border traffic, and the modest fees that the division set for entering Iraq — $10 per car, $20 per truck — have raised revenue for expanded customs forces and other projects in the region.

A five-day trip through the 101st Division's large area of operation showed that American military, not the civilian-led occupation authority based in Baghdad, are the driving force in the region's political and economic reconstruction.

So what else is new? Field commanders, junior officers and sergeants are taking the initiative to make things work in Iraq, despite the best efforts at the top to frustrate their efforts. That has been true for decades, if not centuries. I doubt you'll find any of these actions by the 101st in a CENTCOM or JCS operational plan. Captains, majors and colonels figured it out on the ground.

Still, it doesn't surprise me that our military is taking the lead role in Iraq. That tracks a larger trend around the world, which Dana Priest effectively laid out in her book The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military. Essentially, the military has muscled out other U.S. governmental agency by force of its resources, size, rapid deployment capability, and ability to operate in a tense environment. At some point, down the road, we may see more USAID and State Department leadership in Iraq. But for now, it's natural to expect that DoD would take the lead role. Luckily, our men and women in these units are flexible and innovative enough to act as soldier/diplomat/policeman/politician/advisor -- whatever the situation may require. Now it's up to us to give them the resources (troops, money, equipment, international support) they need to do the job right.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:45

 
The post-modern presidency of George W. Bush

Josh Marshall has this provocative essay in the September issue of the Washington Monthly on President Bush, and the argument that he epitomizes the idea of what a post-modern president would be. The piece is a little theoretical for a guy with my public school education, but it makes a very interesting point about this presidency that I hadn't considered yet. Here's the part that I thought said it all:

The president and his aides don't speak untruths because they are necessarily people of bad character. They do so because their politics and policies demand it. As astute observers such as National Journal's Jonathan Rauch have recently noted, George W. Bush campaigned as a moderate, but has governed with the most radical agenda of any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Indeed, the aim of most of Bush's policies has been to overturn what FDR created three generations ago. On the domestic front, that has meant major tax cuts forcing sharp reductions in resources for future government activism, combined with privatization of as many government functions as possible. Abroad, Bush has pursued an expansive and militarized unilateralism aimed at cutting the U.S. free from entangling alliances and international treaty obligations so as to maximize freedom of maneuver for American power in a Hobbesian world.

Yet this is not an agenda that the bulk of the American electorate ever endorsed. Indeed, poll after poll suggest that Bush's policy agenda is not particularly popular. What the public wants is its problems solved: terrorists thwarted, jobs created, prescription drugs made affordable, the environment protected. Almost all of Bush's deceptions have been deployed when he has tried to pass off his preexisting agenda items as solutions to particular problems with which, for the most part, they have no real connection. That's when the unverifiable assertion comes in handy. Many of the administration's policy arguments have amounted to predictions--tax cuts will promote job growth, Saddam is close to having nukes, Iraq can be occupied with a minimum of U.S. manpower--that most experts believed to be wrong, but which couldn't be definitely disproven until events played out in the future. In the midst of getting those policies passed, the administration's main obstacle has been the experts themselves--the economists who didn't trust the budget projections, the generals who didn't buy the troop estimates, intelligence analysts who questioned the existence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq. That has created a strong incentive to delegitimize the experts--a task that comes particularly easy to the revisionists who drive Bush administration policy. They tend to see experts as guardians of the status quo, who seek to block any and all change, no matter how necessary, and whose views are influenced and corrupted by the agendas and mindsets of their agencies. Like orthodox Marxists who pick apart mainstream economics and anthropology as the creations of 'bourgeois ideology' or Frenchified academic post-modernists who 'deconstruct' knowledge in a similar fashion, revisionist ideologues seek to expose "the facts" as nothing more than the spin of experts blinded by their own unacknowledged biases. The Bush administration's betes noir aren't patriarchy, racism, and homophobia, but establishmentarianism, big-government liberalism, and what they see as pervasive foreign policy namby-pambyism. For them, ignoring the experts and their 'facts' is not only necessary to advance their agenda, but a virtuous effort in the service of a higher cause.

This piece is sure to spark criticism from the neo-con media on the right, such as the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal, just as Mr. Marshall's piece in March 2003 ("Practice to Deceive") did. But while such criticism is inevitable, it's probably also a waste of energy. Mr. Marshall's critique seems spot-on to me. Any salvos launched at Mr. Marshall from the White House will simply prove his point.
posted by Phillip Carter at 22:03

 
WP reports on the soldiers wounded in Iraq
Until now, the wounded toll went largely unreported by the major media and the Pentagon

Until now, there has been lots of reporting on those killed in Iraq, but little reporting on soldiers wounded in Iraq. Much of this owes to advances in body armor and battlefield medicine (also covered) which have transformed many wounds that would've been fatal in previous wars into injuries. However, Vernon Loeb reports in today's Washington Post that the numbers of wounded have actually been quite high -- and that thousands of Americans have returned home from Iraq as a result of wounds suffered in action.

The number of those wounded in action, which totals 1,124 since the war began in March, has grown so large, and attacks have become so commonplace, that U.S. Central Command usually issues news releases listing injuries only when the attacks kill one or more troops. The result is that many injuries go unreported.

The rising number and quickening pace of soldiers being wounded on the battlefield have been overshadowed by the number of troops killed since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations May 1. But alongside those Americans killed in action, an even greater toll of battlefield wounded continues unabated, with an increasing number being injured through small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, remote-controlled mines and what the Pentagon refers to as "improvised explosive devices."

Indeed, the number of troops wounded in action in Iraq is now more than twice that of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The total increased more than 35 percent in August -- with an average of almost 10 troops a day injured last month.
* * *
Pentagon officials point to advances in military medicine as one of the reasons behind the large number of wounded soldiers; many lives are being saved on the battlefield that in past conflicts would have been lost. But the rising number of casualties also reflects the resistance that U.S. forces continue to meet nearly five months after Hussein was ousted from power.

Although Central Command keeps a running total of the wounded, it releases the number only when asked -- making the combat injuries of U.S. troops in Iraq one of the untold stories of the war.

With no fanfare and almost no public notice, giant C-17 transport jets arrive virtually every night at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, on medical evacuation missions. Since the war began, more than 6,000 service members have been flown back to the United States. The number includes the 1,124 wounded in action, 301 who received non-hostile injuries in vehicle accidents and other mishaps, and thousands who became physically or mentally ill.

I'm no fan of body-count journalism, and I don't think we should make policies exclusively on the basis of projected casualties. (See this note from last week) But I do think it's important to take this into consideration. I also think it's important to be sensitive to the new generation of veterans who will soon rejoin American society. Some will be wounded on the outside; many will be scarred on the inside. The searing experience of battle will change them all in some way, great or small. America has a terrible record (save notable exceptions like the GI Bill) of greeting its returning veterans from war, and our thousands of homeless veterans attest to that fact. We must do better with this generation, and do what is necessary to help these men and women when they come home.
posted by Phillip Carter at 18:06

 
Former Army secretary blasts administration on Iraq

Robert Burns, the Pentagon beat reporter for the Associated Press, reports that former-Secretary of the Army (and retired 1-star general) Tom White has a few choice words in his new book for the White House over its handling of Iraq. White was forced by Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld (and possibly the White House) to resign after a series of high-profile clashes between the Army and SecDef over various issues. His uniformed counterpart, Gen. Eric Shinseki, was also forced out by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Now, Tom White writes that the Bush Administration made serious errors in its pre-war planning for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"Clearly the view that the war to `liberate' Iraq would instantly produce a pro-United States citizenry ready for economic and political rebirth ignored the harsh realities on the ground," White wrote in a preface to "Reconstructing Eden," which is to be published Thursday.

In a letter to news organizations announcing the book's release, White was even tougher on the administration. "Unbelievably, American lives are being lost daily," he wrote. White said the administration lacks a cohesive, integrated plan to stabilize and rebuild the country.

"We did not conduct the war this way and we should not continue rebuilding the country in a haphazard manner," he wrote. "The result will be a financial disaster, more lives lost, chaos in Iraq and squandered American goodwill."

White, who as a civilian service secretary was not in the military chain of command, served as Army secretary from May 2001 to May 2003. He clashed with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on a number of issues, including the service's plan for the Crusader artillery system, which Rumsfeld viewed as too heavy and cumbersome for the lighter, more agile Army he envisioned.

A Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Col. Jim Cassella, said that as a matter of policy the department does not comment on books. He acknowledged that U.S. occupation authorities in Baghdad face severe problems with security in Iraq but believe they are on track toward success.

In the book, White noted the postwar spasms of violence in Iraq.

"It is quite clear in the immediate aftermath of hostilities that the plan for winning the peace is totally inadequate," he wrote.

White wrote that the administration's Iraq policy "threatens to turn what was a major military victory into a potential humanitarian, political and economic disaster." The administration's "anemic attempts at nation building" will be viewed with disdain by other countries, he said.

Analysis: This may be Monday-morning quarterbacking, but it's extremely well-informed Monday-morning quarterbacking by a man who's thrown a few footballs in his time. Secretary White, had he stayed in uniform, probably would've made it all the way up to 4-star rank. As Secretary of the Army, he was widely considered one of the most popular service secretaries in recent memory -- at least within the ranks. And he was a part of the pre-war planning process in the Pentagon until his departure in May 2003, so he knows what he's talking about -- much more than this author. If Tom White thinks we screwed up the post-war planning, and failed to devote adequate resources to the problem, he's basing that opinion on a lot more evidence than any other writers I've read lately.

That said, this story has the potential to create serious civil-military problems for the Bush Administration and America -- especially if retired-Gen. Shinseki decides to speak up as well. Acrimony between uniformed leaders and civilian political leaders is nothing new, either for America or any other nation. (See the history provided by Eliot Cohen in his book Supreme Command) But this flare-up presents a Constitutional crisis of sorts, where the President's very credibility on nuts & bolts military decision is being called into question some of his highest ranking military officials. This criticism is bolstered by the experiential gap between President Bush and Secretary White. Art. II of the Constitution designates the President as Commander-in-Chief of our military, but it does not confer automatic credibility on him in the area of national security policy. President Clinton found this out the hard way with his initial efforts to integrate gays in the military, and it cost him good civil-military relations for the length of his presidency. Now we have a situation which may be worse. President Bush isn't being criticized here for his social policies for the military -- he's being criticized for his decisions sending the military into harm's way by the very military leaders who helped supervise and implement those orders for the Army. In terms of Constitutional crises, this does not rise to the level of Cooper v. Aaron or the Nixon tapes, but it's not a good thing either.

No way out? Fortunately, the President can escape this Catch-22 situation. (And no, he doesn't need to enlist in the Army to close the experience gap with Tom White.) What he does need to do is open his national-security decisionmaking process to smart folks like Tom White and Eric Shinseki. This should be easy for a president who prides himself on being a MBA-type -- someone who succeeds by surrounding himself with exceedingly smart people.

If I had to pin the fault on one aspect of the post-war planning, it was the "group think" that pervaded the White House, National Security Council and Pentagon during the process. Clearly, the plan was based on certain assumptions about the post-war situation, and those assumptions turned out to be wrong. We were not greeted as liberators, and we have become the target of hatred for both Shiite and Sunni Muslims. No "Plan B" was created or effectively resourced, and when our planning assumptions proved faulty, it was too late to spin up a Plan B. In a perfect world, we would've deployed enough of a force package to Kuwait to stage for Plan B if necessary -- but we did not. We assumed a tremendous amount of risk by building a plan on a fixed set of assumptions and fighting that plan despite indications that we would face an insurgency after the war. The best way to mitigate this kind of planning risk is to broaden the planning process and build multiple courses of actions (COAs) which account for each probable set of assumptions.

Luckily, there is no shortage of planners on the Joint Staff to conduct such contingency planning. Nor is there any shortage of civilian experts with security clearances to do this kind of planning for RAND or another think tank. All that's required is a willingness among the denizens of the E-Ring and West Wing to consider ideas from the outside, and to act on them.

Update: James Webb -- former Navy Secretary, decorated Vietnam Vet, and author -- also has some words for the Bush Administration on Iraq.

"I am very troubled by the fact that we went into Iraq and very troubled about how we're going to get out of Iraq,'' Webb said Thursday to about 200 naval officers, veterans and civilians at the Radisson Hotel Norfolk. The lecture was sponsored by the Hampton Roads Naval Museum and the Naval War College Foundation.

The United States should quickly get the United Nations involved in administering and patrolling the country, he said.

"We need to get out of there before the mistake we made gets worse,'' said Webb, a Marine Corps veteran.
* * *
Bob Briner, a retired Navy captain from Virginia Beach, said he appreciated Webb's observations.

"What I like about Webb is that he's been there, he knows what he's talking about,'' he said.

Yes he does.

Update: The Washington Post reported on Friday that retired Gen. Anthony Zinni has joined the chorus of really smart and experienced military leaders who think we may be in trouble in Iraq. Clearly, I lack the experience and knowledge of men like James Webb and Anthony Zinni -- the latter of whom is regarded as the intellectual father of the modern "CINC". (Washington Post writer Dana Priest described Zinni as an American proconsul because of the way he presided over American interests in the Middle East when he was CINC of CENTCOM.) Of course, neither man is particularly beholden to the White House. Webb is more of a Reagan Republican, and Zinni is Colin Powell's man.

But is Josh Marshall right -- is this a sign that Rumsfeld is on his way out?
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:38