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

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WP: Pentagon plans to reduce troop levels in near future

Tom Ricks reported in this Sunday's Washington Post that a new plan has been adopted inside the Pentagon to reduce American troop levels in Iraq. The plan is an optimistic one, aiming to cut the current number of 130,000 troops to less than 100,000 within a year and 50,000 by mid-2005. This plan appears driven both by political calculations in the Bush Administration, and the hard reality that America does not have the military force structure to manage a long-term occupation of Iraq. (The Pentagon's official plan does not disclose the details that Mr. Ricks reports on, presumably because this reduction plan is still in the deliberative process.)

The plan, which amounts to being the first formal military exit strategy for Iraq, is designed to show how the U.S. presence might be reduced without undercutting the stability of the country. Military officials worry that if they do not begin cutting the size of the U.S. force, they could damage troop morale, leave the armed forces shorthanded if crises emerge in North Korea and elsewhere, and help create a long-term personnel shortage in the service.

At the same time, some of the people involved in the discussions said they consider the force reduction plan optimistic, as much a goal as a guaranteed outcome.

If it is implemented successfully, the troop reductions could reduce political pressure on the Bush administration as the presidential campaign gets fully underway.
* * *
Officials involved in the discussions about troop reductions insist that implementation will be dictated not by a set timetable, but by security conditions in Iraq. Nonetheless, the drawdown is tied to events that are scheduled to begin in January, when a major round of U.S. troop rotations that will last several months is to get underway.

During that period, the U.S. military hopes to turn over as many basic security functions as possible to the Iraqi security forces now being created and to any additional foreign peacekeepers that U.S. diplomacy secures. If the Iraqi security forces can shoulder more of the security burden, it might be possible to replace the departing divisions of about 16,000 troops each with brigades of about 5,000 each.

Over the spring, that changeover would represent a cumulative reduction of more than 30,000 soldiers; along with other cuts, it could lower the U.S. troop level to fewer than 100,000 by mid-2004.

As more units of Iraqi soldiers and civil defense troops are created, and as some additional foreign peacekeepers begin to arrive, cuts in U.S. troop levels would continue next year. Ideally, said one official involved in the planning, by mid-2005 the number of U.S. troops would be as low as 40,000. Army planners consider a presence of that size to be sustainable for years without placing undue stress on the overall force.

Analysis: As Mr. Ricks reports, this is an incredibly optimistic plan. It hinges on the amount of international support (in terms of troop commitments) we're able to get, as well as on the number and caliber of Iraqis we can train to take over security functions. This plan also hinges on our abilities to rebuidl the Iraqi infrastructure, jumpstart democracy, and a bunch of other things. It's great to have such an optimistic plan, and I hope we can achieve it. But "hope is not a method." We've got to have contingency plans, branch plans, sequel plans, and other options for when one of these key tasks fails to happen.

One other important thing emerges from Mr. Ricks' report that should not be glossed over. He refers to an "exit strategy" for Iraq that's dependent on the fulfillment of certain conditions. Although the logic is backward, it's possible to extrapolate our actual objectives in Iraq from these tactical, operational and strategic conditions of success. The basic argument goes like this: if we fulfill these conditions, then we will have accomplished our mission. Therefore, our mission in Iraq is to set these conditions of success which will enable us to leave. Therefore, we are in Iraq because of these conditions. I know it's backwards, but it's possible to pull our raison d'etre from this exit strategy.

Granted, it would have been nice to have these conditions spelled out up front. But sometimes, you have to hide the ball for reasons of operational security. If you spell out your success criteria too explicitly, you tell your enemies how to defeat you. At this point, we have to define success for political reasons, mostly to get the international community to help us. In any event, this is a good development, and I think it reflects some good work within the Pentagon to boil this mission down to practical, executable, logical elements that can be put into action on the ground.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:18

 
Recall fever moves from California to Iraq

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) leads one of its front-page articles this morning with a tongue-in-cheek question from an Iraqi lawyer in Baghdad: if California can recall its recalcitrant governor, why can't Iraqis recall the Americans now occupying their country?

"When the people of California were unhappy with their authorities, they threw them out and elected Schwarzenegger," said Salah Erebat, a bearded lawyer who supports the insurgents. "So why is it that Americans can do it and we in Sadr City cannot?"

Last Thursday, Iraqi police backed by American tanks showed them why not, chasing the renegade officials out of the Sadr City council headquarters and tossing a dozen of their supporters in jail.

Now, members of the official assembly are afraid to return to work. The standoff has left the contested building sitting empty, ringed by tanks and covered with anti-American graffiti -- testimony to the challenges the U.S. military occupation faces in trying to create a new democratic government in Iraq after decades of totalitarian rule.

U.S. Army Col. P.J. Dermer, who helped establish the district council and has been trying to referee the current showdown, calls it an important litmus test for Iraq. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime shot, and we can't fail it," he says.

Everyone involved in Iraq -- the U.S., the United Nations and the Iraqis themselves -- want the American-run Coalition Provisional Authority to hand over power to an elected Iraqi government as quickly as possible. But six months after the ouster of Saddam Hussein's regime, no Iraqi official can claim to be truly elected. The 24-member Governing Council at the top of the national government structure was handpicked and installed by the CPA in July.

As early as May, the U.S. military tried to involve local citizens in the selection of Baghdad's 88 neighborhood councils. Those councils, in turn, elected district assemblies -- including the one for Sadr City -- and a citywide council. For weeks after Baghdad fell under U.S. control, soldiers toured the city blaring messages through loudspeakers mounted on Humvees, urging residents to attend the selection meetings held in their neighborhoods. In some areas, thousands showed up, packing an entire sports field in one. In others, only a handful of Iraqis who were already cooperating with U.S. forces attended.

"These were their first experiences in actually practicing democracy," says U.S. Army Lt. Col. Joe Rice, the project's coordinator who served until the war as mayor of Glendale, Colo., population 5,000. "In some places it was easy to do right off. In others, we're still not there."

Analysis: Humor aside, the Iraqis have a point. They have a legitimate right to national self-determination, a principle long enshrined in political philosophy and international law. Now freed from the yoke of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqis want to be able to choose their own government. For the most part, I think we're facilitating that choice by building the institutions of democracy and liberal society. But after suffering Saddam for 30 years, I can understand how the Iraqis might be a little anxious.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:03

 
More rural Americans died in Iraq than urban Americans

An analysis of American casualties in Iraq by the Austin American-Statesman has found something very interesting -- that rural Americans account for a greater proportion of killed-in-action than urban Americans. Also, among those urban Americans killed in Iraq, the numbers reflect a disproportionately high number of African-American and Latino soldiers. (Thanks to Donald Sensing for the tip to this story)

Howard County is poorer than most. Its young people are leaving, although Hispanic immigrants are replacing them. It is small. Its people have low incomes. It has relatively few people with college degrees. It is economically depressed.

Disproportionately, the young men dying in Iraq come from places just like this. Compared to the nation's population, those who have died are disproportionately from smaller counties. They are disproportionately from counties with lower per capita income. They are disproportionately from places with low levels of college education.

A statistical analysis of the more than 300 U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq by Austin American-Statesman consultant Robert Cushing shows that this may be America's war, but it is being fought by only a part of America.

The soldiers who died aren't numbers, but numbers tell some of their story. Those who died in Iraq were 39 percent more likely than the nation as a whole to live in counties with fewer than 100,000 people. They were 16 percent more likely than the nation as a whole to live in a county with lower than average levels of college education and 16 percent more likely to live in counties with below average incomes.

Those soldiers who came from the nation's large cities were disproportionately black or Hispanic. And a small proportion of those who died come from the nation's technology hubs, the score of urban areas that are creating the world's newest inventions and companies _ cities like San Jose, Seattle, Austin and Dallas. Those who have died largely grew up in old economy towns or rural regions, places with low levels of technology and little innovation.

Was this same divide evident in the Vietnam War? "I don't think so," said Steve Maxner, associate director of the Vietnam Center at Texas Tech University. "During the war in Southeast Asia, you had the draft."

More than anything, however, those who died in today's all-volunteer military came from small-town America. Their names, lives and hometowns roll through the news, and places long forgotten are known again, if only for a day.

Analysis: I missed this story when it ran on the wire last week, but I think it's very significant. It's important to know which part of America has borne the human cost of this war, and in more general terms, which part of America actually serves in uniform. A number of people argued before the war that we needed to reinstate the draft to more evenly spread the burden of military service across society -- horizontally and vertically. The military establishment counter-argued that a draft would be counter-productive, and that the burden is relatively equal now because of the self-selection dynamic of today's force. I think this story undercuts the military position that the burden is shared equally. It does not necessarily support the argument of Rep. Charlie Rangel and others who say the military burden cuts on the basis of race, but it does support the argument (in my opinion) that America's working and middle classes do more than their share.

But honestly, this study raises more questions than it answers, and I'm hesitant to go much further than this. Here are some of my questions after reading this story:
- Why do rural Americans seem more likely to die than urban Americans?
- Are rural Americans volunteering in disproportionate numbers for the combat arms? Is there some correlation between rural/urban and occupational specialty in the military? (Conventional wisdom holds that the 'country boys' will join the infantry to go hunting in the woods, while the urban kids will go to work as mechanics and technicians. Like most CW, it's just hyperbole)
- Is there a way to parse the data for the most dangerous occupational specialties? This war has included a lot of unconventional war, exposing logisticians and others in the rear area to battle. But I still think that combat troops faced the brunt of the danger, particularly during the combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
- What about the active vs. reserve mix of casualties? Were there any statistically significant differences between urban and rural reserve units in terms of their casualties?
- Is there any way to get the Wounded In Action data, as well as other non-battle casualty data? I'd like to see these numbers because KIA often reflects the enemy's marksmanship and our MEDEVAC capabilities more than anything else. Total casualty data -- KIA plus WIA plus non-battle casualties -- would paint a more complete picture of the relative dangers faced by our soldiers in Iraq.
posted by Phillip Carter at 05:41

 
A moment of silence

INTEL DUMP will observe a day of silence in memory of 4 military police soldiers killed in Iraq. Three of these soldiers belonged to the 716th Military Police Battalion (Air Assault) at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The fourth hailed from the 105th Military Police Company (National Guard) in New York. Listed below are the details according to the Pentagon.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of three soldiers who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom on Oct. 16 in Karbala, Iraq. The soldiers were attempting to negotiate with armed men who were congregating on a road near a mosque after curfew. The Iraqis opened fire killing three soldiers and wounding seven others.. Killed were:

Lt. Col. Kim S. Orlando, 43, of Tennessee.

Staff Sgt. Joseph P. Bellavia, 28, of Wakefield, Mass.

Cpl. Sean R. Grilley, 24, of San Bernardino, Calif.

The soldiers were assigned to the 716th Military Police Battalion, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), based in Fort Campbell, Ky. Orlando was the commanding officer of the 716th Military Police Battalion.
* * *
The Department of Defense announced today that Spc. Michael L. Williams, 46, of Buffalo, N.Y., was killed on October 17, 2003, along MSR Jackson, near Baghdad, Iraq. Williams was killed in action when his vehicle ran over an improvised explosive device. He died as a result of his injuries. Williams was assigned to the 105th Military Police Company, Army National Guard, based in New York.

posted by Phillip Carter at 21:30

 
8 Marines charged with mistreatment of Iraqi POWs

The AP reports tonight that 8 Marines have been charged with various military offenses relating to the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners of war -- up to and including negligent homicide.

The reservists belong to the 2nd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment. Their hometowns were not immediately released, and it was not known if all had retained lawyers.

Two of the men were charged with negligent homicide in connection with the June death of an Iraqi who was held at a detention facility, said Marine Staff Sgt. Bill Lisbon, a spokesman at Camp Pendleton.

Lisbon said Saturday he was unsure how many of the other six reservists had been charged in connection with the death. He would not say whether the man was the 52-year-old Iraqi prisoner of war whose death at a camp run by the 1st Marine Division near Nasiriyah was reported last June.

Maj. Clark Paulus and Lance Cpl. Christian Hernandez face negligent homicide charges. The other six face lesser charges involving mistreatment of prisoners.
* * *
Meanwhile, a lawyer representing one of the men said the Army did not have the necessary personnel to run the detention camp and the reservists were untrained for the job.

"In the rush to war with Iraq, providing the mandatory training to reservists seems to have had little if any priority with the Pentagon," Donald Rehkopf Jr. said in a statement released Saturday.
* * *
Under military directives, the Army is supposed to handle POW facilities, said Rehkopf, who is representing Lance Cpl. William Roy.

The reservists "had no training at all. They were given a 30-minute training on the Geneva convention," Rehkopf said, referring to the international accords for treatment of POWs.

Analysis: This case is going to move forward now in the military justice system to what's called an "Article 32 hearing", which is roughly the equivalent of a grand jury proceeding. There, a military judge must decide whether there is enough evidence present to formally charge these men in military court. From there, the case will move into a military court, most likely in a general court martial.

None of the facts are present in this story and I haven't had time to dig up the charging documents yet. The charges sound serious -- it appears that one (or more) Iraqi died in a POW camp tended by these men. The defense they're putting forward about their training may mitigate their culpability, especially the lower-ranking Marines, but it probably won't absolve them completely. However, I can't make even an educated guess here without more of the facts.

More to follow.
posted by Phillip Carter at 19:21

 
Who's covered by the Third Geneva Convention?
And is the U.S. violating the 3rd GC with its prison at Guantanamo Bay?

Eugene Volokh passes on a critique by Zev Sero of a New York Times editorial that criticizes America's detention of men at Guantanamo Bay who have been captured in the war on terrorism. Eugene also does a great job of parsing the definitions of combatants under the Geneva Convention, and explaining why the NY Times may be wrong in its editorial. The Times asserts that the detention has no basis in the Geneva Convention, an argument which is conclusory at best.

Why are the men still without trial, still without rights? The Bush administration has two justifications. One is, in essence, self-defense: in the war on terrorism, in which the security of the United States is in mortal danger, normal rules cannot apply. The other, more narrow, is about legality: the Taliban and Al Qaeda are not combatants in traditional or legal terms, and are therefore not eligible for the protections due to prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

Both arguments miss the point. The men held at Guant?namo are prisoners of the United States. While they may not have the same rights as American citizens, they should be treated in the highest tradition of American justice. That means they must be given some forum in which to contest their imprisonment, and there must be reasonable rules and some individualized proof for the detentions to be upheld.

That the Pentagon should be allowed to run this prison camp in total secrecy and in utter disdain of what America stands for should be heavy on the conscience of all Americans, whether libertarian or liberal, Republican or Democrat. For this reason alone, the detainees should be brought to justice or released.

The justifications offered by the administration are equally unpersuasive. The argument that the detainees are not prisoners of war because they are not uniformed members of a regular armed force has no foundation in the Geneva Conventions.

As for the claim of self-defense, it simply cannot be applied indefinitely. We accept that there are extraordinary times — Sept. 11 was one of them — when a government must take extraordinary measures to protect the nation. But with Guant?namo, the administration has gone far beyond the needs of the moment, seeking to ensure in every way possible that the prisoners remain indefinitely beyond the reach of law or scrutiny.

Analysis: Eugene correctly cites to the definition of combatants in Art. 4 of the 3rd GC. Regular army soldiers automatically qualify. Members of militias and volunteer corps (the GC was written in 1949 so the language is a little archaic) have to meet a 4-part test for status as a prisoner of war:

(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) that of carrying arms openly;
(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Suffice to say, there has been an open debate in legal and operational communities about whether the Taliban and Al Qaeda satisfy these definitions, or whether American special operations forces do. In general, I think that unconventional warfare -- whether practiced by us or our enemies -- does not fit the Geneva Convention paradigm. Trying to use these definitions to cover today's forms of warfare is a stretch. (See "Extend Geneva to Gitmo") In any event, I don't think the text of the Geneva Convention supports the NYT's contention that our actions at Gitmo have no foundation in the Geneva Conventions. Our actions do have some legal foundation under the Geneva Convention, though in my opinion, these are very shaky foundations.

Why? Eugene and Zev both miss another argument that could be made for why the Geneva Convention does not support our action. Art. 5 of the Geneva Convention creates a rebuttable presumption that prisoners are to be considered POWs until determined otherwise by a properly constituted tribunal:

ARTICLE 5

The present Convention shall apply to the persons referred to in Article 4 from the time they fall into the power of the enemy and until their final release and repatriation.

Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.

An executive determination (like the one made by President Bush) cannot suffice under the Geneva Convention for this article, unless you buy the argument that the President himself is a "tribunal" under the meaning of this article. FM 27-10, the Army's field manual for the law of land warfare, is also quite clear about this requirement. In practice, the Army has constituted many such tribunals in Iraq, usually with mid-level officers (Captain through Lieutenant Colonel) with some connection to the detention operation (MP, JAG, Intel, Civil Affairs). These do not have to be formal proceedings, and they don't even have to be adversarial. The tribunals can conduct an ex parte review of each combatant to make this determination and report that in writing to the commander, with a courtesy copy to the ICRC. (The Red Cross is charged as the executor of the Geneva Conventions.)

However, in the absence of such tribunals, we may very well be in violation of the Geneva Convention. Not in the way the NYT suggests with its editorial, but in a technical and procedural way. I'm well aware of the dissonance between substantive law and procedural law, and how the former tends to trump the latter. If this is mere formalism, then why bother? I'm biased as a law student, but I tend to believe that the foundations of substantive justice lie in procedure. The way we ensure our principles are executed is by crafting procedures to carry them out. In the instant case, the Geneva Convention exists to promote humane treatment of prisoners of war, and it sets out procedures to ensure that this principle is practiced. America ought to follow those procedures, even if they are empty formalities, because it's the right thing to do.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:33

 
Two more plead guilty to terror charges in Oregon

Patrice Ford and Jeffrey Battle pled guilty today to charges of conspiring to levy war against the United States. The pair was charged as part of a group of 7 persons that the Justice Department believed to be part of a terrorist cell in the Pacific Northwest. With these pleas, 6 of the 7 members of the group have pled guilty to charges. The 7th remains at large. Before their pleas, some observers thought this case might prove interesting because the government sought to use evidence gathered with powers gained in the USA PATRIOT Act.

The pleas came during a hearing when defense attorneys had intended to challenge evidence gathered under the USA Patriot Act.

Because of the pleas, those challenges will not be heard during this case.

Last October, federal agents nabbed Ford, Battle and two other men and one woman in what Attorney General John Ashcroft called a "defining day" in the fight against terrorism.

It's not clear when we'll have a person willing to risk prison -- or capital punishment -- to challenge some of the government's post-9/11 security measures. The ACLU thought this might be the case, filing this amicus curae brief. However, the defendants decided it was in their personal interest to plead guilty. Given the strong likelihood they faced of life in prison, I think that was probably the prudent decision for them.
posted by Phillip Carter at 12:07

 
Shameless self promotion: CNN.Com picked up my article from last week that ran in Writ titled "High crimes at Guantanamo Bay". As news breaks in this case, I will continue to provide analysis on INTEL DUMP and also for Findlaw.Com.
posted by Phillip Carter at 11:34

 
Stars & Stripes poll: morale down in Iraq

The Washington Post passes on the results of a poll conducted by the Stars & Stripes newspaper of soldiers in Iraq that does not bode well for our mission there. As a preliminary matter, this poll was conducted somewhat informally, and does not represent a statistically perfect sample of the U.S. military in Iraq. However, I think it would be irresponsible to ignore the results, because they offer the most objective evidence yet of American soldiers' attitudes in Iraq.

The survey, conducted by the Stars and Stripes newspaper, also recorded about a third of the respondents complaining that their mission lacks clear definition and characterizing the war in Iraq as of little or no value. Fully 40 percent said the jobs they were doing had little or nothing to do with their training.

The findings, drawn from 1,935 questionnaires presented to U.S. service members throughout Iraq, conflict with statements by military commanders and Bush administration officials that portray the deployed troops as high-spirited and generally well-prepared. Though not obtained through scientific methods, the survey results suggest that a combination of difficult conditions, complex missions and prolonged tours in Iraq is wearing down a significant portion of the U.S. force and threatening to provoke a sizable exodus from military service.

In the first of a week-long series of articles, Stars and Stripes said yesterday that it undertook the survey in August after receiving scores of letters from troops who were upset with one aspect or another of the Iraq operation. The newspaper, which receives some funding from the Defense Department but functions without editorial control by the Pentagon, prepared 17 questions and sent three teams of reporters to Iraq to conduct the survey and related interviews at nearly 50 camps.

"We conducted a 'convenience survey,' meaning we gave it to those who happened to be available at the time rather than to a randomly selected cross section, so the results cannot necessarily be projected as representing the whole population," said David Mazzarella, the paper's editorial director here. "But we still think the findings are significant and make clear that the troops have a different idea of things than what their leaders have been saying."

Experts in public opinion and the military concurred that the poll was not necessarily representative, but they characterized it as a useful gauge of troop sentiment. "The numbers are consistent with what I suspect is going on there," said David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland at College Park. "I am getting a sense that there is a high and increasing level of demoralization and a growing sense of being in something they don't understand and aren't sure the American people understand."

Analysis: A few quick points of analysis emerge from this story. I think it's important to note at the outset that Stars & Stripes is a quasi-independent newspaper. It exists under the auspices of the Defense Department, though it has editorial discretion to run the articles it wants to. The reporting from S&S reporters in Iraq has been first-rate; as good as anything the NY Times or Washington Post has put out there. These reporters know the units they're covering and they know the military as an institution, and I think that informs their stories -- including this one.

Now for some analysis of these polling results:

1. American soldiers love to gripe. As Eliot Cohen said in the WP article, "American troops have a God-given right and tradition of grumbling." That's true. But the character of the gripes counts, because it indicates what soldiers are upset about -- and what they're happy about. I always expected my soldiers to complain about the food, the weather, the hardships, the family separations, and other things. In fact, I thought griping was healthy. I accepted it as normal, and thought these gripes often opened up channels of communication that enabled me to connect with my soldiers. I thought it was dangerous when my guys complained about the mission, the deployment, the leadership, or their peers. Those gripes usually meant I had to explain the "why" behind the mission, or adjust fire on something else I was doing. Similarly, I think the same is true in Iraq. The nature of the gripes counts here because the soldiers are doing more than just complaining about the food and conditions. (Though I've been told those two things continue to suck for many soldiers.) Many of these soldiers are complaining about the mission, their political leadership, and their raison d'etre for Iraq. That's not a good sign.

2. Junior soldiers and officers tend to be honest -- especially when anonymous. These poll results are likely to be more accurate than reports from embedded reporters or politicians who've made the journey to Iraq. Why? Because those kinds of visitors get a "dog and pony show", as the WP story points out. Commanders often selected the most "hooah" soldiers for those meet & greet visits, and they often coach the soldiers on what to say (and what not to say). Similarly, major media reporters who don't fully embed into units will only get a small glimpse of unit morale. Because they're not there long enough to build trust and rapport, they probably won't get the straight answers. These surveys are more likely to get the straight answers than most of the high-level "factfinding" trips, and thus, I think these survey results are pretty valuable.

3. The data, if granular enough, may reveal important differences across units and regions. It's common knowledge that the majority of Iraq is doing well -- particularly the southern and northern parts of the country. Most of the fighting is happening in Baghdad and the "Sunni Triangle." Presumably, these poll numbers will show a greater disenchantment among soldiers in those areas, while soldiers in the good areas will be happy with their mission. I haven't yet reviewed the data, but this seems intuitively true. (Update: I've read the surveys, and they don't have this level of granularity. This is probably something that our commanders ought to be doing in Iraq, and that they probably are doing right now.)

4. Other metrics to look at. These surveys are great for measuring subjective attitudes, but we should also start looking at some objective metrics of soldier morale and performance in Iraq. Reenlistment is the obvious one, both during the deployment and during the year afterwards. Safety-accident rates are also an important indicator of morale. Though the visits themselves are confidential, aggregate data about chaplain visits and mental-health visits may also provide a good metric. The Army should be looking at all of these on a constant basis -- and in historical context -- to evaluate whether we have a problem in Iraq or not.

Bottom Line: Does poor morale mean we should leave Iraq? No. No military can be effective if it lets soldier morale determine its mission, and that's certainly true here. Moreover, our system of civilian control of the military can't allow the dog to yank the chain in this way. If our national objective in Iraq is important and if we have committed our nation to that objective (as we have), then we must succeed. If military morale declines, then we must do what we can to take care of our soldiers to maintain that morale (e.g. providing R&R, body armor, phone calls home, good food, mail service, effective training before deployment, etc). Taking care of soldiers is the answer here, not withdrawal.

Update: J.P. Carter (no relation) has a different take on the story. I think his reading of the numbers is plausible, especially the differences he notices between services. If anything, I think these surveys raise more questions to be asked and answered.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:14

 
Live blog from the DC sniper trial

UnlearnedHand pointed me to this outstanding weblog being run by Kerry Sipe, the online news coordinator for The Virginian-Pilot, who's reporting first-hand from the court complex in Virginia Beach. Here's an excerpt from what the 'blog has to offer:

12:42 PM Oct. 15

Prospective Juror 386, a Navy retiree, said under questioning by Judge Millette that his brother had been killed by police during a robbery and that he himself had been charged by police after a fistfight. He assured the judge that neither of these incidents would have any affect on his ability to consider testimony from law enforcement officers in the case.

The man said he had no objections to the death penalty.

"I didn't peronally feel threatened down here," the man told Ebert, "but I cancelled a trip to D.C." while the killings were going on last year, partly because of safety concerns and partly because of the traffic problems the crimes had caused there. He said he would have no trouble setting aside those feelings in rendering a verdict in the case.

Defense attorney Greenspun again, as he has throughout the questioning of potential jurors, apologized to No. 386 for not being able to call him by name. "It's to protect you from our friends who are surroundng the courthouse here," he said. "Of which there are many." Presumably, the attorney was referring to extensive press coverage of the case. The Pilot's Larry Bonko reported in this morning's edition that there are 353 members of the media from 76 news organizations registered to cover the Muhammad trial.

Greenspun questioned the man about any knowledge he has about military justice based on his service in the Navy. The man said he understood that the military justice system was not the same as the civilian justice system.

"I don't have anything against the death penalty," the man said. "I think it's serious to take someone's life, but being in the military, I may have a someone different view about that." Greenspun asked him if he meant that his job description as a military officer may have involved taking human life under certain circumstances. He said that's what he meant.

This is a brilliant idea, and it appears to be brilliantly executed as well. The editors/reporters who thought of this deserve some kind of journalism award. I, for one, am very interested in the issues of this case because of the domestic terrorism implications, and this will enable me to follow the details of this trial. Well done.
posted by Phillip Carter at 10:17

 
Iraq war diary of a mobilized law student

Law.Com provides a reprint of an article in the Fulton County Daily Report that describes the journey of Tenn. Air National Guard Capt. Michael R. Moebes. (Thanks to How Appealing for the link) Shortly before finishing law school, he was called to serve in the Gulf in charge of an Aeromedical Evacuation Liaison Team, responsible for coordinating the MedEvac of wounded soldiers from the battlefield. The news article describes his mobilization, and then gives excerpts of Capt. Moebes' e-mails from Iraq.

Moebes' messages also offer a gritty and compelling glimpse of the life of a soldier on the ground in Iraq.

His account shows how, just as in the television show "M*A*S*H," dedicated, homesick medical professionals treated truckloads of wounded soldiers while trying to maintain a semblance of a normal life.

Military snafus and oddities became a part of daily life. On the way to Iraq, his unit's Humvee was misplaced. Another day, he was forbidden from taking a shower because he wasn't wearing the required Kevlar helmet and flak jacket.

But like a modern-day Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre, Moebes and a buddy, Capt. Shane Gilliam, kept their sense of humor. They installed a wading pool in their tent, escaped the chow hall to eat in a local Iraqi restaurant and befriended National Guardsmen from another state who circumvented Army alcohol restrictions by concocting a home brew.

Meanwhile, a stream of interesting characters crossed Moebes' path. They included rescued prisoner of war Jessica Lynch, actor-turned-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mohommed, an Iraqi translator who narrowly escaped the wrath of Uday Hussein.

Moebes says he tried to keep his messages upbeat, so he sent nothing when he felt too depressed to write. But like the edgier moments of "M*A*S*H," Moebes' e-mails depict the grim realities of war.

Definitely worth a read.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:57

 
'Every soldier a rifleman'
New Army chief outlines his plans for America's oldest service

Sean Naylor reports in Army Times (subscription required) that Gen. Peter Schoomaker has laid out an ambitious plan for transformation of the Army after Gulf War II. For what it's worth, transformation after victory has always been harder than transformation after defeat, and the Army appears anxious to seize on 'lessons learned' from this war in order to prepare for the next one. The cornerstone of this effort is the plan to train every Army soldier as an infantryman first -- and specialist second -- in order to build a warrior ethos within the ranks and ensure that every unit can competently fight when called upon. The move is an implicit response to the failures of the 507th Maintenance Company and others in Iraq.

“Everybody in the United States Army’s gotta be a soldier first,” Gen. Peter Schoomaker told reporters during an Oct. 7 roundtable meeting with reporters in Washington.

The specialization of jobs in the Army pulled the service away from the notion that every soldier must be grounded in basic combat skills, he said. But Iraq has demonstrated that no matter what a soldier’s military occupational specialty is, he must be able to conduct basic combat tasks in order to defend himself and his unit.

“We’ve dismounted artillerymen in Iraq, and we’ve got them performing ground functions — infantry functions, MP functions,” Schoomaker said. “Everybody’s got to be able to do that … Everybody’s a rifleman first.”
* * *
*Every soldier will be required to qualify on his or her individual weapon twice a year, [Gen.] Byrnes said. The current Army standard requires soldiers to qualify only once a year, although some commanders have their troops qualify more frequently.

*New recruits will qualify on their individual weapons in basic training and then again in advanced individual training, Byrnes added. Until now, qualification in basic training only was the standard.

*Every soldier, regardless of MOS and unit, will conduct at least one live-fire combat drill a year. For higher headquarters rear-echelon units, it might include reacting to an ambush, Byrnes said.

In addition to transforming the grunt, the new Chief of Staff of the Army has plans to transform the way units are structured. His goal is to maximize the number of deployable brigades that the Army has, in an effort to boost the number of troops available for deployment without busting the Army's "end strength" cap as set by federal law. And Gen. Schoomaker has had enough of rotating senior commanders out of combat while their troops stay behind.

This policy has infuriated many in the Army, especially the outgoing commanders, who feel it forces them to abandon their troops just when their soldiers need them most.

Schoomaker is sympathetic to those who feel the policy should be changed, and has told the units preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan that he does not want midtour changes of command. Staying with a unit until it redeploys is “a fundamental role of leadership,” he told reporters.

This is all good stuff. The question will be whether Gen. Schoomaker gets the support he needs from the SecDef to make this happen, and whether he can get the authorization/appropriations authority from Congress to do it. Gen. Schoomaker's likely in for a long fight, since some of these changes may collide with other service objectives and programs. There's a lot of parochialism in the Army, and a lot of stakeholders with vested interests who know how to fight like a guerilla in the halls of Congress. Thankfully, Gen. Schoomaker's a pretty good snake-eater too.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:34

 
Feds investigating Islamic terror recruiting in U.S. prisons
"Prislam" may create a fertile recruiting ground for foreign terrorists

In a Senate hearing yesterday, two top federal officials disclosed that the FBI and Federal Bureau of Prisons are becoming increasingly concerned about "Prislam", the fusion of prison culture and radical Islam that is rapidly growing within America's prison system. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reported on the development in connection with testimony about military and prison chaplain recruiting. (Also see this ArmyTimes story) The issue has become hot after the arrest of CPT Yousef Yee, the U.S. Army Muslim chaplain who now stands charged for security lapses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As disturbing as those charges are, I think the reports about America's prison system are worse.

The government also believes radical Islamic groups, including possibly al Qaeda, are actively recruiting in U.S. prisons, Mr. Pistole and Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Harley Lappin testified. There are about 9,600 Muslims in federal prisons, about 5.5% of the population, not including members of nontraditional Muslim offshoots such as the Nation of Islam.

The Bureau of Prisons is seeking to weed out any radicals among its 10 Muslim clerics, Mr. Lappin said, and recently blocked access to prisons for cleric Warith Dean Umar after the imam's comments and writings were the subject of a Page One article in The Wall Street Journal.

Paul Rogers, president of the American Correctional Chaplains Association, said reports of terrorist recruitment in prison "have been blown out of proportion."

Paul Barrett of the Wall Street Journal has done some great work on this subject, reporting some time back in a Page 1 article one on imam in New York who was preaching radical Wahhabist teachings to the inmates in that state. Christine Fair at RAND and others have also looked at the problem from an academic and policy perspective. Others have written on it too, such as Chuck Colson and Marc Morano. But too few people take it seriously.

This is an exceptionally dangerous problem. Imagine a group of men who have U.S. citizenship, training in violence, experience with violence, a predisposition towards criminal activity, access to weapons, and a reason to dislike the U.S. government. Put them together in a prison with moderate supervision and let them share tactics, techniques and procedures. Then add a radical Islamic cleric who enjoy a position of power and prestige within the prison. Allow him to infuse these dangerous, disaffected criminals with his ideology. Voila... you have the perfect Al Qaeda recruit for inside the United States. Why infiltrate men from Saudi Arabia or Egypt when you can recruit from inside America's prisons instead?

How did this problem get so bad? The biggest contributor has been the skyrocketing American prison population, both at the state and federal level. Here in California, our prison population has surged since 1994 when the state adopted its "3 strikes" law for repeat offenders. The federal prison population has mushroomed since the 1980s when stiff mandatory sentences were introduced for federal offenses, especially drug crimes. The result today is the largest American prison population in our nation's history, and one that continues to grow. I'll let my readers play amateur sociology, but there are plenty of racial, ethnic, gender, socio-economic, and religious trends that emerge from America's prison population. These also play a role in creating the phenomenon of "Prislam", and making this group a fertile recruiting ground for terrorist groups.

Both Democrats and Republicans deserve the blame for the failure to legislate rationally on crime during the last two decades. No legislator can afford to say "Wait a minute" on any anti-crime bill, lest he/she appear soft on crime and vulnerable to challenge on the issue. Consequently, nearly every crime bill ratchets up sentences and penalties, and once raised, these tend never to go down. Only recently have some federal judges coalesced to oppose these sentences, though on the grounds of judicial discretion, not policy reasons.

We've been lucky so far. Our law enforcement surveillance network -- particularly the parole and probation system -- has managed to keep a handle on this problem. With the exception of Jose Padilla, I can't think of many instances where a terrorist's origins were traced back to prison. But given the large numbers involved, unfortunately, I think it's only a matter of time.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:33

 
An insider's view of the Justice Department on Sept. 12, 2001

Eric Muller, a law professor at UNC Law School, offers us this glimpse via the words of Judge Michael Chertoff, recently confirmed to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Before his appointment to the federal bench, Chertoff served as Chief of the Justice Department's Criminal Division. He managed the criminal law enforcement part of the Bush Administration's legal war on terrorism, and personally litigated issues in contentious matters such as that of Zacarias Moussaoui. Muller notes that most judges don't speak with as much candor as Chertoff, so this was both a rare glimpse into the DOJ and into the mind of a federal appellate judge. Here's an excerpt:

He devoted the first part of his talk to sketching a view of the task he faced on 9/11 and in the days after. One of the lasting contributions of his talk, I think, was his frank depiction of the relative ignorance in which he and the others at DOJ were forced to operate. Nobody at DOJ had no way of knowing whether the WTC and Pentagon attacks were just the prelude to an even larger disaster. What he did know, though, was this: (a) the enemy had masqueraded as friendly visitors, (b) the enemy had to have had a complicit (or perhaps an innocent) support network--people who'd provided shelter, money, sustenance, and so on, and (c) there was no way to distinguish between the many well-meaning visitors to the USA and the few who meant us harm. "It was not just like looking for a needle in a haystack," he said. "It was like looking in a haystack for a needle disguised as a stalk of hay."

The limited information they had suggested a realistic possibility of further strikes. (And, he pointed out, it still does.)

People who make decisions under this sort of pressure, and in this state of imperfect information, he noted, do not have the benefit of hindsight. They must act.

He said that he is entirely prepared to accept history's judgment of how he acted. And, interestingly, he reported that he and others were "accutely aware" of the eventual judgment of history, even as he was acting in those first few days. But he unapologetically defended most of what DOJ ultimately did.

He said that the early efforts after 9/11 were organized around 3 principles: 1. Enhancing intelligence in order to predict another attack. 2. Taking steps to identify those who might stage such an attack. 3. Disrupting networks from which al Qaeda drew support, even innocently-offered support.

How well, he then wondered aloud, did DOJ do?

Read the rest to find out. Then ask yourself, based on your knowledge of the situation and your personal feelings of security in October 2003, how did the Justice Department do?
posted by Phillip Carter at 20:49

 
Update to body armor story
Query: Can today's defense industry logistically support a strategy of pre-emption?

Simula Inc. announced today in a press release that it had received an additional $14 million order for the Small Arms Protective Insert, or "SAPI". This is the ceramic plate that goes into the Interceptor protective vest, and it is the part of the vest that can actually stop a 7.62 round. Without this plate, the vest is good only against fragmentation and oblique bullet shots.

In a news release, Simula said the combination an initial delivery order announced Sept. 29 and Tuesday's order brings the total value of the contract to $41 million. The latest order is a "surge order" for additional SAPI exercised under the terms of the previously announced contract.

All shipments are scheduled to be completed by the end of 2004.

With this order, the company said it enters 2004 with the largest backlog in its history.

Why the backlog? There's a micro-economic and a macro-economic reason. The micro-reason is that this company does not have the capacity to churn out 30,000 plates overnight, because it was originally contracted to procure these overtime and it built production lines to manage a steady flow of these plates. It must now build new production lines, work round-the-clock shifts, or find some other means to produce the plates. All of these measures will cost a lot, and they still won't result in instantaneous production of SAPIs.

The macro-economic reason for this problem is the overall trend since the fall of the Berlin Wall towards consolidation in the defense industry. (See this survey of the defence industry by The Economist) Small specialized contractors have either gone out of business or been swallowed up by larger contractors, and for most major end items, there remains one contractor capable of making that item. The same is true for smaller items, such as SAPIs and HMMWV tires and Bradley tracks. When the Pentagon wants to procure a bunch of these right away, it can't, because the defense industry has downsized and consolidated itself to the point of maximum efficiency, and it can't respond quickly enough to meet this wartime demand with its peacetime production lines.

The implications of this macro-economic trend cannot be understated. I think this is an area of strategic risk for the American government, and it probably hobbles our current national strategy of pre-emptive action. Our military cannot perform well in war (and after war) if it does not have the procurement and logistics base to support it. We have nearly spent our post-Cold War stockages of spare parts in a number of areas, and so far, the defense industry has not shifted to a wartime footing to replace these things (except for some items like JDAM bombs). There's an old maxim that "Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics." In this case, I think our pre-emptive strategy may contain an element of amateurism, in that it ignores logistical realities that are now beginning to show across our force.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:54

 
LAT: More than 100 bases considered for closure in 2005 BRAC round

John Hendren reports in this morning's Los Angeles Times that the Pentagon has a list of more than 100 military bases that it's considering for closure in the 2005 round of the Base Closure and Realignment Commission ("BRAC"), out of a total of 425 bases. The move comes as part of the SecDef's larger "transformation" effort for the Defense Department, wherein he seeks to streamline everything from procurement to housing to warfighting. Consolidating and reorganizing bases could save the Pentagon billions of dollars in capital costs and operations costs. However, these closures would hit the bases' communities hard. To close these bases, Sec. Rumsfeld will have to fight scores of Congressmen and Senators committed to keeping bases in their states alive.

Such a proposal would guarantee a political firestorm on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers jealously protect the bases in their home states or districts.

Military analyst Loren Thompson reported Rumsfeld's plans in an analysis prepared late last week for defense officials and reporters. Thompson, of the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based public policy organization, said the savings are expected to exceed the $66 billion the Pentagon saved during the last decade from previous base closures, but would come at the politically controversial cost of shutting about 25% of the nation's bases.

Thompson's report was confirmed Monday by the senior defense official.

Under legislation passed in 2002, Rumsfeld is required by May 16, 2005, to prepare a list of bases to be closed or realigned, and the nine-member Base Closure and Realignment Commission must submit its list to the White House by Sept. 8, 2005. A vote by a simple majority of the nine is all that is needed to keep a base on the closure list. If President Bush accepts the list, the closures become law in 45 days unless Congress blocks them — something Congress did not do in the first four rounds.

The more activities a base performs — if more than one service is housed there, if it is a command post, or if it is home to Reserve and National Guard units, for instance — the less likely it is to be closed. Defense insiders estimate that as many as 150 bases could be on the 2005 list because the cuts would come in overall capacity and would likely target smaller, less efficient locations.

"If there's a base that only has one particular purpose, one particular unit, one particular mission that could be accomplished somewhere else, that would be more vulnerable," the senior defense official said.

In the past, lawmakers have grudgingly accepted the lists of base closures, but this time, because the facilities to be realigned or cut would be spread over a majority of the 50 states, they might revolt, Thompson said. An effort last summer by Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) to eliminate the 2005 round of base closures received more than 40 votes, even before any bases to be cut were named.

"I think this could backfire on them," Thompson said of Rumsfeld's Pentagon managers. "This would be so big in one round that it might affect enough senators or congressmen that they might have enough critical mass that they could vote the whole thing down."

Analysis: From a purely economic standpoint, BRAC makes sense. The efficiencies which can be gained from closing bases outweigh the loss of jobs and economic activity in these small communities. This is true purely on a dollar-for-dollar basis. If you add in variables such as the greater combat effectiveness of units that are able to train more because of proximity to training areas or other units, then the scales tip even further. And if you add in the strategic value of reorganizing our forces to deploy, rather than sit in peacetime garrison locations like Fort Riley, Kansas (originally established to aid in the Indian wars of the 19th Century), then you really get more bang for your buck with these closures.

Operationally, this move goes hand-in-hand with others announced in the last several months by the Pentagon to reorganize its footprint abroad. The U.S. currently has plans to radically change its stance in South Korea, pulling soldiers back from scattered bases near the DMZ to a consolidated posture south of Seoul. Similarly, the U.S. has plans to reduce the overall footprint in East Asia and consolidate into bases in the Pacific from which these forces could deploy to other parts of the world if necessary. In Europe, the SACEUR has announced plans to close a number of bases in Germany and redeploy large units back to the states. In their place, the U.S. would leave a system of "lilypad" bases that were lightly manned, but able to serve as jumping-off points for deployment in Europe and abroad. The 2005 round of BRAC will resemble both of these proposals, in that it will place a premium on consolidation, deployability, and security, among other criteria.

Historically, few of these bases were constructed (or kept open) with an eye towards these criteria. Most military bases today were built during the mobilizations of WWI or WWII. After those wars, these bases stayed open because their states' representatives had enough pull in Congress to keep them open. One reason why the South has so many military bases today is because of the pull that Sen. Richard Russell (D-Ga.) had over such matters, as the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. (See Master of the Senate by Robert Caro) But the continued existence of these bases owes very little to rational criteria (e.g. deployability) and very much to politics.

I'm not sure we can afford that kind of luxurious irrationality anymore. Maintaining all these bases saps billions from an already bloated defense budget, and we need to find whatever efficiencies we can. Closing bases will hurt many communities, but those effects can be mitigated. (See, e.g., the case of Fort McClellan, AL, where the former U.S. Army Chemical and Military Police schools were converted into law enforcement training facilities) Ultimately, the benefits from BRAC far outweigh the costs of closing these bases, and we can't afford to ignore the outcome of that equation.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:30

 
AP: 1/4 of U.S. troops in Iraq lack good body armor

The Associated Press reports tonight that funding delays and other procurement problems have stalled the deployment of "Interceptor" body armor to soldiers in Iraq, leaving thousands without the critical gear. This despite after-action reviews from Afghanistan and Iraq saying this body armor saved hundreds of lives with its ballistic protection (see also this story and this story); this despite billions spent so far in the war on terrorism; this despite promises from politicians on both sides of the aisle to take care of the troops.

Delays in funding, production and shipping mean it will be December before all troops in Iraq will have the vests, which were introduced four years ago, military officials say.

Congress approved $310 million in April to buy 300,000 more of the bulletproof vests, with 30,000 destined to complete outfitting of the troops in Iraq. Of that money, however, only about $75 million has reached the Army office responsible for overseeing the vests' manufacture and distribution, said David Nelson, an official in that office.

Angry members of Congress have denounced the Pentagon. They say up to 44,000 troops lack the best vests because of the sluggish supply chain, significantly more than the Pentagon figure. Relatives of some soldiers have resorted to buying body armor in the United States and shipping it to their troops, congressional critics say.

"I got a letter from a young soldier in Baghdad saying that the men in his group were concerned that they had cheap armor that was incapable of stopping bullets. And they wondered why they could not have the best protection possible under the circumstances," said Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio.

The House version of an $86.7 billion Iraq spending bill passed last week would include $251 million for body armor and for clearing unexploded munitions, although it's unclear if additional money would speed up the process at this point. President Bush's original request included no more money for body armor.

Analysis: This is a monumental logistics screwup for the Army's procurement community, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Congress (especially the Armed Services committees), and for the White House. Unfortunately, it's hard to pin the blame on any one office, or even on any one administration, because the blame belongs to lots of people who touched this program over the last several years. The initiative to develop new body armor may have started as early as the Reagan Administration; this particular program dates back to the Clinton Administration. The earliest decisions about how many Interceptor vests to buy and when were made when President Clinton held office.

However, the current administration doesn't get off the hook that easily. When the decision was made to invade Iraq in late 2002, this shortfall could/should have been identified, and dealt with. The blame for that mistake starts with Army logisticians and runs all the way up the chain of command to the E-Ring of the Pentagon and to Congress. The job of logisticians is to anticipate requirements and move resources to the right time and place on the battlefield to influence the fight. Clearly, this requirement was not anticipated, or decisionmakers at various levels decided to ignore this requirement.

As a nation, we have let our soldiers down by sending them into harm's way without this equipment. Our soldiers can make do without a lot of creature-comforts when necessary, but this is absolutely mission-essential equipment that no soldier should have crossed the LD without. What's even worse is that the distribution of this gear has been inequitable thus far, with reservists worse off than active units, and some active units worse off than others. I've received no less than a dozen e-mails from reservists saying they were told they would get this gear only after every active-duty soldier got it. (Query: is there any legitimate distinction between an active-duty soldier and mobilized reservist when you're both deployed to a combat zone?) Many said they had already bought their own ceramic plates over the Internet with personal funds and/or unit funds, because they could/would not wait for the Army to procure this gear. I think that's despicable, and something must be done.

So what can be done? Congress typically doesn't move at the speed of light, but it can when it wants to. If Congress was willing to jump through its fourth point of contact (paratroopers know what this means) to legislate authority for the Do Not Call list, then they can also move heaven and earth to fund body armor for our soldiers. Similarly, the Pentagon could do a lot to acquire, ship and distribute this equipment once it's procured. As my old First Sergeant used to say: the maximum effective range of an excuse is 0 meters. So far, all I read in this article is a litany of excuses from offices in the Executive and Legislative branches about why this process is taking too long. Tell that to the guys in Iraq waiting for their body armor while they face Iraqi guerillas armed with AK-47s and RPGs.
posted by Phillip Carter at 19:36

 
Why was Gitmo so vulnerable to espionage?

Richard Serrano asks that question in today's LA Times, and answers that the Guantanamo Bay facility was not full of counter-intelligence measures to check on its people, and that it relied mainly on trust to keep everyone in line.

What has been learned is that while Camp Delta may have been secured from outside attack, its internal security system rested largely on trust — the belief that its staff, all of whom had security clearance, was loyal.

Allegations that the detained staffers appear to have developed sympathies for the prisoners also have alarmed the American Muslim community, raising fears of a backlash against Muslims serving in the military.

Heavily fortified, far from the Afghan battlefield, so remote and hard to get to that it seemed the ideal solution for holding suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban captives, Camp Delta was meant to be the most secure site for detaining combatants in America's war on terror.

Now, the Pentagon has dispatched a special task force to determine the extent of the alleged security breaches, what damage has been caused and how Camp Delta can be fixed.
* * *
Col. John J. Perrone, an Army reservist from New York who served as Camp Delta's prison warden for eight months last year, said he believed the facility was safe from an outside attack. He acknowledged that he often worried about an internal breakdown, but he said he was amazed that three staff members had been arrested.

"There are a lot of soldiers that are in and out there," he acknowledged. "You have e-mail and telephones, and there are various other methods of communication. The Internet is a great source of information."

Security clearances should be tightened and random searches conducted, Perrone said, noting that getting through the prison doors was no harder than boarding an airplane when he was at Camp Delta.

Analysis: I'm not sure you can dismiss trust and personal loyalty so easily as effective mechanisms for maintaining security. After all, that's generally what keeps every military unit functioning in combat -- trust and unit cohesion. It's also what keeps most of our government running, although we have counterintelligence systems in place to detect leaks in a lot of places. Our society is not one that watches every person, every moment, everywhere. Even at Guantanamo Bay, we have not subjected our military personnel to that kind of regimen because it runs contrary to American norms and values. Trust and personal loyalty sometimes break down, as in the three Gitmo spy cases, but they still remain pretty effective. Indeed, I would say they're more effective on the whole than building a repressive society where every move is watched.

That said, there remain glaring holes in our security at Gitmo. Trust aside, we should've been screening luggage on the way out and maintaining tigher control over classified documents. It may be the case that too much is classified at Guantanamo, thus making this latter job very hard. Regardless, physical security must be the foundation of any larger security effort at Gitmo, and physical security entails placing an absolute quarantine around this prison and around the larger base where our personnel are living. If the intelligence there is so valuable, then we ought to do what's necessary to keep it secret.
posted by Phillip Carter at 12:20

 
The story of the 'Lackawanna Six'

The New York Times has an excellent story on the saga of the 'Lackawanna Six' in Sunday's paper. The case was brought against six men for providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations, including attendance at an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, among other charges. Ultimately, the six men pled guilty to various lesser offenses, in exchange for information and the government's pledge not to designate them as enemy combatants. The case has generated some amount of interest already, as a possible example of Al Qaeda "sleeper cells" in America. This article discusses that idea, but instead focuses on the ways this case has forced law enforcement officials to retool their criminal enforcement paradigm for terrorism.

. . . an examination of the case by The New York Times and the PBS documentary program "Frontline" demonstrates that behind Washington's sweeping proclamations is a more measured victory over a profoundly ambiguous threat.

After the suspects kept up a cover story about their trip for more than a year, Mr. Alwan and five other men from Lackawanna pleaded guilty to training with a terrorist organization. And investigators determined that the men had been recruited by an American Muslim with connections to the upper echelons of Al Qaeda.

But counterterrorism officials never figured out the mystery that consumed them through the long, tense, terror-obsessed summer of 2002: What, if anything, did Al Qaeda have in mind for its Lackawanna recruits? In fact, the federal prosecutor whose office won the guilty pleas, Michael A. Battle, does not call them a terrorist cell. "It's a heavy burden to prove," he said, "and I wasn't prepared to do that."

Lackawanna was the first major test of a retrofitted law enforcement establishment whose mission is less to solve terrorist crimes than to make sure they do not happen in the first place. The inside story of the case — pieced together from interviews with investigators and counterterrorism officials, as well as a review of confidential documents — reveals a government feeling its way across a fresh landscape to crush a threat it cannot quite grasp.

Peter Ahearn, head of the Buffalo F.B.I. office, described the riddle of prevention this way: "If we don't know for sure they're going to do something, or not, we need to make sure that we prevent anything they may be planning, whether or not we know or don't know about it."

The imponderability of the men from Lackawanna made them a magnet for the government's deepest suspicions and anxieties. An arsenal of new antiterrorism tools was applied to their case — enhanced surveillance, interrogation of enemy combatants and a free flow of information between criminal investigators and intelligence officers, once barred by rules devised to protect Americans from improper domestic spying.

But the men's true intentions remain locked away with them. Mr. Alwan, speaking to The Times in a rare interview of an American Al Qaeda recruit, said that the men had no plans, no hatred for America, and that when he walked away from Osama bin Laden, he left Al Qaeda behind. He explained his trip to Afghanistan as "a lot of curiosity." Yet he acknowledged lying to authorities in a failed attempt to avoid jail.

The question posed last fall by prosecutors still stands: "Why do a group of young Yemeni-Americans, born and brought up in Lackawanna, N.Y., and, in the majority of cases married with children, suddenly leave their otherwise unremarkable lives to spend six to seven weeks in a terrorist training camp, then quietly slip back into roles of middle-class Americans?"

Analysis: This is a great story, which is rich in detail. It really was a coup for the NY Times to recruit Lowell Bergman, played by Al Pacino in the movie The Insider, and Matthew Purdy is an exceptional reporter as well. Both have written a story that deserves a read from both anti-terrorism insiders and the public alike.

Terrorism will likely be an issue in the 2004 presidential election, as either a subset of national security or a major issue in its own right. I believe the Democratic candidates will soon start to use this issue in the primaries to appeal to their core constituencies -- liberal Americans who feel their civil liberties are at risk with the current administration. The Lackawanna Six case will be a major piece of that argument, just as President Bush used the Willie Horton case in 1988 to appeal to the fears of moderate and conservative voters. (In principle the two are the same; in practice the latter is inherently more dirty than the other as far as political tactics go.) In the general election, I believe this will be an issue too. The Democrats will likely use this issue as a wedge to separate moderates from the Republican Party, and I think they will be successful.

Update: I intended this last note to be controversial, and sure enough, I've gotten some e-mail. Ryan Booth thinks I'm way off the reservation with the political comparison between the Lackawanna Six case and the Willie Horton issue of 1988. Clearly, the facts are different. However, the political strategies behind each issue are similar:
- The use of an issue which appeals to fear and insecurity among voters (terrorism and violent crime). However, in the Horton instance, the argument was if you choose Gov. Dukakis, you will be less safe from criminals. In this case, the argument will be that if you choose George Bush, you will be less safe from your own government. Similar, but different.
- The use of an issue which appeals to each party's respective base, as well as moderates.
- The meta-narrative that "You can't trust this candidate on X issue" that lies behind each. In Horton's case, it was "You can't trust Mike Dukakis to be tough on crime." In this case, it will be "You can't trust John Ashcroft with your civil liberties.

So at the end of the day, the two arguments are not exactly the same. But they share some common meta-narratives and themes. At each argument's core, there is an appeal to fear.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:11

 
An $87 billion slush fund?

Fred Kaplan at Slate thinks that's the best description for the President's appropriations package for Iraq. In particular, Kaplan points out a few places where the Secretary of Defense can move money around within the $87 billion package, or even borrow from other parts of the $400 billion Pentagon budget, to pay for current operations in America's war on terrorism. The guidance in this budget document is as vague as the phrase "war on terror", thus leading Kaplan to criticize the budget sections as a slush fund.

Add them all up: $9.3 billion—11 percent of the entire, already-controversial sum (and that doesn't include the expandable loophole provided by the "not less than" clause).

There is no overlap or double-counting in this calculation. Each of these separate sections explicitly notes, "The transfer authority provided in this section is in addition to any other transfer authority available to the Department of Defense" (italics added), or words to that effect.

In the supplemental document, the Pentagon offered explanations for these loopholes. Transfer accounts are "necessary due to the dynamic nature of these operations," or "to provide the flexibility needed to allocate funding to those components that are actually incurring costs," or "to help the Department address the unpredictable scope, duration, and intensity of these military operations."

Certainly postwar Iraq and Afghanistan are a lot more unpredictable than, well, the Pentagon predicted. Much of life is unpredictable. That's why budgets have supplementals. The entire $87 billion request is officially designated "an emergency requirement." Yet much of it is broken down into specific line-items or at least general categories of spending. Is the situation really so unpredictable that more than $9 billion of that sum—and possibly much more (the "not less than" clause)—might need to be spent in ways so quickly, and so differently from what is currently imagined, that Rumsfeld must be given the authority to move it around, from one account to another, without prior congressional approval? If the circumstances do warrant it, couldn't he simply put forth another supplemental? The present supplemental didn't run into many obstacles, despite growing criticism of the whole operation; there's no reason to fear that a subsequent one would, either.

So why have three committees of Congress essentially abrogated such a sizable chunk of their oversight powers? Mainly because they wanted to. The lawmakers can play populist politics, tossing out hundreds of millions of dollars for new Iraqi hospitals, housing, garbage trucks, and business subsidies. They can thunder that their constituents—the American people—don't get federal money for such niceties, so why should Iraqis? Meanwhile, they know that Rumsfeld can use some of the slush-fund money—the "transfer funds"—to put them back in the budget, very low key, notifying the committees but not needing their permission. Responsibility is thus eluded, electoral-politics points are gained.

Right -- Congress deserves much of the blame here. It is true that the President recommended this legislation to Congress in accordance with his Art. II, Sec. 3 power to "recommend to their [Congress'] Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient". (Bonus fact: the President actually initiates more legislation than Congress under Art. II, Sec. 3, a development widely traced to the rise of the modern administrative state and the need for large packages of legislation to guide each executive department.) That said, Congress never leaves a piece of Presidential legislation alone, and they could easily add conditions and other requirements to these parts of the President's $87 billion package. But they haven't.

There are two reasons why not -- one legitimate, one political. Legitimately, the Pentagon needs some discretion in the way it allocates its funds. Here's a simple example why. One day, the Iraqi guerillas are attacking vehicles, so you need vehicle parts. Next month, the Iraqi guerillas start attacking base camps, so you need to buy new construction materials. If the budget were too detailed, the SecDef and his staff couldn't move that money around. This is oversimplified, but you get my point. You also have timing issues in play, where the Pentagon probably doesn't want to slow down the funding process by having to report to Congress every time it moves money around.

Secondly, this is a political punt by Congress. The members of Congress don't want to tackle the systemic issues for why such a large appropriations package is needed (e.g. the lack of good body armor for every soldier in Iraq). The members also don't want responsibility for deciding how to spend this $87 billion, either because that responsibility properly lies in the Pentagon, or because they want the freedom to attack these spending decisions down the road. And the list goes on.

Does a slush fund like this really matter? I'm not sure. Certainly, it can hide spending that the American people and its representatives might not otherwise approve of. But I would balance that oversight problem against the practical problems of vetting every expenditure with Congress -- and still having time to get the money to the right time and place on the battlefield. Congressional appropriations are a cumbersome process, and we can't have soldiers' fortunes riding on it.

Personally, I'd be much more concerned about some of the structural issues revealed in this supplemental request, like the lack of body armor, the problems with M2A2/A3 Bradley Fighting Vehicle track procurement, ammunition shortfalls, radio batteries, and other parts problems which affect the entire Army and Marine Corps right now. Put bluntly, the warehouse shelves are dry. We have used up many of our peacetime stockages of key items that soldiers need to fight in Iraq. The problem will only get worse with time. Moreover, as we force defense contractors to jumpstart production of these items, we incur significant startup costs. Frankly, I don't think that good planning was done before we crossed the LD about precisely what we'd have to buy over the long haul. I think our optimistic expectations of this occupation infected every aspect of planning -- from troop deployment orders to orders for SINCGARS radio batteries. If I were an enterprising journalist in Washington, that's the story I'd be writing right now. And if I were an enterprising Congressman, that's the issue I'd be pursuing too.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:07

 
Update to note on FedEx's anti-terrorism efforts

A number of readers have written me to remind me of the police forces created during the late 19th Century within most major railroad companies. Originally, these forces were created to police the rail lines against Indian tribes, bandits, and other hazards. Today, they continue in this law enforcement role, although against other threats. Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Rail is one example of a railroad company with its own police force, and one reader writes that these police take an active role in making sure the rail lines stay safe.

Our facilities are crawling with these folks - they carry guns, have arrest power, and nationwide jurisdiction. The police forces of the various railroads cooperate with each other and law enforcement to a great extent, and could definitely provide a model as to how other types of companies could implement the same thing, though I think the railroads possess of lot of maturity in handling the power that comes with it due to their length of experience.

Railroads are just one part of America's critical infrastructure, however. The anthrax attacks showed just how vulnerable our country can be to a small strike against one aspect of its infrastructure -- in that case, the public postal system. Financial institutions, railroads, water treatment plants, power plants and distribution networks, and other parts of America's infrastructure all need to be hardened against the threat of terrorism. The paradox of anti-terrorism planning is "the more you protect the hard targets, the more vulnerable you make the soft targets." If we harden our airports and public sites against terrorism, we will simply make our private sites more attractive as targets. America depends on its infrastructure, and most of its infrastructure is private, not public. Thus, we need to encourage more companies to be proactive like the railroads and FedEx, and to think about how they can protect themselves.

Update II: Several readers were kind enough to write me about an incident in 1994 where one of FedEx's planes was hijacked and nearly crashed into its main hub in Memphis. I'm sure I read the news of this incident back then, but it had totally left my mind until now. No wonder FedEx takes anti-terrorism seriously. My real hope is that there's cross-talk between the logistics and airline people at FedEx and the law enforcement people on the Memphis FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). The FBI holds some of the best legal and investigative minds in the world, but they're not subject-matter experts on everything.
posted by Phillip Carter at 10:24

 
Group takes Gitmo appeal to the Supreme Court

A coalition of retired military officers, judges, ex-POWs, and others has filed an amicus curae brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the appeals of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. The petition on behalf of 12 detainees was dismissed by lower courts on procedural grounds, and the group is now asking the high court to overturn that dismissal so the case can go forward on the merits.

Representing seven groups that have filed friend-of-the-court briefs on behalf of 16 detainees at the base, the former officials said the detentions of more than 650 terror suspects without access to lawyers is a mistake of law that hurts the United States' reputation and could endanger Americans elsewhere.

The detainees have sued in federal court, seeking the right to talk to lawyers and to challenge their detentions before a court, but have had their cases rejected and are now appealing to the Supreme Court.

''The perception of this case abroad -- that the power of the United States can be exercised outside the law -- will diminish our stature and repute,'' said a brief filed by 19 former diplomats. ``Our most important diplomatic asset has been this nation's values.''

They said countries from Egypt to Malaysia were now citing the Guant?namo precedent as they held suspects without trial.

In a separate brief, three retired military officers said they feared that the failure to apply the Geneva Conventions in Guant?namo is giving other nations ''an excuse'' to do the same ``and will endanger American soldiers captured in the future.''

The diplomats include two former assistant secretaries of state, William Rogers and Alexander Watson, and Allen Holmes, a former assistant secretary of defense. Among the military leaders was Rear Adm. Donald Guter, who retired last year as Navy judge advocate general. Guter said he was involved in early decisions about Guant?namo and reviving military tribunals for some suspects.

So far, federal judges have ruled that because the base, leased from Cuba, is on foreign territory, aliens held there have no access to U.S. courts to challenge their detentions. The Bush administration maintains that the detainees -- most of them captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- are ''unlawful combatants,'' do not deserve POW status under the Geneva Conventions and can be held indefinitely.

Also today, the New York Times reports that the Red Cross has restated its disapproval of the way America is behaving at Guantanamo. This is significant for a couple of reasons. First, the ICRC has enormous international prestige, as well as moral authority. Second, the Third Geneva Convention charges the ICRC with what amounts to the job of executor. If this body thinks our behavior at Gitmo is inconsistent with the Geneva Convention, they're probably the best ones to make that call.

Christophe Girod, the senior Red Cross official in Washington, said on Thursday in an interview at the United States Naval Base here, "One cannot keep these detainees in this pattern, this situation, indefinitely."

Mr. Girod spoke as he and a team of officials from the international organization were completing their latest inspection tour of the detention camp. Although he did not criticize any physical conditions at the camp, which houses 660 detainees, most of them captured in the Afghan conflict, he said that it was intolerable that the complex was used as "an investigation center, not a detention center."

He said the International Red Cross was making the unusual statements because of a lack of action.

United States officials have said they have begun moving to sort the detainees, choosing which to release and which to take before military tribunals on criminal charges.

Some officials, notably Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, have said the detainees may be held until the effort against terrorism ends.

Mr. Girod said, "The open-endedness of the situation and its impact on the mental health of the population has become a major problem."

Analysis: My thoughts on this subject have not changed substantially since I wrote "Extend Geneva to Gitmo" in the Washington Times in early 2002. For principled and practical reasons, we ought to give the detainees at Gitmo the protections of the Third Geneva Convention, recognizing that those rules were written for a different paradigm of war and that we need to adjust our rules to fit the reality of today's war on terror. At the very least, we need to give these detainees Art. V tribunals to determine whether they are lawful or unlawful combatants -- and what legal process they are entitled to as a result of that decision.

In America's rush to condemn the men currently imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, we have forgotten the reasons why we adopted the Geneva Convention in the first place.

The Geneva Convention was not intended to serve as a manual for courts martial - it was intended to make warfare more humane. Many of those reasons for its adoption now argue strongly for protecting captured Taliban and al Qaeda fighters under its provisions.

Three good reasons exist for extending the Geneva Convention to include the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters we have captured:

(1) The nature of warfare has changed a lot in 50 years; the Geneva Convention's definitions of warfare and soldiers are anachronistic. (2) The United States employs unconventional warfare and warriors itself - we ought to be concerned with their treatment if they're captured. (3) America needs to retain the moral high ground in this conflict because our global war on terrorism depends on international cooperation, which is largely based on the sympathy and approval we now enjoy among other countries.
* * *
These three reasons combine to make a very strong case for a change in U.S. policy toward the men it now holds at Guantanamo Bay. The consequence of not recognizing these men as prisoners of war will be quite severe. American unconventional warriors will pay the price in future conflicts for this decision if they are captured. And most of all, this policy jeopardizes the international cooperation we need to win this conflict.

Though the Geneva Convention does not strictly apply to these prisoners, we should extend its reach in order to retain the moral high ground and further our overall goals in the war on terrorism.

One final note: I often use the phrase "the moral high ground" and its close cousin "moral authority". I should define these terms. I use "moral high ground" to mean a political or policy position where you are doing the right thing. Not the technically legal thing, or the political expedient thing, but the morally right thing. To the extent that morality is subjective, this is vague term. However, I still feel there are right and wrong things in this world, and that most Americans can tell the difference. "Moral authority" is the political capital that accrues from doing the right thing. It's a powerful tool, and one that we can use domestically and abroad to support our war on terrorism. When you don't do the right thing, you lose moral authority. Unfortunately, I think that's where we're at with Gitmo.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:51

 
FedEx starts its own police force to fight terrorism

Today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) carries an interesting article about FedEx's initiative to counter terrorism in its operations. Faced with the responsibility for a vast cargo airline and distribution network, FedEx really had no ability to tap into official sources for intelligence about terrorist threats or countermeasures. Partly to tap into these resources, and partly to form an investigative unit of its own, FedEx persuased the state of Tennessee to authorize a police force for the corporation. Among other things, this has enabled FedEx to become a part of the Memphis area Joint Terrorism Task Force, an interagency working group managed by the FBI.

More importantly for FedEx, having a private police force qualifies the shipping company to serve on a regional joint terrorism task force, overseen by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The 66 task forces currently in operation across the country -- which consist of local, state and federal officers -- are entrusted with more-sensitive and specific data regarding terrorist threats than businesses usually receive. FedEx is the only major air carrier that is a task-force member.

Although the FedEx representative on the task force can't give his corporate boss inside information because it may be classified, the company still gains a great deal from its membership. That is because the FedEx representative can signal the company to take preventive actions. If the task force learns certain kinds of explosives are being used by terrorists in Asia, for instance, the representative can alert the company to install specialized explosives detectors there.

"If they feel there is a threat to a particular part of FedEx's operation, they can take steps to improve security in that area without revealing security information," says FBI agent George Bolds, who is general counsel in the bureau's Memphis, Tenn., field office, where FedEx is based.
* * *
But the new arrangement does raise complex questions that have yet to be fully resolved: Does FedEx's task-force membership give it an unfair competitive advantage? Do the FedEx cops have an obligation to alert the company's rivals to terrorist threats? If the FedEx cops find wrongdoing among FedEx's senior officials, will the police ignore it because the company pays their salaries?

Tim Edgar, general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, questions whether corporate cops can be trusted to act in the public interest, and argues that a watchdog agency should oversee the company's performance. "You're given all the powers of someone accountable to the public, but you're driven by the profit incentives of a private company," he says.

Maybe... but on the other hand, FedEx has a lot of stakeholders who have various degrees of power to keep the company on the right path with respect to civil liberties. From a purely economic perspective, I imagine shareholders and directors will be quite reticent to allow any abuse of this power that could lead to a lawsuit -- or worse yet, a class action suit on behalf of a large injured class. Moreover, FedEx is an extremely visible company that depends on its public image of trustworthiness for its business viability. I don't see them doing a lot to jeopardize that.

I think this is a great idea, and honestly, I wish more companies would lean forward in their foxholes like FedEx. The overwhelming majority of America's critical infrastructure resides in the private sector -- power grids, dams, transportation, rail, water supply, etc. An attack on any aspect of America's critical infrastructure would ripple through every aspect of American society, and inflict billions of dollars of damage. The FBI can't protect everything, and it should focus its resources on proactively investigating intelligence about terrorism. The firms themselves should focus on defending their assets -- which they know best -- and preparing to manage the consequences of an attack. There are legal issues inherent in giving this kind of power to private entities, but I think the benefits outweigh those risks, and that those risks can be mitigated.
posted by Phillip Carter at 13:01

 
Don't mess with Texas. . . or use your middle finger there either

Howard Bashman reproduces part of a Texas Court of Appeals decision that affirmed a motorist's right to give another driver the middle finger, and that such a gesture was not unlawful because it did not tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. The court explained its reasoning in footnote 1:

The "bird" is "an obscene gesture of contempt made by pointing the middle finger upward while keeping the other fingers down." Merriam-Webster OnLine, at http://www.m-w.com. This gesture is of ancient origin:

[T]he middle-finger jerk was so popular among the Romans that they even gave a special name to the middle digit, calling it the impudent finger: digitus impudicus. It was also known as the obscene finger, or the infamous finger, and there are a number of references to its use in the writings of classical authors. . . . The middle-finger jerk has survived for over 2,000 years and is still current in many parts of the world, especially the United States.

Desmond Morris et al., Gestures 81-82 (1979). This symbolic gesture has come to mean many things to many people in many contexts, including "displeasure" and "mild annoyance." See Martha Irvine, Is the Middle Finger Losing Its Badness?, AP Online, Feb. 23, 2003, available at 2003 WL 13367718 (reprinted in several newspapers). See also the cover of the September 20, 2003 issue of The Economist magazine, depicting a cactus in a desert panorama giving the gesture because of displeasure with the outcome of the Cancun trade talks.

Who said judges have no sense of humor? I suspect that this decision would be geographically and contextually dependent, however. Giving the bird in some places would certainly cause an immediate breach of the peace. In other places, it might be regarded as a friendly gesture. Like obscenity, this kind of thing is harder to define as anything more precise than "I know it when I see it."
posted by Phillip Carter at 11:47

 
Formal charges to come against Gitmo suspect

CNN reports that the Pentagon has decided to press formal charges in military court against CPT Youssef Yee, the Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay who stands accused of espionage. The initial charges will be for relatively minor offenses, such as the mishandling of classified documents. Sources tell CNN that more charges will follow over the next several days and weeks, possibly to include capital counts of espionage.

Charges of espionage, which Yee could eventually face, are likely to take considerable time to assemble.

By filing the less-severe charges first, the military will demonstrate that it is continuing to work on the case and that Yee is not languishing in the naval brig at Charleston, South Carolina, where he is being held, officials said.
* * *
The investigation into the apparent infiltration of the remote Guantanamo Bay facility is ongoing, and a senior defense official has told CNN that more arrests may come.

More to follow . . .
posted by Phillip Carter at 11:41

 
Why do Democrats swoon over men in uniform?
Ghosts of the 1960s linger in the relationship between the military and the left

Michael Kinsley asks this question in Slate today, trying to answer why Democrats seem to be so taken with retired-Gen. Wesley K. Clark.

The notion that liberals disdain people in uniform was always a bit of a myth. Even during Vietnam, concern for the loss of young American lives was probably the anti-war movement's most powerful motivation. Since then, sneery right-wingers have had it both ways about liberals and the military: When liberals oppose military action, conservative voices accuse them of betraying our fighting men and women. When liberals support military action, they are accused of callous indifference to the lives of American soldiers.

But the current liberal swooning over (retired) generals is truly something new. A widespread fantasy among liberals who loathe the Bush administration, for example, is that Colin Powell will resign as secretary of state and "say what he really thinks." This will bring down the whole house of cards, these liberals believe. What he really thinks, they think, is more or less what they really think.

There is not much basis for this belief. Powell is skilled at distancing himself from certain policies without seeming disloyal. But if he really were as opposed to the administration he serves as these liberal fantasists imagine, a resignation at this point would come much too late to have any moral force.

Then there is Gen. Wesley Clark. Much of his support comes from people who think they haven't swooned themselves but believe that others will do so. But most of these people are in a swoon whether they realize it or not. They think that Clark has the best chance of defeating George Bush, and that nothing else matters. Their assessment is based on what seems to me a simple-minded view that you can place all the candidates on a political spectrum, then pick the one who's as far toward the other side as your side can bear, and call it pragmatism.

That's one piece of the puzzle. Another more personal account comes from Robert Poe in "Prisoner's Dilemma", which ran in the October issue of The Washington Monthly. Mind you, not every Democrat was a draft resister who was sent to prison, and not every Democrat bears the guilt for those who did so. Nonetheless, I think some of these issues continue to plague the left to this day, and Mr. Poe's account adds a voice not often heard to this debate.

While Bush's poll numbers have been plummeting, the drop reflects worry over the continuing chaos in Iraq more than any growing anger at administration members for ducking service in their youth. Partisan Democrats may be furious that a president who sidestepped combat now poses as a war hero. But what really drives Democrats crazy is that Bush seems to have paid no political price for doing so.

This tolerant public attitude did not begin with Bush. In fact, in the last three presidential elections, a candidate who had served in the regular military was defeated by a candidate who had not (Clinton v. Bush in ' 92; Clinton v. Dole in '96; Bush v. Gore in '00). It has now become unremarkable for those who in their youth avoided putting themselves on the line for their country and their ideals to successfully impugn the patriotism of political opponents who served with honor. Think of Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.). He got out of Vietnam with a bum knee, but unseated former Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.), a Vietnam veteran and triple amputee, with ads attacking Cleland as soft on national security. Somehow, in the public mind, the ancient link between physical courage and patriotism has been broken in this country.

One can imagine any number of reasons for this shift. One obvious factor is the end of the draft in 1973, which no longer forces every young man to consider the possibility of military service. Another is the triumph of individual market thinking in this country--the growing sense of personal freedom and individual entitlement in modern life, and the corresponding fading of the notion that one has a duty to anything outside one's self and family. But there is another, related factor for which liberals--especially those of my generation, who came of age in the late 1960s--bear heavy responsibility. Too many of them opposed the Vietnam War in ways that required no personal sacrifice, while at the same time successfully grabbing the banner of high idealism by growing their hair long and marching in anti-war protests. Though they may not want to admit it, members of the anti-Vietnam War movement, who today dominate the opinion-making class, helped erode the connection in the public's mind between patriotism and courage, idealism, and sacrifice. And that change in public attitude has let today's so-called "chicken hawks" off the hook.
* * *
In 2003, it turns out that my questions about the anti-war movement do again matter. The reality of a major war launched by the Vietnam generation for reasons that, just as with Vietnam, didn't quite make sense, finally drove me to think through the implications of Lompoc's missing activists. I quickly concluded that the anti-Vietnam War liberals and the pseudo-patriotic neocons were more alike than different. Both embodied a privileged elite claiming to be paragons of idealism and patriotism, while hiding behind college or medical deferments to avoid putting themselves on the line, either in rice paddies or in prison. Indeed, there's a case to be made that, for conservative draft dodgers, one of the biggest benefits of the war with Iraq has been its extreme (and certainly intentional) divisiveness, which helps obscure how closely, in terms of character and integrity, they resemble anti-Vietnam War draft dodgers.

But more important, I realized that the success of the anti-war movement in selling itself as idealistic, while never showing up to do the hard time, directly paved the way--in fact, pioneered the techniques--for neocons to sell themselves as courageous patriots, after having never shown up for service in Vietnam. And with neocon draft dodgers now trying to prove their patriotism at the cost of American lives, that leaves anti-Vietnam War liberals with a lot to answer for.

The puzzle's still not complete. I think that Mr. Kinsley and Mr. Poe add two important parts of the picture, but there's more to be written.

First, Mr. Poe's right that the Vietnam War set in motion a number of dynamics which affect partisan politics to this day. After the advent of the all-volunteer force in 1973, the Vietnam War had an enormous impact on the self-selection of America's "best and brightest" for military service. No longer did the George Herbert Walker Bush's, John F. Kennedys and Al Gores of America's elite join the military, as they did in WWII and Vietnam respectively. Indeed, neither did the young conservatives of the 1970s, who opted instead for the fast-track to money and/or power (see, e.g., Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz, Tom Delay, Richard Perle, etc)

Fast-forward thirty years, and suddenly you have an elite on both sides of the aisle with a dearth of military experience. The number of veterans in Congress has dropped over the last 30 years; so too has the number of veterans appointed to the bench or executive positions. Unfortunately, this dynamic affects the Democratic Party more, because of the self-selection inherent in an all-volunteer force. Values and attitudes towards the military translate across generational lines into the choices made by children. More than ever, with our all-volunteer force, these choices shape the military's composition, which in turn produces the pool of eligible veterans to serve at high levels of our government.

My experience, growing up in liberal Santa Monica during the 1980s, was that most parents did not encourage their children to consider military service -- even for a brief tour, even for the educational benefits. A lot of this traced, in my opinion, to the attitudes harbored by my friends' parents who grew up during the 1960s, and held certain attitudes towards the military as an institution. Those attitudes were passed onto the children of my generation, who have had the opportunity to choose or refuse military service in the absence of a draft. These attitudes were enough to shape school choices and career choices, and steer the overwhelming majority of my friends away from uniformed service. Those who did serve usually had some specific reason, like college financial aid or a service academy appointment. Most went off to college, found a career, and moved into adulthood without a serious glance towards military service.

The result is an ever-increasing divide in American society between those who've served and those who haven't. I have no data to back this up, but my emprical observation is that this divide correlates quite well with political attitudes and socioeconomic status, with both liberals and the wealthy shunning military service. (One caveat: these same groups that shun military service often flood other forms of public service. I think that fact deserves mention, although for obvious reasons, such public service doesn't carry the same credential for issues of national security.) Again, fast-forward 30 years after these decisions were made, and you see a liberal and wealthy elite that contains disproportionately less veterans.

So what? Why does veteran status matter in politics?

At the end of the day, this boils down to the politics of identity. A white man cannot criticize affirmative action with the same credibility as a black man; he even risks being called a racist for his views. An old man cannot criticize the right to choose an abortion without being labeled a hypocrite and worse. Similarly, a non-veteran cannot advocate for military action -- or the lack thereof -- with the same credibility as a veteran. I don't think this is the most intelligent want to assess credibility; I don't think someone's c.v. necessarily affects the quality of their ideas. But the American public does not see it that way. These credentials serve as shorthand for the American public; they enable voters to make decisions about credibility and trustworthiness.

The recognition of this fact is why I think that Democrats swoon over men in uniform. It's more than guilt over opposition to Vietnam; it's more than trying to offset the political advantage of the incument president. This swooning is about demonstrating credibility on issues of national security where the Democratic party currently has -- rightly or wrongly -- less credibility than the GOP. Wes Clark and John Kerry both realize this, and have each tried to leverage their military records for political gain. Whether their war records will make any difference in how they serve as Commander-in-Chief is a matter for debate. (FDR did well as a wartime President with no uniformed service; LBJ did a less than stellar job despite service in WWII.)

I don't like the politics of identity, and I suspect most politicians don't either. But the Democrats have to play the game, and that means appealing to voters in 2004 on national security issues. If winning takes putting a veteran on the ticket, I wouldn't be surprised to see Dems doing what it takes to win. I'm okay with that. After all, candidates have been picked for decades because of their geographic value, religion, age, and other "important" reasons. In 2004, the key constituency may not be Southerners or moderates or the elderly -- it may be Americans who care about their security. If that's true, why not pick a veteran?
posted by Phillip Carter at 11:31

 
Sodomy and 'don't ask, don't tell' go to court

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces heard arguments yesterday over whether the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas requires the military's sodomy statute -- Art. 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice -- to be overturned. The facts of the case seem tailor made for the challenge: an airman was prosecuted for having off-base sodomy with another airman. The charges squarely implicate Art. 125, notwithstanding some factual issues at trial surrounding consent and even whether the sodomy occurred. Howard Bashman at How Appealing provides this first-hand report from the argument yesterday before the CAAF. (Also see this discussion of the issues from NPR this morning)

. . . the judges appeared troubled by the positions taken on all sides. Counsel for the government (a career military lawyer), insisted (unsurprisingly) that Lawrence did nothing to Article 125. Citing Justice Scalia's characterization of the Lawrence majority opinion, she insisted that Lawrence, at best, subjects Article 125 only to rational basis review -- to which one of the judges pithily responded, "The traditional way to read opinions is to look at a the majority opinion, not the dissent." Nevertheless, even assuming that rational basis review should apply, two of the five judges seemed clearly troubled by the rational bases offered by the government -- unit cohesion, maintenance of discipline, morale, etc. Article 125 criminalizes homosexual as well as heterosexual sodomy, and some of the judges couldn't seem to understand how private, consensual sodomy (whether heterosexual or homosexual) could possibly relate to these legitimate interests. While government counsel appeared to concede that some heterosexual sodomy falling under Article 125 would be protected by Lawrence, she insisted that Article 125 was constitutional as applied to this particular defendant, who was convicted of both consensual and nonconsensual sodomy. When pressed to explain why, she rather conclusorily returned to the litany of "unit cohesion, maintenance of discipline, and morale" -- an explanation with which the judges did not seem particularly impressed.

Counsel for amicus, who was represented by a gentleman from Wilmer Cutler, argued that Lawrence mandates strict scrutiny of the statute. According to amicus, when the Supreme Court said in Lawrence that the Texas statute served "no legitimate purpose," the Court wasn't implying that it was engaging in rational basis review. Rather, according to counsel, the Supremes meant that the Texas statute served not even a legitimate purpose. The sweeping language of Lawrence (and the cases upon which it relies), he maintained, makes clear that prohibitions of Article 125 should be strictly scrutinized, and that the professed justifications of the military are (a) hardly compelling or (b) narrowly tailored. Therefore, Article 125 is unconstitutional on its face. The judges, however, seemed somewhat skeptical of this argument. One judge posed the following hypothetical: suppose that the Secretary of the Air Force or a military commander issued a rule or a general order that prohibited the conduct described in the Don't Ask Don't Tell statute, 10 U.S.C. 654(f)(3)(B) (mandating discharge for engaging in "any bodily contact which a reasonable person would understand to demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in [a homosexual] act"). Now suppose a servicemember violated that order. Could the servicemember then be prosecuted for insubordination? Under amicus's theory, wouldn't Lawrence bar such a prosecution? Therefore, doesn't amicus's theory call into question the whole Don't Ask Don't Tell policy?

Appellant's civilian counsel initially declined to opine on what level of scrutiny should be applied following Lawrence. His approach appeared to be, Lawrence said what it said, namely, the state can't criminalize consensual sodomy, and the military is no exception. Counsel also seemed to distance himself from the facial challenge advanced by amicus, and directed the court's attention to the facts of this case. The defendant was convicted (among other things) of engaging in consensual sodomy off base. Lawrence, if anything, should prohibit prosecution for that. The judges responded, however, by noting that simply because the government failed to prove that the sodomy was forcible does not mean that it was consensual (apparently the testimony of the "victim" was inconsistent on this point).

Analysis: Shortly after the Court's opinion in Lawrence, I wrote a piece for Findlaw and CNN.Com opining that the courts would probably defer to the military on deciding whether "don't ask, don't tell" should remain in place. This conclusion was based on the courts' longstanding tradition of deference to the executive branch on national security grounds -- present in both the gay rights and terrorism contexts (see, e.g., the Hamdi and Padilla cases). If this were a challenge to "don't ask, don't tell" (codified at 10 U.S.C. 654), I would stand by that conclusion with respect to this case before the CAAF. But this is not a facial challenge to "don't ask, don't tell" -- it's a challenge to the military's sodomy statute. The Supreme Court held in Lawrence that you cannot criminalize sodomy, among other things, in an extremely powerful and broadly-written opinion by Justice Kennedy. The CAAF judges are bound by Supreme Court precedent just as any Art. III appeals court would be (the CAAF actually sits in Art. I as an executive branch court). I think they will apply Lawrence to hold that Art. 125 of the UCMJ is unconstitutional, and that the military can no longer criminalize sodomy.

That said, I do not think they will rule so broadly so as to overrule "don't ask, don't tell." For one, that's not the issue of the case -- this is a criminal appeal of a sodomy conviction, not an appeal from a discharge for violation of 10 U.S.C. 654. Second, as a matter of administrative law, the "don't ask, don't tell" policy can stand separately from the sodomy statute; one is not legally dependent on the other. (The same is also true of the Solomon Amendment, which threatens to cut off federal funding for universities if the universities ban ROTC or military recruiting on campus. This funding restriction is not legally dependent on the the legality of Art. 125 or even 10 U.S.C. 654. A challenge to the Solomon Amendment predicated on the legality of 'don't ask, don't tell' conflates the issues and is almost surely destined for failure.) If the court overturns Art. 125, it will certainly give the Lambda Legal folks some more ammunition for their fight against "don't ask, don't tell". But the CAAF's decision on Art. 125 -- if it overturns the statute -- will not overrule that "don't ask, don't tell" per se.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:41

 
Out of the loop
SecDef says he didn't know of White House plans to reorg for Iraq

The Washington Post (and other media) report today that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was caught by surprise when the White House announced that it would create a new top-level working group for the management of America's occupation of Iraq.

Rumsfeld said in an interview with the Financial Times and three European news organizations that he did not learn of the new Iraq Stabilization Group until he received a classified memo about it from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Thursday.

Rumsfeld was asked several times why the changes were necessary. "I think you have to ask Condi that question," he said, according to a transcript posted on the Web site of the Financial Times.

Pressed, he said: "I said I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English? I was not there for the backgrounding."

Rumsfeld's tart remarks offer a window on the tensions among members of President Bush's war Cabinet, which are vividly described by administration officials but are rarely visible to outsiders. Rumsfeld's bluntness has occasionally rankled allies and caused headaches for the White House, but Bush is said to remain supportive.

The new group, headed by senior Rice aides at the National Security Council, gives the White House a stronger role in overseeing the reconstruction effort, which is under attack on Capitol Hill as poorly planned and unexpectedly expensive. Republican sources said the White House realizes that the consequences could be dire if the pace of the reconstruction does not improve markedly before the 2004 presidential election campaign begins.

Rumsfeld said he has not talked to Bush about the changes. When an interviewer said it sounded as though Rumsfeld had not been briefed about the changes before the memo and an interview Rice gave the New York Times, he replied, "That's true."

Analysis: Two quick points emerge from this story. First, Don Rumsfeld is no teddy bear, and he's no diplomat either. Asking reporters from the Financial Times (a British paper) and three other European papers if they speak English in an interview is a surefire way to make enemies. It's insulting, and it's the kind of comment likely to enrage the citizens of Europe once again about Rumsfeld.

The second point of analysis is that the SecDef has been cut out of the loop. Not just in a small way, like he wasn't invited to some ceremony at the Rose Garden, but in a very big way. Until this working group was formed, the chain of command for Iraq ran straight from the President to the SecDef to L. Paul Bremer III and General John Abizaid, the CENTCOM Commander. Now, it looks like we have a working group interposed between the President and SecDef, and more importantly, we have the elevation of State and other cabinet agencies to a peer position within this group. That the SecDef wasn't informed of this before it happened is very significant, especially in this administration. I think it's too early to tell precisely what this means, but I think it's one indicator that SecDef Rumsfeld might not be asked back for a second Bush administration.
posted by Phillip Carter at 06:06

 
High crimes at Guantanamo Bay

I've written an article for Writ, an online legal magazine, on the allegations at Guantanamo and why they're worthy of capital punishment if true. The piece looks at why espionage and aiding the enemy charges in this case are so serious, and how the actions of a few men might damage the entire global war on terrorism.

The essence of the charges against these three men is this: According to the government, they gathered classified information about Guantanamo Bay, and interfered with the interrogation effort there. If these allegations are proven, the men could be convicted of capital espionage, defined as communicating, delivering, transmitting, or attempting to communicate, deliver or transmit information about nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft, early warning systems against large-scale attack, war plans, communications, or other major weapons systems. (A lesser, non-capital charge of espionage exists for communication information about other secret matters).

Yee and Halabi could also be convicted of aiding the enemy, defined as giving (or attempting to give) "arms, ammunition, supplies, money, or other things" to the enemy, communicating with the enemy, or having "any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly".

If convicted, the two military defendants could face the death penalty. (In contrast, Mehalba currently faces up to 5 years in federal prison for his alleged false statements to airport officials, but more charges are expected that could lead to a life sentence for him.)

At first glance, imposition of the death penalty here might seem severe, especially for non-violent crimes; after all, murder is the classic death-eligible crime. But, as the government doubtless points out, these crimes, if they are proven, will have jeopardized not just one life, but literally thousands, for they could have a lasting impact on America's ability to understand the threat it faces from Al Qaeda.

Viewed in this context, the death penalty begins to seem far more appropriate. Certainly few who support the death penalty for murder would oppose it for Richard Reid - the so-called "shoe bomber" who tried to down a passenger airliner. Yet if the allegations against Yee and Halabi are proven, they have put many, many more people in serious jeopardy than even the notorious Reid did.

posted by Phillip Carter at 05:57

 
The absentee ballot nightmare in California
Could thousands of deployed soldiers be disenfranchised by this rapid recall?

The New York Times has an interesting story today on the mess we're likely to see in the next several days concerning absentee ballots for today's gubernatorial recall election. The Times reports that a record 3.2 million Californians have requested absentee ballots, and that just 2 million of those have returned them thus far -- leaving 1.2 million ballots outstanding as of election day.

Of that total, 800,000 absentee ballots and an expected 400,000 ballots that will not be counted until after election night because of anticipated snags will not be included in preliminary results from the counties, said Stephen Weir, the clerk-recorder of Contra Costa County in Northern California and the treasurer of a statewide association of county clerks and registrars.

"If it's close, it's bloody," said Mr. Weir, who estimated that 10 percent to 12 percent of the votes statewide would be counted after election night. "The next day we're dead, and people want to know what's left to be counted, and the bottom line is we're talking about 1.2 million votes that are not counted election night."

There are too many unknowns, including how many of the 15.4 million registered voters will turn out to vote and how the votes will shake out, to predict the influence of the absentee ballots. But Mr. Weir was estimating that 8 million to 10 million voters would turn out, with at least a third of them voting by absentee ballot. County election officials, who said absentee ballots had decided local elections in recent years, said on Monday that if the race was close enough, it could take the counties, who have up to 28 days after the election to count the absentee ballots and certify the election results, several weeks to finalize a tally.

Let me add another variable here: military voters. I probably should've written an op-ed about this two months ago when there was time for the ACLU to make these arguments before the Ninth Circuit. If I'm right, thousands of military voters will not have their votes counted in this election. The culprit is the mail system, and specifically the tension between the tight timeline (60 days) of this recall and the relatively slow mail pipeline to deployed soldiers overseas.

Federal law (the "The Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act") provides for some mechanisms to assist military personnel overseas with voting, but these mechanisms are all premised on the fact of a regularly scheduled election with a lot of lead time.

The UOCAVA provides for a "back-up" ballot, called the Federal Write In Absentee Ballot ("FWAB"), should a citizen overseas not receive his or her regular ballot from the state or territory. Under the UOCAVA, citizens can only use the FWAB under three, very specific conditions. To be eligible for this ballot, the citizen must: (1) Be located overseas (including APO/FPO addresses); (2) Have applied for a regular ballot early enough so that the request is received by the local election official at least 30 days before the election; and (3) Not have received the requested regular absentee ballot.

In this case, Californians in uniform overseas have not had such lead time. They really have had 60 days, assuming they were plugged into the news and monitoring this situation. It's possible that a Californian deployed overseas might have missed both the 30-day cutoff for requesting an absentee ballot and the 30-day cutoff of requirement (2) above.

There are really two groups of soldiers overseas that are likely to be disenfranchised here:

(1) Reservists deployed from their homes inside California. Thousands of reservists have been mobilized from California and sent to Iraq. These soldiers likely deployed with a mail forwarding order in place, so that their mail would be forwarded by the U.S. Postal Service from their civilian address to their military APO address. In the best of times, the USPS can forward such mail domestically in a few days. In the military, such mail deliveries can take longer. Mail delivery in theater is less frequent (2-3 times per week), and it has to account for variables such as security.

- Best case (and also most unlikely) scenario: the reservist applied for an absentee ballot at the time of deployment, possibly in anticipation of the March 2004 primary. The absentee ballot gets sent to the home address in California, then forwarded to the soldier, who may or may not have time to read up on the issues. He/she then sends it back to California through military mail, which can take 2 weeks or longer to get back to the states.

- Middle case: the reservist deployed with other things on his mind and did not pre-request an absentee ballot. The regular ballot announcements arrive in the mail, get forwarded to him in Iraq, where they arrive after the absentee ballot deadline has already passed. It's too late to request an absentee ballot, and this soldier is precluded from using a Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot under the UOCAVA.

- Worst case (and also quite likely): the reservist wasn't even registered at the time of the election, possibly because he just turned 18 or because he had other things on his mind. He wants to start voting, because he feels a sudden sense of civic engagement while deployed to a combat zone. The soldier learns of the election late because he gets an infrequent news feed through his unit newsletter and First Sergeant. The soldier tries to register to vote, but by the time his registration gets to L.A. County's Registrar-Recorder, he's missed the deadline for the Oct. 7 election.

(2) Active duty soldiers with a home of record in California. There are literally thousands of these soldiers on active duty, and I was one them. For various reasons (such as maintaining residency for future tuition purposes), these soldiers maintain California as their state of legal residence. Most of these soldiers are permanently registered as absentee voters, meaning that their absentee ballots get generated automatically just as an infirm person's ballot would be. However, these soldiers' ballots still have to contend with the military mail system to get to and from the combat zone. And it's unlikely the soldier will have full access to the Los Angeles Times or San Francisco Chronicle to become an informed voter, so the vote may be somewhat diluted by an information deficit.

Most soldiers won't fit any of these hypotheticals, but they'll fall somewhere near the middle case. Legally, it's hard to pin the blame for why their vote won't count. Certainly, the tight timeline of the election deserves most of the blame, because it's simply too short of a time window for the mail and absentee ballot systems to work properly. The mail service deserves some of the blame too. So do the soldiers, for not pre-requesting absentee ballots.

Unfortunately, the bottom line is this: many of these soldiers' votes won't count. I think that democracy suffers when anyone's vote goes uncounted. But I think it's patently offensive that many of our soldiers serving in combat overseas should lose their democratic voice because of the mechanics of this recall.

One of the strongest arguments for the 26th Amendment was that Americans who were old enough to fight and die for their country ought to have the right to vote. I think the connection between suffrage and service is very real, and that these soldiers are literally earning their right to vote right now with their blood and sweat in Iraq. Our election system has to do better at making their votes count.

Update: Every news outlet in Los Angeles is projecting a big win for Arnold, which essentially makes the issue of military absentee ballots moot. I think that's true as a practical and legal matter, but the larger issue of military disenfranchisement remains. I still think we need to do more on this front.
posted by Phillip Carter at 11:10

 
The value of intelligence
Army leaders lament the lack of "human intelligence" in Iraq

Greg Jaffe has a great piece in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) about the struggle by U.S. commanders in Iraq to fight a war without sufficient amounts of "HUMINT", or "human intelligence". A consensus seems to have emerged that our commanders have sufficient combat power ("boots on the ground") to do their job now in Iraq -- but that they don't have sufficient intelligence to fight the guerilla networks they now face in Iraq.

Brig. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who commands all of the 35,000 U.S. troops arrayed across Baghdad, came here in July with orders to transform the city into a stable and secure place. Since he arrived, 16 of his troops have been killed and about 170 wounded. In his left front pocket the general carries 16 laminated cards, each bearing a picture of a dead soldier, his address, date of birth and the names of his spouse, children and parents.

While Washington debates whether President Bush should send more troops to stabilize Iraq, Gen. Dempsey says what he really needs is better intelligence to track down and defeat the enemy. "Right now, I have more than enough combat power. What I need to know is where to apply it," he says.

Gen. Dempsey's predicament spotlights a larger trade-off the Pentagon made in its vision for the Army over the past decade: As the Army shrank in size, it focused on winning high-intensity conventional wars and didn't emphasize the intelligence needs that are essential to victory in guerrilla fights.

As a result, the Army is short of interrogators and counterintelligence soldiers, forcing commanders in Iraq to improvise solutions on the fly -- and make some significant mistakes along the way. Overwhelmed by looting and guerrilla attacks, for example, the U.S. relied on mass arrests to restore order, which bred resentment and suspicion among Iraqis and may have fed the enemy's ranks.

"We haven't fought a war where human intelligence was the coin of the realm for decades," says Brig. Gen. John Custer, the senior intelligence officer at U.S. Central Command, which oversees troops in the Middle East. With the Army fighting guerrilla wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, "we're coming to realize the value of human intelligence on the battlefield."

Emily Hsu also writes on this issue today in Inside the Army (subscription required), saying the Army is looking to deploy some of its latest C4ISR ("Command, Control, Communications, Computing, Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance") systems to Iraq to help bridge the HUMINT gap. Specifically, the Army hopes to speed the procurement processes for a few systems that have the potential to aid commanders in visualizing the enemy and the battlefield in Iraq.

Systems being eyed include an automated language translation service, as well as the “PackBot” unmanned ground vehicle, which has been operationally tested in Afghanistan clearing caves and compounds, DOD and Army officials said in an Oct. 1 interview with Inside the Army.

Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, met late last month with officials from the Army Research Lab to generate possible dollar figures and time lines on which these two capabilities might be put into the hands of the soldier in Iraq, these sources said.

Decisions on the deployments are pending specific allocation of the $87 billion supplemental request which has yet to be approved by Congress. The exact number of systems that may be deployed and when they will “roll-out” to the field is “still on the drawing table,” one official said.

Analysis: While I applaud the initiative of the Army in pushing forward its procurement in these areas, I don't think this will be enough to cure the problems that Mr. Jaffe writes about in today's Wall Street Journal. Specific, actionable, credible, exploitable intelligence is the kind of stuff that generally comes from having smart intelligence operatives and analysts on the ground in Iraq, working at the muddy boots level. You can leverage technology only so much to manage information and speed up your OODA loop. At some point, you simply have to go out there and get good raw information to feed into these intelligence systems. That's the real crux of the problem.

In much of Iraq, I think this intelligence gathering effort is going well. There is a direct correlation between our relations with the Iraqi people and our ability to collect intelligence from them. In places like Basra and Mosul, where coalition troops have stabilized the situation, this effort is going well. In Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle, it's going less swimmingly.

One bit of good news is the increasing "Iraqification" of the stability mission. The graduation this weekend of the first battalion of Iraqi troops is a step in the right direction, and it may ultimately become the key to this intelligence problem. It should be obvious that Iraqis can collect intel better than Americans -- if only for linguistic and cultural reasons. If deployed with American forces in the tough spots, these troops will contribute a great deal towards the gathering of actionable intelligence about Iraqi guerilla networks. Learning about your enemy is never easy. But I think that these Iraqis represent our best hope in gathering the intel we need to accomplish our mission in Iraq.

Update: Terry Boyd has a great story in the European Stars & Stripes about the way intelligence gets used at the tactical level to conduct a raid.

Earlier in the week, Chenoweth had been relayed a tip that Maj. Gen. Rafi abd Al-Latif Tilfah al-Tikriti, former head of Iraq’s security apparatus and No. 15 on the United States’ most wanted list, may be hiding along with two other Saddam loyalists in an area at the confluence of the Tigris and Diyala rivers.

At 2 a.m. Wednesday, a hunting party of 300-plus people gathered at Muleskinner Base on the southern edge of Baghdad. Six hours earlier, the 1st AD units involved — the 2-6 and 1st Battalion, 35th Armored Regiment — spent an hour rehearsing the raid in a soccer field. Company commanders and platoon leaders walked soldiers through an improvised layout of the area including the three target compounds.

Nothing is left to chance.

Great reporting from one of the few reporters still embedded with the force in Iraq. Also see this story on the "Three Block War" from Mr. Boyd.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:03

 
Notes on Wes Clark's new book

Fred Kaplan, the War Stories columnist for Slate, has some "talking points" on Wes Clark's new book "Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire," which is basically a critique of U.S. foreign policy since Sept. 11. And no, the timing is not coincidental -- this is clearly intended as Clark's national security platform for his presidential campaign. Kaplan, who's no stranger to defense issues, offers a pretty even-handed assessment of the book, which I will probably go buy now to add to my copy of Waging Modern War.

Page 130: A revelation:

As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan. … He said it with reproach—with disbelief, almost—at the breadth of the vision. I moved the conversation away, for this was not something I wanted to hear. And it was not something I wanted to see moving forward, either.

A few questions come to mind: Who was this senior staff officer? If that can't be revealed, couldn't Clark at least tell us how senior he was? Why did Clark want to "move the conversation away"? Why didn't he pursue it? Why didn't he mention anything about this "chat" during his wartime CNN commentary? Still, it's shuddersome that the Bush administration was planning such a broad imperial sweep (Somalia and Sudan?) so insouciantly just weeks after 9/11.

Pages 131, 148: Clark goes after Bush's doctrine of "preventive war." It was "an idea that the United States had consistently rejected for itself and condemned in others," and it was "likely to make us the enemy" in the eyes of much of the world.

Pages 175, 178: The neocon concept of a "New American Empire," Clark goes on, is not only impractical, given the size and training of the U.S. military, but also contrary to "the principles of national self-determination." The idea also ignores the fact that American power and prosperity since World War II have been "sustained not by classical empire but rather by an interlocking web of international institutions and arrangements that protected and promoted American interests and shared the benefits, costs, and risks with others."

Thoughts... If elected, Wes Clark would probably be one of the most intellectual American presidents in history -- on par with Woodrow Wilson and Bill Clinton. His comments in an interview with Josh Marshall, his writing in this book, and his writing in Waging Modern War are all quite lucid, well informed, and right as a matter of policy. Unfortunately, a guy this prolific also has to deal with the burden of his prior statements, and that may become an issue for Wes Clark during the campaign. More to follow.
posted by Phillip Carter at 20:04

 
Senator proposes to pay for soldiers' full travel fare for leave from Iraq

Last week, I criticized the Pentagon's leave plan for soldiers in Iraq as being too cheap because it only paid soldiers' fare as far as Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Since then, the Pentagon has broadened its plans to cover the cost of soldier travel to a few other major hub airports -- but still not all the way home. Rick Maze reports in Army Times that Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn) has introduced a bill to change that.

“The least we can do is get them home and back at government expense,” Dayton said Monday as he introduced a bill, S 1670, making troops on R&R leave eligible for travel and transportation allowances.

“Those service men and women are serving with great courage in 115-degree temperatures and other truly awful conditions,” he said. “They are being given two weeks leave, many of them because they are in the reserves or National Guard and they have just had their five- or six-month tour extended by another six months. This will be the only time that many of them will have a chance to see their families during the entire year.”

The price tag for providing allowances to cover travel costs would be about $69 million if all 138,000 U.S. service members now stationed in Iraq took leave, he said.

Dayton, whose bill has four other Democratic cosponsors, said he plans to pay for the allowances by tapping into President Bush’s $87 billion Iraq supplemental funding request. Dayton plans to offer his proposal as an amendment to the supplemental, which is expected to be on the Senate floor for debate later this week.

Dayton’s proposal would apply only to those taking leave under the U.S. Central Command’s rest and recuperation leave program for troops involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom. It would not expand travel allowances for any other military leave program.

Analysis: I think this is a great idea, and frankly, it's the kind of thing that military planners should have done as an administrative matter. I'm not as familiar with the Joint Travel Regs as I was when I was on active duty. But I'm pretty sure that there is a way commanders could have taken care of this. In fact, I know for certain that some commanders tried to do this for their troops, only to have the idea vetoed at a higher level.

Note 1: The DoD travel card fiasco may be coming back to bite soldiers in the backside here. A few years ago, nearly every soldier had an American Express (or Bank of America) travel credit card issued to him or her, to cover the costs of official travel. Many service personnel abused those cards, creating a staggering amount of delinquent credit card debt and earning a black eye for the military from the financial community. The military responded by cancelling most travel cards, and placing strict controls on the system. Unfortunately, that hinders soldiers now who might use those cards to float the cost of their travel from Iraq (or from BWI) to their home of record, while they wait for reimbursement.

Note 2: There are serious equity issues that need to be addressed in this leave policy. Those are issues to be addressed at the lowest level, e.g. brigade and battalion level. But I would not be surprised to see the first leave approvals being given to certain groups of soldiers, such as those who distinguished themselves in combat, those who reenlisted, and those who have other compelling circumstances (such as the birth of a new child). I think in nearly all cases, commanders will do the right thing. But there may be some situations where commanders use leave as a carrot to induce soldiers to reenlist, and that would be unfortunate (and possibly illegal). Nothing will kill a unit's cohesion and morale faster than the perception of unfairness and inequity from the commander. Hopefully, that's not happening here.
posted by Phillip Carter at 19:50

 
USAFA scandal delays new Army Secretary's confirmation in the Senate

As I predicted a couple of weeks ago when the commission report was released on the U.S. Air Force Academy scandal, the Los Angeles Times reported today that Air Force Secretary James Roche's bid to become Army Secretary has been blocked in the Senate. Interestingly enough, the hold on Roche's nomination came from Armed Services Committee Chair John Warner, a Republican Senator from Virginia. Clearly, this goes beyond the partisan politics that often stalls many nominations in the Senate.

Having failed in the past to grill nominees for the top civilian job in the Air Force about allegations of sexual abuse, Warner told Roche that his committee would take no chances on approving the nomination until all questions had been answered.

"This committee, frankly, got burned one time, and we're not going to get burned again," Warner said.

Within the Pentagon, Roche is regarded as having reacted decisively to a scandal in which female cadets reported a culture that provided only light punishment for sexual assault and imposed a code of silence around knowledge of the events. However, he faced aggressive questioning Tuesday by senators who argued that the Air Force has done too little. Members of an independent panel told the Senate committee last week that Air Force leaders, both in Washington and at the academy, ignored numerous warning signs.

"I don't know why it didn't get to me," Roche said of the scandal.
* * *
Some of the toughest questioning came from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who criticized Roche's March 23 statement in which he said the academy's problems could not be blamed on the Air Force's current leaders.

"We're in the dog-ate-my-homework and not-on-my-watch defense," said an outraged McCain.

Analysis: The investigation should be complete in December, and then we'll probably have another round of confirmation hearings for Sec. Roche. These hearings will be quite nasty when they're held. Indeed, they may rival the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings for vitriol and lewdness when the dust clears. My reading of the USAFA scandal is that there were serious problems at the Academy, and also serious problems in the Air Force chain of command that allowed the problems to continue for years. It's upsetting that Congress would exercise oversight of the Air Force through its approval of the Air Force chief's next career move. But the buck has to stop somewhere, and the Air Force Secretary's desk seems like a good place to me.
posted by Phillip Carter at 19:31

 
More information on the latest Gitmo suspect

The Los Angeles Times gives us some more details about Ahmed Mehalba, the man picked up at Logan Airport in Boston yesterday for allegedly carrying CD-ROMs full of classified documents about the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The interpreter, 31-year-old Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, appeared in U.S. District Court in Boston on Tuesday and was formally charged with making false statements to federal agents after attempting to clear an airport security checkpoint Monday.

Prosecutors allege that he was carrying 132 compact discs, at least one of which reportedly held secret information about operations at Camp Delta, the U.S. military prison in Cuba where some 660 Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners are detained.
* * *
Authorities say Mehalba, a former Army intelligence officer and the nephew of a retired Egyptian army intelligence officer, was working as a linguist at the Cuban prison on a contract basis for Titan Corp., a defense industry firm based in San Diego.

But his court-appointed lawyer, Michael Andrews of Boston, said in a telephone interview that his client did not lie when he asserted, repeatedly, that none of the compact discs contained classified material and that if any secrets were found on the discs, he did not know how they got there.
* * *
Mehalba was described as a naturalized U.S. citizen of Egyptian descent who was living in Massachusetts and working at Camp Delta to help military interrogators interview detainees.

He earlier had enlisted in the Army and served at the Counter-Intelligence School at Ft. Huachuca, Ariz., until he took a medical discharge in 2001, officials said.

The Boston Globe adds a few more details to the story:

During the questioning Monday night, Mehalba also acknowledged that he has an uncle who has worked in Egyptian military intelligence and that his girlfriend is a former US Army specialist who was caught with classified information on a stolen laptop in 2001.
* * *
Court records and interviews with neighbors and acquaintances painted a picture of a man who traveled often and juggled an array of occupations, from Boston taxi driver to diamond consultant. He had applied to be a gatekeeper Massport two days after the attacks of Sept. 11.

Neighbors in Salem said Mehalba drove a car decorated with bumper stickers for the Army Reserves and Palestine.

Records show he had spent at least a decade in Greater Boston. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Mehalba immigrated to Salem area in the early 1990s.
* * *
In 2000, Mehalba joined the Army, and in November reported to Fort Huachuca to take a 79-day interrogator course, but never graduated, said Fort Huachuca spokeswoman Tanja Linton.

But while he was there, Private Mehalba grew close to Deborah Marie Gephart, an Army specialist and a fellow student at counterintelligence school.

Gephart was discharged on Sept. 21, 2001, "on less than honorable conditions," according to the FBI affidavit. She was initially arrested by the Sierra Vista police department for allegedly stealing a car. But a subsequent search uncovered a stolen laptop and classified counterintelligence training material, the FBI affidavit said. The affidavit did not provide details about the information.

Analysis: Some of these details have real significance. The fact that he's a citizen means that he can't be charged by a military tribunal. In theory, he could be designated an enemy combatant and detained indefinitely without access to counsel (see, e.g., Jose Padilla). That's a real possibility here, although it's hard to understand how the government makes these decisions since it has moved forward in civilian court against some and through enemy combatant proceedings against others -- with no apparent principle to distinguish between the two paths.

The fact that he's been in the military, and more specifically, in the military intelligence community, means that he knows what he was doing and what he would've been looking for. Generally speaking, you want operatives (if you're the enemy) who know the inside of the system they're trying to gather information from. Fort Huachuca is the Army's military intelligence school, and it runs its counter-intelligence courses as well as its interrogator courses. Mehalba certainly fits the profile of someone you'd want to recruit, even if he was just giving general information about Gitmo that could then be passed back to Syrian or Al Qaeda officers.

The facts of his military background, and his family background, add a lot of color to this case. It's unclear how much of that will be admissable in court, if the government moves in federal court against him. My prediction is that Mehalba will plead guilty to some lesser-included offense in exchange for information about who he was working for. But if he doesn't, I'm sure the government is prepared to throw the book at him.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:59

 
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