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

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Book recommendation

There aren't many non-fiction books that you can start and finish on a cross-country flight. The War on Our Freedoms: Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism is one of them. Despite the ominous title, this is not a series of tirades against John Ashcroft or the Bush Administration -- it's a series of moderate, well-written, well-researched essays in each aspect of the legal war on terrorism. I liked it so much that I plan to assign it for my class on American Law & Terrorism next quarter. If you're looking for a one-stop-shop book that covers everything from the USA PATRIOT Act to FISA to 18 U.S.C. 2339b, this is it.
posted by Phillip Carter at 14:48

 
Air Force sends forward non-capital charges against Gitmo interpreter

Senior Airman Ahmad I. Al Halabi will face non-capital charges before a general court-martial at Travis Air Force Base in California, according to the Air Force. Some of the charges were dismissed against Airman Halabi. The most important part of this news release is that the Air Force will not seek the death penalty for Airman Halabi, as it theoretically could have done under the UCMJ articles for espionage and aiding the enemy.

Charges referred include seven specifications alleging the accused failed to obey a lawful general order or regulation in violation of Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ); one specification alleging the accused aided the enemy in violation of Article 104; four specifications alleging espionage in violation of Article 106a; five specifications alleging the accused made false official statements in violation of Article 107; two specifications charged under Article 134 alleging the accused willfully retained documents without authority in violation of 18 U.S.C. 793; and one specification charged under Article 134 alleging the accused executed a fraudulent credit application scheme in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1344.

Charges against Senior Airman Al Halabi that were dismissed include four specifications alleging the accused failed to obey a lawful general order or regulation in violation of Article 92; one specification alleging the accused aided the enemy in violation of Article 104; four specifications alleging the accused made false official statements in violation of Article 107; and one specification charged under Article 134 alleging a violation of 18 U.S.C. 793.
* * *
Senior Airman Al Halabi was on temporary duty at Guantanamo Bay (GTMO), Cuba, for nine months serving as a translator at the time of the alleged offenses. He was apprehended at Jacksonville Naval Air Station, Fla., July 23, and was transported to his home station, Travis AFB the next day. He is currently being held in pretrial confinement at Vandenberg AFB, Calif.

Analysis: Despite the dismissal of certain charges and command decision to forgo the death penalty, I still think these are serious charges. Airman Halabi may still spend the rest of his life behind bars for the crimes he is alleged to have committed. We have no way of knowing -- based on the information that's been made public -- how much damage he did to America's national security at Guantanamo Bay. Presumably, that kind of evidence will be part of the trial in this case, and the members of Airman Halabi's military jury will have to weigh the facts of those crimes in determining whether he should be found guilty or not. Even then, we (the public) may never learn of these facts, if they are considered too sensitive to release to the public that they remain classified for the duration of the trial. We'll see.
posted by Phillip Carter at 14:34

 
1,300 reservists allege job discrimination after demobilization

The Washington Post carries this disturbing report today on complaints filed with the Department of Labor by soldiers who allege discriminatory treatment by employers upon their return from duty. Mobilized reservists enjoy the protection of two major laws -- the Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act, and the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act. More than 1,300 reservists have filed complaints with the Department of Labor saying their employers may have violated those laws, up from 900 in 2001.

Concerned about the rise in complaints, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao has released a televised public service announcement reminding employers that they must reinstate workers called to military duty. "They did their job -- now let's do ours," Chao says.

Under a 1994 law, it is illegal to discriminate against military personnel mobilized for duty. Returning personnel are supposed to be allowed to return to their same, or a comparable job, complete with any pay raises or promotions they might have otherwise received if they had remained at work.

The United States has become increasingly reliant on National Guard and reserve forces, which now make up about half of the U.S. military personnel in Iraq. Since Sept. 11, 2001, 306,000 Reserve and Guardsmen have been mobilized, including about 163,000 now on active duty.

For the most part, employers across the country have been generous in dealing with their National Guard and reserve employees, officials said. Hundreds of firms have begun making up the pay difference between their military and civilian pay, according to Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, and many offer health benefits as well.

In about one-third of the cases filed in the past year, reserve and guard personnel said they missed out on jobs and promotions as a result of their mobilization, and about 20 percent said they weren't reinstated in their jobs. The rest of the cases involve vacation, seniority and pension issues, Labor Department officials said.

The department referred 79 of the cases to the Department of Justice for possible civil prosecution. A Justice spokesman said the department couldn't determine whether any lawsuits have resulted from the recent complaints. The U.S. attorney in Denver has filed two lawsuits on behalf of National Guard and reserve forces in the past six months.

Analysis: These two laws provide a lot of protections for active-duty and reserve soldiers, including protection from creditors and employers while overseas. But the protection is imperfect, as this story illustrates. The USERRA in particular contains loopholes through which employers can restructure themselves to eliminate jobs, or take other measures which have an adverse impact on the soldier. At the end of the day, our soldiers pay a heavy price for their decisions to serve in the military, especially those with jobs in the private sector. If we want reservists who are able to make a good living as civilians and serve their country as part-time warriors, we need to take a hard look at these legal protections and see if they need adjustment for today's reservists. The laws were written at a time when a major mobilization was only expected in the case of another world war -- that's no longer the case. Today's reservist must live with constant mobilizations, and I think these legal protections are probably insufficient for that situation.
posted by Phillip Carter at 06:50

 
Veterans taking care of veterans

The Washington Post carries a moving report this morning about a group of older veterans of past wars who have taken it upon themselves to greet American soldiers coming home on leave from Iraq through Baltimore-Washington International airport. Many of these men are Vietnam veterans who want to ensure that these men face a better homecoming than they received.

"Welcome back. Good to have you home," said Bill Self, a Vietnam War veteran, extending his hand to each soldier arriving for two weeks of home leave. Beyond him, a second line of veterans was waiting with telephone cards allowing the soldiers to make free calls across the country.

At the end of the gantlet stood Ray Shipley, 75, a Korean War veteran from Bowie who served in both the Army and Air Force. He knew that every second of leave is precious and wanted to make sure the soldiers didn't waste it sitting in an airport. Like the old buck sergeant he is, Shipley hurried them off to the appropriate ticket agent.

"They only have 15 days, and that time starts as soon as they get off the airplane," he said.

He spotted a soldier dragging a green duffle bag. "Hey, sarge, come on over here. Welcome home, buddy. Where you going? . . . Chicago? See the man here. He'll get you there in a couple of hours -- or less."

With polls showing rising doubt at home about the wisdom of the Iraqi war, the veterans who show up every morning to greet the troops at Baltimore-Washington International say their mission is to make sure the returning soldiers know that they still have the support of Americans.

"These guys are fighting over there, and there are all these arguments. Somebody should tell these guys, 'Hey, you're fighting for us, and we appreciate it,' " Shipley said. "It's not their fault that we get in the predicaments that governments put us into."

It is a lesson some of the veterans know well. Self is a former Navy corpsman who served with the 3rd Marine Division in Da Nang in 1965 and 1966.

"I went through the same thing in Vietnam," Self, 74, said. "There wasn't anyone to see me when I got home, so we're here to make sure that doesn't happen again."

posted by Phillip Carter at 06:41

 
Older veterans who hold their own

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting article this morning about a couple of older gentlemen serving in the Florida Army National Guard -- and now fighting in Iraq. Warfare has historically been a young man's endeavor, largely for the physical toll it exacts on the body. But these men are proving that they're tough enough to hang in there.

A few days ago, resting on his cot after a nighttime patrol in the brutal streets of Baghdad, [Sgt. James] Flores, a grandfather, sat bolt upright: "It hit me all of a sudden. I said, 'Oh, Lord, I turn 50 tomorrow.' I never thought in my lifetime that I'd be at war at that age."

With his birthday, which he celebrated on another patrol, Flores dashed the notion that war belongs to only the young and joined a minority of servicemen and women who, at 50 and above, have gone to battle.

Fewer than 1% of U.S. troops are in the 50-to-59-year-old bracket, which makes up 12% of the nation's population.

While it is not unusual for senior officers and noncommissioned officers to achieve "senior citizen" status in the military — Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition troops in Iraq, is 52 — Flores is still one of the foot soldiers, pulling guard duty, eating MREs, staying in shape and, as best he can, thinking young.

"To tell you the truth, I don't see much difference between what I do and what a 19-year-old does," said Flores, who works two jobs as a cook back home in Kissimmee. "I passed the annual PT [physical training] test, and I saw some 22-year-olds who couldn't. That made me feel really proud."
* * *
In Iraq, Staff Sgt. Paul Stevens, 52, thought for a moment about his age, then said, "Well, some people tell me I may be the oldest squad gunner — machine gunner — in the infantry." He quickly added that he relished duty with the Florida National Guard here.

"This is why I stayed in the reserves," said Stevens, who's in Iraq with Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 124th Infantry. "To serve. It's an honor for me to serve at this age."

A two-tour Vietnam veteran who rejoined the military after 13 years as a civilian so he could fight in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Stevens knows Charlie Company's younger soldiers view him with a touch of awe.

"The way this thing is going," said a 19-year-old specialist eyeing Stevens, "I may be as old as he is by the time I get out of Iraq."

"We figured we'd be guarding a Patriot site or something," Stevens said. "But we got lucky and got assigned to the Special Forces, training in Jordan for pilot rescue. It was a lot of night training. The terrain was terrible, like walking on the moon. You'd fall over stones, hit the ground, roll and get up and go on. With my machine gun, 600 rounds of ammunition and body armor, I figure I was carrying 80 or 100 pounds.

"Sometimes I was really hurting. But the younger guys were hurting worse. Some of them broke and had to drop out. I never got to that point. Sure, the younger guys kind of joke about my age. But that doesn't bother me at all. I think it's pretty cool. Just like I think it's pretty cool we crossed the berm into Iraq two days before the war started."

posted by Phillip Carter at 06:36

 
Veterans Day message from Intel Dump

Veterans Day is always a solemn occasion to reflect on and to show our gratitude for those who have fought to preserve the freedoms all Americans enjoy today.

This day was designated as "Armistice Day" after World War I to pay tribute to those who served in that war. This holiday was originally commemorated on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month to mark the anniversary of the agreement which ended WWI. In 1954, the day's significance was expanded by Congress to honor all the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, coast guardsmen, and merchant marines who have worn our Nation's uniform. By pausing to remember, we recognize the many diverse and difficult circumstances that our Veterans have faced. However, no matter what the time or the uniform, they are united by the same ideals: life and liberty, peace and prosperity, service and sacrifice.

There are currently more than 25 million living American veterans, many of whom put their lives on the line to preserve our freedoms. Through each of these challenges, the members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard have protected our country and liberated millions of people around the world from the threats of tyranny and terror.

On the observance of Veterans Day in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower called on all citizens to not only remember "the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly..." but also to rededicate themselves "to the task of promoting an enduring peace...." Today, almost 50 years later, we remember the dedication of our veterans, and resolve ourselves to upholding their legacy of justice, liberty, and opportunity for all.

I ask that you set aside a moment this Veterans Day to remember the service and sacrifices of American veterans, past and present.

(I cobbled this message together from past messages sent by the President and JCS Chairman to send to the UCLA law school student body and faculty.)
posted by Phillip Carter at 06:20

 
Supreme Court grants cert to Gitmo cases

The AP reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a pair of cases arising from America's detention of more than 600 men at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They are currently held there as "unlawful enemy combatants", just outside the reach of the 3rd Geneva Convention, but with most of the humanitarian protections found in that document. The narrow question presented by these appeals is whether U.S. courts have jurisdiction to hear the appeals from these men.

The appeals came from British, Australian and Kuwaiti citizens held with more than 600 others suspected of being Taliban or al-Qaida foot soldiers. The court combined the appeals and will hear the consolidated case sometime next year.

Lower courts had found that the American civilian court system did not have authority to hear the men's complaints about their treatment.

"The United States has created a prison on Guantanamo Bay that operates entirely outside the law," lawyers for British and Australian detainees argued in asking the high court to take the case.

"Within the walls of this prison, foreign nationals may be held indefinitely, without charges or evidence of wrongdoing, without access to family, friends or legal counsel, and with no opportunity to establish their innocence," they maintained.

The men whose names are on that case do not even know about the lawsuit, lawyers from the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights told the court. The lawsuit brought on their behalf claims they are not al-Qaida members and and no involvement in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Bush administration replied that a lower federal appeals court properly looked to a Supreme Court case arising from World War II to determine that foreigners held outside the United States cannot bring the kind of court challenge at issue now. The 1950 case said German prisoners detained by the United States in China had no right to access to federal courts.

The Guantanamo base is a 45-square-mile area on the southeastern tip of Cuba. The land was seized by the United States in the Spanish-American War and has been leased from Cuba for the past century. The lease far predates the communist rule of Fidel Castro.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia had rejected the detainees' claim that Guantanamo Bay is under the de facto control of the United States, even though it remains a part of Cuba.

Solicitor General Theodore Olson, whose wife was killed aboard the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, told the court that the prisoners' lawsuit has great "potential for interference with the core war powers of the president."

President Bush (news - web sites) has recommended that six of the Guantanamo detainees, including Australian David Hicks, be the first to face military tribunals established for the global war on terror.

Analysis: As with nearly every Supreme Court case, the real issue is whether the Court will decide this case narrowly or broadly. If the court rules narrowly on the jurisdictional question alone, that may not necessarily derail the Bush Administration's legal strategy for dealing with detainees in the war on terrorism. Moreover, such a narrow legal ruling might not affect the detentions of U.S. citizens at U.S. military prisons, such as Jose Padilla. However, if the Court decides to issue a sweeping decision (a'la Lawrence v. Texas) addressing all aspects of the war on terrorism, then I think this could be significant. In this decision, the Court will have the opportunity to hear and address many aspects of the war on terrorism, and the larger question of balancing liberty with security. If the Court takes the opportunity to address those larger questions, then this could really be a monumental decision.

What are the odds that they'll do that? I don't know. But my hunch is that the Court will seize this opportunity to issue a decision larger than the facts of this case. In a Q&A session I attended last year at the Reagan Library, Justice Anthony Kennedy hinted that he felt such issues would ultimately be decided by his court. Also, there appears to be a circuit split growing between the 2nd Circuit and 4th Circuit on the issues of unlawful combatants and access to counsel, among other issues. The law in this area is somewhat messy and outdated, and the Court may want to clarify its precedent for lower circuits. In the end, I still can only make an educated guess, but I think the court will issue a broad holding in this case when they ultimately decide it.

Will Justice Rehnquist have to recuse himself from this vote? I'm not all that clear about the rules of judicial conduct as they apply to justices of the Supreme Court. But there is an argument to be made that the conservative Chief Justice might have to step down for this case because of his past writings on civil liberties in wartime. Justice Rehquist is the recent author of All the Liberties But One: Civil Liberties in Wartime. To some extent, I think his research and writing in this area reveals some bias on the issue, and his bias appears to be against the petition in this case. If Justice Scalia recused himself for his remarks on religion and the state, then I think there's at least an argument to be made that Justice Rehnquist should recuse himself on this case. We'll see.

Update I: Robert Greenberger and Jess Bravin of the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) correct one of my statements about the breadth of this decision to grant cert. The Supreme Court will only look at the narrower question of whether the courts have jurisdiction to hear petitions from prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay. The Court's order limits the case to "[w]hether United States courts lack jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba."

In accepting the case, the Supreme Court limited its review to whether federal courts have any jurisdiction over Guantanamo, rather than some of the broader legal issues raised by the detentions. Mr. Ratner said the court may "look at this as a Guantanamo vs. Bagram question," referring to the Afghan military base where the U.S. also detains and interrogates suspected terrorists.

So...we're not likely to get a major decision about the balance between liberty and security, or something which might apply to the Padilla and Hamdi cases. However, this decision will certainly impact the American decision to detain men at Guantanamo Bay. Suffice to say, it would be a major complication for the administration if prisoners there were allowed to bring suit in federal court to challenge their detention. My prediction echoes that made by Eugene Volokh -- the Court will likely follow Johnson v. Eisentrager and hold that enemy combatants outside the United States do not have the right to petition for habeas corpus in U.S. courts. But this case could easily go another way.

Update II: The Washington Post's article on the Supreme Court's decision to hear this case has a couple of interesting links on the right side of the page:

• Defendants' Web Site
• Guantanamo Bay Defendants
• Kuwaiti Detainees

To which I'd like to add the Pentagon's official site for Military Commissions, and the Findlaw.Com repository of documents from the war on terrorism. The latter is probably the best repository for primary legal documents on terrorism.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:52

 
Admin note: I am in the middle of grading undergraduate exams this week and several other projects, so I'll be away from my news feed for most of the day. Please check back infrequently over the next few days, and come back for regular analysis & commentary on Veterans Day, Nov. 11. Thanks.
posted by Phillip Carter at 13:01

 
Pentagon calls up 43,000 reservists for duty in Iraq
Active-duty, Marine contingents also alerted for deployment

The New York Times reports this morning on an alert order issued by the Pentagon yesterday to reserve and National Guard units around the country, letting them know they will be going to Iraq. 397 units in nearly every state are affected by this order, which includes both combat troops (such as infantry and armor) and support units (such as logistics and communications).

Pentagon planners have sought to limit additional call-ups of National Guard and Reserve forces beyond combat units identified months ago, but ultimately realized that, at the very least, logistics units would be required in the next rotation.

Military planners say the United States could deploy a slightly smaller but still sizable force in Iraq by tailoring the replacement troops to the mission now facing the American-led occupation. For example, they said, the plan calls for swapping tank-heavy armored divisions for units that put more foot soldiers in Iraq. The proposal also takes account of plans to accelerate the training and fielding of Iraq's own security forces to more than 200,000 personnel next year.

The administration has failed to win new commitments of foreign troops for Iraq beyond the two multinational divisions serving there. Mr. Rumsfeld is ordering two brigades, or about 20,000 active-duty marines, from the First Marine Division at Camp Pendleton, Calif., to help fill the gap left by departing Army forces. It will be the first time since the Vietnam War that large numbers of marines, traditionally an expeditionary force, will serve long-term duty for a military operation.

Joining that marine force will be one brigade, or about 7,000 soldiers, from the Army's 25th Infantry Division, based in Hawaii.
* * *
Of the 43,000 whose units are being alerted, more than 37,000 are Army Reserve and National Guard troops. The remainder are Marine reservists. In addition, the Pentagon is telling about 2,000 Air Force personnel and about 1,000 Navy personnel they could be going to Iraq or Kuwait.

To fulfill the requirement of serving a full year on the ground, those troops actually mobilized may serve up to 18 months, including training and leave.

Analysis: This is a large chunk of the reserve force. Here in California, this deployment is tapping into a unit which has not deployed for combat since the Korean War. When you add up Operation Noble Eagle (homeland security) deployments, Balkans deployments, and other missions, you soon see that we have run through a very significant portion of the reserve force. What's left is basically a hollow shell of a force. Moreover, each deployment since Sept. 11 has tended to decimate the units called up. After being called away from their jobs and families, thousands of reservists have decided not to re-up for more time in the reserves. And the cycle goes on and on.

America's reserve force is a precious resource. It has done yeoman's work since the end of the Cold War in supporting the active force and in deploying itself for missions like Bosnia and Kosovo. But if we continue down this road, we will absolutely destroy the reserve force and render it mission incapable. I'm not sure the mission in Iraq is worth that price. However, I'm not sure what the answer is. We're committed to the Iraq mission now, and short of conscription, there's no other way to make ends meet than with reserve forces. But we should start developing mitigation plans to ensure that in 3-5 years, we'll still have a reserve force capable of doing something. Whether that means additional educational benefits or VA benefits for reservists, or additional reenlistment bonuses, we should probably do it.

Update: Even the Pentagon acknowledges the "challenges" in managing our reserve forces for the Iraq mission. "Challenges" is a great euphemism. It's a way to say something is incredibly difficult while still sounding positive about the endeavor. That's the kind of "can do" attitude I'm used to seeing in the military officer corps, and I'm not surprised to see it in the upper ranks of the Pentagon. However, I would add that some challenges are more challenging than others, and that this issue (management of reserve forces) will be a really tough nut to crack. A positive attitude can help, but it will only do so much.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:30

 
NYT: Iraq tried last-minute diplomatic effort to avoid war
Update: Is this story really what it appears -- or is it more smoke & mirrors?

James Risen has a startling report about Iraqi efforts to engage in back-channel diplomacy via influential DoD adviser Richard Perle to avoid war. The lengthy article describes the networks used to make the contacts, what was said, and how the U.S. responded to the Iraqi requests for more diplomacy.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 — As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal.

Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct an independent search. They also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who was being held in Baghdad. At one point, the intermediary said in an interview, the Iraqis pledged to hold elections.

The messages from Baghdad, first relayed by the intermediary in February to an analyst in the office of Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy and planning, were part of an attempt by Iraqi intelligence officers to open last-ditch negotiations with the Bush administration through a clandestine communications channel, according to people involved in the discussion.

The efforts were portrayed by Iraqi officials as having the approval of Saddam Hussein, according to interviews and documents.

The overtures, following a decade of evasions and deceptions and a number of other attempts to broker last-minute meetings with American officials, were ultimately rebuffed. But the messages from Baghdad raised enough interest that in early March, Richard N. Perle, an influential adviser to top Pentagon officials, met in London with the Lebanese-American businessman, Imad Hage. According to both men, Mr. Hage laid out the Iraqis' position to Mr. Perle, and he pressed the Iraqi request for a direct meeting with Mr. Perle or another representative of the United States.

"I was dubious that this would work," Mr. Perle said, "but I agreed to talk to people in Washington."

Mr. Perle said he sought authorization from officials of the Central Intelligence Agency to meet with the Iraqis.

Mr. Perle said the C.I.A. officials said they did not want to pursue this channel and indicated they had already engaged in separate contacts with Baghdad. Mr. Perle said the response was simple: "The message was, `Tell them that we will see them in Baghdad.' "

Analysis: I think there are two basic ways to look at this. Either the Iraqis were trying to delay the conflict via diplomacy, in order to shape the outcome by engaging in more defensive preparation. Or the U.S. was trying to deny the Iraqis that opportunity by spurning diplomacy after it had committed to war. My gut tells me that these are not mutually exclusive, and that both interpretations are probably correct. This may all be a moot point. But my gut also tells me that a little bit more time would have helped us now in Phase IV, by allowing us to put more troops on the ground and lay the groundwork more for the post-war phase of the operation.

Update: Josh Marshall is more skeptical than I am about this story, given a line that's buried far down in the story about the leaker's motivation for speaking with the Times. Here's the all-important paragraph:

Senior Pentagon officials said Mr. Durnan relayed messages he received from Mr. Maloof to the appropriate officials at the Pentagon, but they said that Mr. Durnan never discussed the Hage channel to the Iraqis with Mr. Wolfowitz. (In May, Mr. Maloof, who has lost his security clearances, was placed on paid administrative leave by the Pentagon, for reasons unrelated to the contacts with Mr. Hage.) [emphasis added]

Josh is very savvy about these things. (I consider him to be one of the smarter reporters inside the Beltway.) Here's his analysis of this story and how it "leaked" to the press:

Let's say I'm a career defense bureaucrat struggling to get my security clearances restored because it's very hard for me to be a defense bureaucrat without them. And let's say one of the reasons I can't get them restored is because of some unauthorized contacts I had with a Lebanese-American businessman under investigation for running guns to Liberia. And let's further add to the mix that my whole mess with the security clearances is part of a larger struggle between different factions in the national intelligence bureaucracy. Oh, and one last thing: let's say I'm a protégé of Richard Perle.

Okay.

Now, if I'm on the line for these unauthorized contacts with the gun-running businessman, wouldn't it be a lot harder to punish me for it if it looked like that contact almost allowed me to secure a deal that would have averted the need for war?

And if that's the case, wouldn't it be cool if my buddies and mentors went to the press with the story of how I almost saved the day?

If true, this certainly diminishes both the newsworthiness and veracity of this story. Unfortunately, like the recent Rumsfeld memo that was leaked to the public, it's getting hard to see through all the smoke and mirrors to what the truth actually is. I'd like to take newspapers like the New York Times at something close to face value, because I rely on accurate news from prestigious sources for information that shapes my view of the world. Unfortunately, this incident and others makes it clear that I can't afford to rely on any one source of news -- and indeed, that I do so at my own peril.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:49

 
1st Armored learns to act like CIA-police hybrid in Iraq
"Everyone is an intelligence officer . . . everyone you come in contact with [has] intelligence value"

Vernon Loeb has an interesting article in today's Washington Post on the exploits of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, and its efforts to develop intelligence sources in the neighborhood of Baghdad. The tactics look less like those of an armored division and more like those of an intelligence agency, or a very street-savvy police department.

When the 4-27 Field Artillery started patrolling parts of north Baghdad in late May and June -- McKiernan did not take command until July -- its 535 soldiers found themselves under almost constant attack.

The violence reached a zenith on July 3, when a patrol was ambushed on Haifa Street, the main thoroughfare in Karkh, by Iraqis who fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a Humvee and then opened fire with automatic weapons. Three U.S. troops were wounded, two Iraqi bystanders were killed in the crossfire, and 14 were injured.

Maj. Michael S. Patton, the unit's operations officer, was trying to secure the area immediately after the shooting when his interpreter told him a man in the crowd had some information for him. Patton sent his interpreter back to tell the man he was going to pretend to arrest him, so that no one would suspect he was passing information.

Back at the base camp, the informant, a cigarette vendor in his mid-forties who has lived in the neighborhood all his life, told Patton who carried out the attack -- and Patton's troops quickly nabbed him.

The episode made Patton understand who held the key to the battle: Iraqis in the neighborhood. It also was the start of a beautiful relationship. To date, the cigarette vendor has delivered 35 Iraqi resistance fighters to the Americans. "The guy," said Patton, 37, a cigar-smoking Oklahoman, "has been a gold mine."

Analysis: The article goes on to say that the 2nd Brigade's commander learned these tactics, in part, from his experience teaching at the British Military Academy at Sandhurst. These methods reflect hard-won British experience in Northern Ireland, which was built on centuries of colonial and constabulary experience. What's interesting is to see how the U.S. melds this experience with the American army's unique technological edge and experience in the Balkans. The result seems to be better operations that are driven by intelligence. If every unit in Iraq does this kind of thing, they should soon be able to penetrate the guerilla cells responsible for recent attacks on American forces. The key to penetrating those cells is developing HUMINT capabilities -- mostly Iraqis -- who are willing to work for us instead of the other side. Doing so will take a lot of work and a long time, and it won't be something the media can cover. But it will be effective in the long run. This kind of intelligence is absolutely critical for fighting a 4th Generation War, and we will lose without it.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:36

 
Allies' concerns delay military tribunals

After a report last week that military tribunals were "imminent," the New York Daily News reports today that several American allies have expressed political concerns over the process which may affect their citizens.

Britain, Australia, Pakistan, Kuwait, Egypt and Yemen want their people being held in Camp Delta at the U.S. base in Cuba sent home for trial or released.

Many of the 660 detainees were scooped up in Afghanistan during the early months of the war to oust the Taliban and hunt down Osama Bin Laden.

The Pentagon is in negotiations with Britain over two Britons and an Australian at Gitmo.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has taken more flak at home over the issue than President Bush does from Democrats, complained one foreign official. The U.S. now says the three suspects won't face the death penalty.

"It's obviously not a legal question but more of a strategic political reason for [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz and [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld," said a former administration official familiar with the 2001 order that created the controversial tribunals.

Wolfowitz wants to keep Pakistan happy, according to two former Bush officials. Since breaking with the Taliban, Pakistan has nabbed dozens of Al Qaeda, including 9/11 planner Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Analysis: It's more than keeping Pakistan happy, although that's part of it. Each of these countries has provided some aid in our war on terrorism, whether it's troops for Afghanistan or intelligence information. I imagine that if push comes to shove, and the administration is forced to decide between tribunals and our allies, they'll choose our allies. But we'll see.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:26

 
A local version of Total Information Awareness?

Noah Shachtman reports this weekend that the ACLU has produced a new report on the "MATRIX" program, a state-run information gathering and analysis system that's eerily similar to the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program that was torpedoed this year over civil liberties concerns. (Long-time Intel Dump readers may remember my earlier report on this program) This program's future is somewhat in doubt, as several state and local governments have pulled out of the MATRIX program because of civil liberties concerns. I'll continue to follow this story to see how it develops.

Update: Some academics up at MIT have come up with a program called "Government Information Awareness", or the "citizen's TIA". One of my readers describes it as "a public, peer to peer information exchange system, which allows anyone to post information on politicians and government officials." Very interesting.
posted by Phillip Carter at 18:11

 
Failing to plan = planning to fail

That's the lesson offered by this New York Times Sunday Magazine article, which bears the not-too-subtle title "Blueprint for a Mess". (Note to NYT eds: I'm sure it was tough not to use 'quagmire' or 'slog' in this headline) David Rieff looks at an issue that has been looked at by many authors since the end of Gulf War II -- how planning for Phase IV (the post-war phase of the operation) could have gone so wrong. Even I've taken a whack at this issue in an article for the Washington Monthly. Mr. Rieff's conclusion is that several main factors contributed to the general state of affairs today in Iraq:

1. Getting In Too Deep With Chalabi
* * *
2. Shutting Out State
* * *
3. Too Little Planning, Too Late
The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) was established in the Defense Department, under General Garner's supervision, on Jan. 20, 2003, just eight weeks before the invasion of Iraq. Because the Pentagon had insisted on essentially throwing out the work and the personnel of the Future of Iraq Project, Garner and his planners had to start more or less from scratch. Timothy Carney, who served in ORHA under Garner, explains that ORHA lacked critical personnel once it arrived in Baghdad. ''There were scarcely any Arabists in ORHA in the beginning'' at a senior level, Carney says. ''Some of us had served in the Arab world, but we were not experts, or fluent Arabic speakers.'' According to Carney, Defense officials ''said that Arabists weren't welcome because they didn't think Iraq could be democratic.''

Because of the battle between Defense and State, ORHA, which Douglas Feith called the ''U.S. government nerve center'' for postwar planning, lacked not only information and personnel but also time. ORHA had only two months to figure out what to plan for, plan for it and find the people to implement it. A senior Defense official later admitted that in late January ''we only had three or four people''; in mid-February, the office conducted a two-day ''rehearsal'' of the postwar period at the National Defense University in Washington. Judith Yaphe says that ''even the Messiah couldn't have organized a program in that short a time.''

Although ORHA simply didn't have the time, resources or expertise in early 2003 to formulate a coherent postwar plan, Feith and others in the Defense Department were telling a different story to Congress. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Feb. 11, shortly before the beginning of the war, Feith reassured the assembled senators that ORHA was ''staffed by officials detailed from departments and agencies throughout the government.'' Given the freeze-out of the State Department officials from the Future of Iraq Project, this description hardly encompassed the reality of what was actually taking place bureaucratically.

Much of the postwar planning that did get done before the invasion focused on humanitarian efforts -- Garner's area of expertise. Through the U.S. Agency for International Development, Washington was planning for a possible humanitarian emergency akin to the one that occurred after the first gulf war, when hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled their homes in northern Iraq and needed both emergency relief and protection from Saddam Hussein. This operation, led by Garner, had succeeded brilliantly. American planners in 2003 imagined (and planned for) a similar emergency taking place. There were plans drawn up for housing and feeding Iraqi refugees. But there was little thought given to other contingencies -- like widespread looting.
* * *
4. The Troops: Too Few, Too Constricted
On Feb. 25, the Army's chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, warned Congress that postwar Iraq would require a commitment of ''several hundred thousand'' U.S. troops. Shinseki's estimate was dismissed out of hand by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and other civilian officials at the Pentagon, where war plans called for a smaller, more agile force than had been used in the first gulf war. Wolfowitz, for example, told Congress on Feb. 27 that Shinseki's number was ''wildly off the mark,'' adding, ''It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and secure the surrender of Saddam's security force and his army.'' Shinseki retired soon afterward.

But Shinseki wasn't the only official who thought there were going to be insufficient troops on the ground to police Iraq in the aftermath of the war. The lack of adequate personnel in the military's plan, especially the military police needed for postconflict work, was pointed out by both senior members of the uniformed military and by seasoned peacekeeping officials in the United Nations secretariat.

Former Ambassador Carney, recalling his first days in Iraq with ORHA, puts it this way, with surprising bitterness: The U.S. military ''simply did not understand or give enough priority to the transition from their military mission to our political military mission.''

The Department of Defense did not lack for military and civilian officials -- men and women who supported the war -- counseling in private that policing a country militarily would not be easy. As Robert Perito recalls: ''The military was warned there would be looting. There has been major looting in every important postconflict situation of the past decade. The looting in Panama City in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion did more damage to the Panamanian economy than the war itself. And there was vast looting and disorder in Kosovo. We know this.''

Securing Iraq militarily after victory on the battlefield was, in the Pentagon's parlance, Phase IV of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Phases I through III were the various stages of the invasion itself; Phase IV involved so-called stability and support operations -- in other words, the postwar. The military itself, six months into the occupation, is willing to acknowledge -- at least to itself -- that it did not plan sufficiently for Phase IV. In its secret report ''Operation Iraqi Freedom: Strategic Lessons Learned,'' a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Times in August, the Department of Defense concedes that ''late formation of Department of Defense [Phase IV] organizations limited time available for the development of detailed plans and pre-deployment coordination.''
* * *
5. Neglecting ORHA
* * *
6. Ignoring the Shiites
* * *
The Next Steps
In Iraq today, there is a steadily increasing disconnect between what the architects of the occupation think they are accomplishing and how Iraqis on the street evaluate postwar progress. And as the security situation fails to improve, these perceptions continue to darken.

The Bush administration fiercely denies that this ''alarmist'' view accurately reflects Iraqi reality. It insists that the positive account it has been putting forward is the real truth and that the largely downbeat account in much of the press is both inaccurate and unduly despairing. The corner has been turned, administration officials repeat.

Whether the United States is eventually successful in Iraq (and saying the mission ''has to succeed,'' as so many people do in Washington, is not a policy but an expression of faith), even supporters of the current approach of the Coalition Provisional Authority concede that the United States is playing catch-up in Iraq. This is largely, though obviously not entirely, because of the lack of postwar planning during the run-up to the war and the mistakes of the first 60 days after the fall of Saddam Hussein. And the more time passes, the clearer it becomes that what happened in the immediate aftermath of what the administration calls Operation Iraqi Freedom was a self-inflicted wound, a morass of our own making.

Analysis: This NYT article does a great job of putting together the pieces which have already been reported by other newspapers, including the New York Times itself and the Los Angeles Times. It's the kind of piece that future generations of students and scholars will use to understand the difficulties America faced in post-war Iraq. Unfortunately, this piece fails to ask and answer the crucial question: WHY was American planning for Phase IV so defective? The question of why is as important as the question of how, which this article answers ably. We know now that our planning for Phase IV was defective, and we can figure out the ways in which that planning effort failed. What we do not know is why senior leaders in the White House and Pentagon failed to heed the advice of their staffs, and why they charged forward with a plan that was seemingly doomed to failure.
posted by Phillip Carter at 18:02

 
On campaign contributions and government contracts

Dan Drezner has a good discussion of the recent brouhaha over large political contributions made by the top U.S. firms doing business in Iraq. The story broke after the Center for Public Integrity released a report essentially saying that the U.S. awarded contracts to firms that were -- coincidentally -- top donors to political campaigns. I think Prof. Drezner does a good job of putting the study and its conclusions into proper perspective. Likewise, I don't think this study is the damning indictment of war profiteering that some have made it out to be. Every large firm donates money to campaigns, and it doesn't surprise me that large government contractors are giving money to men and women running for top government positions. Moreover, I'd bet that even the losers in the Iraq contracting process gave money to campaigns. In the absence of any specific evidence of cronyism or corruption, I'm inclined to think this is much ado about nothing.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:51

 
Wes Clark on America's empire

The November issue of the Washington Monthly features this article from retired-Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who is trying to posture himself as an alternative to the current foreign policy being pursued by the Bush White House. The article is essentially an excerpt from Clark's new book, and it offers some insight into the foreign policy that Clark would adopt if he moved into 1600 Penn. Ave.

We need to see ourselves and the world around us in sharp relief--and use that vision to inform better our policies. Simply put, the United States needs a new strategy for the 21st century--a broader, more comprehensive, and less unilateralist approach abroad, coupled with greater attention to a sound economy at home, and sensible long-range policies. The Bush administration's strategy of preemption, published in the 2002 National Security Strategy, was focused against Iraq. At home, the formula of the supply-siders--tax cuts for the wealthy to feed trickle-down economics--has about run its course. It is time for America to return to the basic concepts that ensured its unprecedented prosperity and security and to adapt from these a new strategy that can better serve our needs today.

The first of these basic principles should be inclusiveness. The United States represents evolutionary values of human dignity and the worth of the individual-ideals that have steadily swept across Europe and into much of the rest of the world. We have been proselytizers, advocating our values, assisting states abroad, encouraging emerging young leaders to study and visit the United States. During the Cold War we were careful to reach across the Iron Curtain. And when the Cold War ended, we worked hard to encourage the enlargement of democracy around the world. We should be seeking allies and friends around the world.

Second, we should be working to strengthen and use international institutions, beginning with the United Nations and NATO. Such institutions can provide vital support to American diplomacy, bringing in others to share the burdens and risks that we would otherwise have to carry alone. The United Nations especially can contribute legitimacy to U.S. purposes and actions. International law is of little significance to most Americans, but it carries heavy weight abroad. Both the United Nations and NATO need refinement, particularly the United Nations--but these refinements can be made only through American constructive leadership, for we are the lone superpower, with the resources and incentives to do so.

And finally, we must place in proper perspective the role of the armed forces in our overall strategy. We should ensure that they retain the edge over any potential adversary and continue to modernize them to deal with foreseeable contingencies, including the possible need to preempt any threat to the United States. We always have the right of self-defense, including inherently the right to strike preemptively. But force must be used only as a last resort--and then multilaterally if possible.

Operating on these three principles, we should repair our trans-Atlantic relationships. When the United States and Europe stand together, they represent roughly half the world's gross domestic product and three of the five permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council. These are the countries that are most politically and culturally aligned with the United States. We are the major investors in each other's economies. We should turn upside down nineteenth-century Britain's view that Britain had no permanent friends, only permanent interests. In the West, we must have permanent friends and allies and then work to ensure that our interests converge.

Using this trans-Atlantic alliance as our base, we should then work to resolve our security challenges--the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, the continuing threat from al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. We should be working with allies to help settle disputes between India and Pakistan and within the Middle East that could explode into deadly conflict. And we should be pressing through the United Nations and offering assistance to ease the ongoing conflicts in Africa.

Good words; hard to implement. I like Wes Clark's view of the world, and his view of where America should fit into the world. I think that we ought to enlist other nations and international organizations in the fight against Al Qaeda and other terror networks, because the only way to defeat a terror network is to build a stronger network of our own. However, I also recognize that saying these things and doing them are two different things. It will be exceedingly hard for President Clark to implement his vision -- harder even that it would be if he were General Clark again. A lot of fence mending must be done before we can start down this multilateralist road. If Wes Clark wants to make this vision seem realistic, I think he has to articulate the "how" instead of just the "what" for his view of the world and America's place in it.
posted by Phillip Carter at 18:16

 
Lawmakers push for better body armor -- and the Pentagon responds

Lisa Burgess reports in Stars & Stripes today that 33 members of Congress have sent a letter to the House Appropriations Committee requesting that the Pentagon be directed to buy better body armor and other gear for soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

On Wednesday, 33 House members, led by Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., sent House appropriators a letter that emphasized the need to supply all deployed troops with the Defense Department’s new Interceptor flak vests, as well as provide adequate immunizations, drinking water and even sundries such as toothpaste.

“It is an outrage that servicemembers, deployed in the Global War on Terrorism, do not receive adequate personal hygiene products and drinking water,” the letter said. “Servicemembers have told us they lack personal items like razors, shaving cream, toothpaste, etc. Congress needs to provide these items to America’s soldiers and not rely on families to continually send their loved ones these necessities.”
* * *
Many members of Congress have expressed anger over Defense Department estimates that more than 40,000 troops, most notably Reserve and National Guard combat support units, were not outfitted with the new “Interceptor” body armor before deploying to Iraq.

Instead, the troops are wearing Vietnam-era “flak jackets,” designed to stop fragmentation but not larger caliber rifle rounds, or Kevlar vests without the ceramic inserts that prevent high-caliber ammunition from penetrating.

Some soldiers told members of the House Appropriations Committee that they were spending as much as $650 out of pocket to buy their own Interceptor Body Armor vests and protective insert plates.

DOD officials have said that the manufacturer of the new vests is producing the armor as rapidly as possible, and that the new vests are priority shipped to the Middle East.

In response to this story, and to widespread criticism over the Interceptor body vest procurement problem, the Pentagon released a statement today that it was doing all it could to get the body armor to Iraq as quickly as possible.

The Army and Marines are rushing to get enough body armor into Iraq and Afghanistan by December for everyone who needs it, as fast as it comes off the assembly line.

"Body armor is saving lives," Army Brig. Gen. James R. Moran emphasized. "There have been dozens and dozens of instances where body armor has saved lives of individual soldiers. We're producing that as quickly as we possibly can."
* * *
Getting body armor to combat zones by December is part of the Army's "rapid fielding initiative," Moran said. He said the initiative, which treats soldiers as part of the system, is saving soldiers' lives, improving the quality of their lives and improving their combat effectiveness. "And we're doing it immediately," the general noted.

Analysis What we have here is a lot of "too little, too late" on both sides. The push by the 33 Democratic legislators comes as Congress has given its blessing to the President's $87 billion package for Iraq and Afghanistan, and also near the end of the FY2004 defense appropriations process. In other words, the push may be too late. I have learned that at least one member of Congress tried to amend the President's $87 billion request in the House to add funding for body armor, but that rider was rejected on procedural grounds. At this point, I'm not sure what can be done, given the fact that Congress has signed off on this bill and the President seems sure to sign it.

That said, I'm not sure what else can be done. The Pentagon jump-started the procurement of this body armor a few months ago, and there appears to be no feasible way at this point to make the production lines move any faster. At this point, December 2003 may be the best that our military-industrial complex can do in terms of a delivery date for these pieces of equipment, and soldiers couldn't even buy these items faster if they wanted to with a personal credit card.

What's left to be done? I think we're kidding ourselves if we think that Iraq will be the last battle fought by our military for some time, or that we will leave Iraq anytime soon. The Interceptor body armor should be fielded to every American soldier and Marine -- active and reserve -- as soon as possible. We ought to make the fielding of critical soldier equipment a priority. It was tragic to send men and women into combat without this gear this time. We will be derelict if we do it again.

Update: National Journal's Congress AM Daily reports that 103 members of Congress have called on the House Armed Services Commitee chairman to hold hearings on the Pentagon's failure to field Interceptor body armor before the war in Iraq.

In the letter to Hunter, Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio) and the others noted service members' complaints that only some soldiers serving in Iraq have been issued the highest quality "Interceptor" body armor -- Kevlar bulletproof vests with removable ceramic inserts. Other soldiers have been killed when Vietnam-era "flak jackets" failed to stop enemy bullets.

The letter also cited reports that parents of soldiers have been purchasing ceramic plates for the Interceptor vests and sending them to their sons and daughters overseas.

posted by Phillip Carter at 16:13

 
Federal judges harder to predict on sentencing than lawmakers say

Jess Bravin and Gary Fields reported in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) about a really interesting draft study by the General Accounting Office on sentencing decisions by federal judges. The study belies much recent criticism of federal judges -- that they are too lenient across the board; that they always "downwardly depart" from the sentencing guidelines; that they bend the law where they think the facts warrant it. This new GAO study punctures at least one of those critiques, and hints at a much more complex picture of the federal bench.

Government researchers did find wide disparities in sentencing across the country's 12 regional judicial circuits. In drug cases, for example, district judges in San Francisco's Ninth Circuit were 19 times as likely to mete out sentences below the guidelines of the U.S. Sentencing Commission -- to make what are called "downward departures" -- as those in the Fourth Circuit, based in Richmond, Va., an unpublished draft study by the General Accounting Office shows.

Those figures are adjusted to control for differences among cases and to exclude cases in which the government sought leniency because the defendant pleaded guilty and provided it with "substantial assistance."

But the two reports paint a different picture from the one legislators offered when Congress passed a law in April to restrict judges' latitude. The GAO, Congress's oversight arm, found that of 175,000 federal criminal sentences given nationwide from fiscal 1999 through fiscal 2001, 17% were downward departures. A separate study released this week by the Sentencing Commission itself, looking at fiscal 2001, found that about 11% of criminal sentences given by federal judges fell below the guidelines.

Both reports found rates substantially above the 5.8% reported for 1991 -- but below the 18.1% for 2001 that was cited during the congressional debate over whether lawmakers should tighten the sentencing rules.
* * *
But researchers cautioned that even though the Ninth Circuit is widely considered the country's most liberal, and the Fourth its most conservative, the numbers don't tell the whole story.

Because the Ninth Circuit includes the Mexican border states of Arizona and California, it has a disproportionate number of alien defendants, who often receive lighter sentences so they can be deported more quickly. The highest such departure rates were found in San Diego's Southern District of California, with 70% of 5,300 drug cases. Nationwide, noncitizens were twice as likely as citizens to receive lighter sentences, at 24% of cases.

The GAO also found considerable differences based on the defendant's race and the type of drug offense. Nationwide, 28% of 21,700 marijuana defendants received lighter sentences, while only 8% of 14,600 crack defendants did. Hispanic defendants were most likely to receive leniency -- 23% of 29,800 defendants did -- while blacks were least likely, at 8% of 20,400 defendants. The rate for white and "other" defendants was 13%.

Analysis: It's funny how numbers can go against conventional wisdom sometimes. A few outspoken judges have created the perception that all judges are willing to bend the rules for defendants -- and that appears to not be the case. The response to this perception has been quite Draconian. The Justice Department now wants to track all judges who downwardly depart from the sentencing guidelines. The federal judiciary has had to deal with this issue while trying to get more resources with which to hear cases and clear its backlog. Hopefully this data makes the debate a little bit more intelligent -- and honest.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:33

 
Start of military tribunals said to be 'imminent'

Col. Frederic L. Borch III, the prosecutor appointed by the Pentagon to lead the military tribunal effort, announced today to an American Bar Association meeting that the start of these trials was "imminent, soon". It has been nearly 2 years since President Bush authorized these tribunals in his 13 Nov 01 executive order, and some have predicted that the trials would never actually happen. Today's speech belies that prediction, and indicates that these proceedings may be just around the corner.

"I think it's safe to say that our start is imminent, soon," said Col. Frederic L. Borch III, who oversees nine prosecutors in a Pentagon office set up to handle the upcoming trials. Borch, speaking to an American Bar Association gathering, would not be more specific.

Pentagon spokesman Maj. Michael Shavers later said there are numerous steps preceding the start of a trial, and nothing will happen immediately.

"We are weeks if not months away," Shavers said.

Plans have been in the works for such trials for nearly two years, but the White House has given no date for the first tribunal, nor specified who would be tried or where. Lawyers working with the Pentagon predict the first tribunal will take place at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the U.S. military is holding several hundred foreign prisoners picked up in the hunt for terrorists after Sept. 11, 2001.

The trial, when it comes, will mark the first time since World War II that the United States has put wartime prisoners on trial in such a proceeding.

Analysis: Why start now? I think the administration wants to fight the perception that the men detained at Guantanamo Bay are languishing there in perpetuity -- with no legal process whatsoever. These military tribunals represent a relatively low risk way to give the detainees some legal process and dispute that perception. Notwithstanding the procedural criticisms of these tribunals, they will represent more legal process than the detainees have gotten so far. The White House may be able to spin this as a magnanimous act -- something that goes above the requirements of the Geneva Convention.

To use a bad legal pun, I think the jury's still out on the tribunals. I've read the procedural rules created by the Pentagon and compared them to both the Manual for Courts Martial and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The differences are major, but the tribunals still have the potential to be fair proceedings for the men detained at Guantanamo. I'm not convinced yet that the tribunals will be the kangaroo courts that some have made them out to be. I guess I have faith in the career military lawyers who will staff the tribunals and sit as members of the jury, and their ability to do the right thing. Maybe that's overly optimistic. But at least we're giving these detainees some legal process. It remains to be seen how just that process will be.
posted by Phillip Carter at 20:00

 
Two U.S. soldiers killed in attack on M1A2 tank
Enemy tactics appear very similar to those in Israeli-Palestine conflict

The AP reports on a roadside bomb that struck and seriously disabled one of the Army's M1A2 tanks from the 3rd Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment, 4th Infantry Division -- killing two soldiers. The attack was the first to successfully knock out an M1 since the end of major combat operations on May 1, and only the third destructive hit on an M1 during the war.

The Abrams tank was disabled when it was struck by a land mine or a roadside bomb Tuesday night during a patrol near Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad, said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, a spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division. A third crewman was evacuated to a U.S. hospital in Germany, she said.

It was the first M1 Abrams main battle tank destroyed since the end of major combat May 1, military officials said. During the active combat phase, several of the 68-ton vehicles the mainstay of the U.S. Army's armored forces were disabled in combat.

Analysis: The M1A2 weighs more than 70 tons, and is the most advanced and heavily armored combat vehicle in history. They are considered virtually impregnable to attack from anything but another tank or sophisticated anti-tank missile (like the Hellfire). I imagine the Army is extremely concerned right now about this new development, because the majority of its vehicles in Iraq are not as well protected as the M1 tank or M2/M3 Bradley fighting vehicle. Indeed, the Army is currently deploying its new "Stryker" brigade to Iraq, composed of lightly-armored wheeled vehicles which were partially developed with an eye towards peacekeeping operations. If the Iraqi guerillas now have a way to take out the M1 tank, that's a very serious development.

There's another interesting angle here that was noted by an officer who participates in a military list-serv I belong to. That's the similarity between this M1 hit and the 15 Oct 03 attack which killed three Americans in the Gaza Strip. In that attack, a huge bomb exploded in the roadway under a U.S. diplomatic convoy of heavily armed and armored vehicles. Compare the TTPs used in Gaza to those used in Iraq:

The attack occurred at about 10:15 a.m. (4:15 a.m. EDT) Wednesday, five hours after the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have condemned Israel for building a controversial fence around the
West Bank, and as Israeli soldiers in the southern Gaza Strip continued a six-day-old operation to destroy cross-border tunnels. Eight Palestinians have been killed and more than 230 homes have been destroyed or severely damaged in that operation.

The bomb detonated as the convoy was about 11/2 miles inside the Gaza Strip from the Erez crossing at the Israeli border. They were driving along the pockmarked, partially blacktopped road that runs the length of the Gaza Strip and is frequently used by foreigners -- diplomats, aid workers, journalists and others -- as well as by local Palestinians.

According to witnesses and U.S. Embassy officials, a Palestinian security team led the convoy in one car, the American security guards occupied the second vehicle, at least two U.S. diplomats were in the third, and another Palestinian police car brought up the rear.
* * *
U.S. officials said the vehicle had armor plating on its roof and sides, but said they did not know whether the vehicle was equipped with armor on its underside to protect against land mines. Israeli officials estimated that
the bomb, which was buried in the hardpan roadbed, might have weighed more than 100 pounds.

A smaller bomb planted on another road in the northern Gaza Strip exploded under an Israeli military all-terrain vehicle Wednesday morning, injuring three soldiers, according to an Israeli military spokesman. The spokesman said the two incidents were not believed to be related.

Homemade bombs concocted from petroleum products, sugar, cosmetics, shampoo and varying amounts of TNT are commonly used by militants in the Gaza Strip. The explosives are frequently planted in potholes or beneath roadbeds on
routes used by Israeli military vehicles and have been used to blow up 50-ton tanks as well as lighter vehicles.

Some of the explosives are detonated on impact when a vehicle rolls over them; others are more sophisticated and are set off by remote control. A gray cable hanging into the crater left by Wednesday's attack on the U.S. vehicle suggested that the bomb might have been ignited by remote control from a nearby concrete hut.

This is pure speculation, but I think these two sets of tactics are pretty similar. The U.S. suspects right now that foreign elements are behind many of the attacks in Iraq, and that they are having a significant influence on domestic Iraqi guerillas. Even if they're not actually conducting the attacks, I think it's very likely these foreigners are providing training and expertise to the Iraqis in the art of urban combat and insurgency. To some extent, these foreign guerillas may also be passing along their doctrine from places like the Gaza Strip and West Bank, where guerillas and terrorists have learned how to defeat sophisticated Israeli security schemes and achieve deadly results. This is a very dangerous development. More to follow.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:18

 
Embedded report from the 3rd ACR

Nir Rosen of the Asia Times is one of the last reporters to remain 'embedded' with a unit in Iraq. Asia Times publishes this series from Rosen which offers some vivid reports from the field with the soldiers of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. Overall, I think the series paints a pretty good picture of what's going on over there with this unit. Here's an excerpt from the first article of the series:

AL-QAIM, western Iraq - "This is the wild wild west," says Captain Chris Alfeiri, holding a fly swatter while relaxing in between missions. A 30-year-old native of Boston, Alfeiri is one of about 1,000 soldiers from the 1st Squadron of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR), based in Fort Carson of Colorado Springs, Colorado, and currently stationed in al-Qaim, at the western edge of Anbar province, bordering on Syria.

It is a dusty, arid and lawless region, with large towns by the Euphrates River, which snakes into Iraq from Syria. Americans are attacked on a daily basis by a recalcitrant community that used to shoot at the Iraqi army as well, and every night they can hear mysterious fire fights occurring inside the towns as tribes, gangs and smugglers battle over turf.

The 3rd ACR has converted an abandoned train station into home and called it Tiger Forward Operating Base. There is a cafeteria, or chow hall with a Pueblo motif painted on its walls, serving three different hot meals a day, from bacon and pancakes to pasta and Asian-flavored chicken with vegetables. There are TOCs, or tactical operation centers, pronounced "tok". There are barracks, where soldiers have small gyms, watch satellite TV and compete in board games like Risk, seeking world domination, or football video games on Sony Play Station. There is a detainment center for prisoners, and even a recreation center with wireless Internet and "morale phones" to call home.

Alfeiri's diminutive chin, small eyes, soft cheeks and shaved head give him a friendly baby-faced look incongruous with his role as a combat officer who served in Bosnia for a year, an experience that helped prepare him for dealing with conflict in an alien culture, as does his marriage to a former fellow journalism student from Honduras, whose family he often visits in their country. His men operate every day from the western-most base in Iraq. His 130 soldiers, known as Bandit troop, conduct border surveillance operations, raids, checkpoints and help reconstruct the towns in the region.

Every night his men roll out of Tiger X Ray, the call sign for their base, and a convoy of tanks and Humvees proceeds to the border, driving off the hardball, as they call the road, in order to avoid improvised explosive devices, IEDs. They stop at a test fire range, and make sure their heavy weapons work, the radio announces that their call sign, White 1, is at Red Con One (or Readiness Condition One, meaning everything works) and they head into the black moonscape.

posted by Phillip Carter at 08:55

 
The myth of the Republican military voting bloc

Benjamin Wallace-Wells deconstructs this myth in next month's issue of the Washington Monthly, and argues that the GOP ought not take military votes for granted in 2004. This well-reported and written story chronicles the recent political history of the military, from George C. Marshall to the present day, and paints the picture today of a military that's increasingly disenchanted with the current White House.

The effect of all of this, says Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel and professor of political science at Boston University, is that "the soldier vote and the pro-military vote are in play." In 2004, says Feaver, the military sociologist at Duke, "there is the potential for these forces which have always pushed towards the Republicans to be neutralized, or even pushing towards the Democrats."

If these frustrations spill over into politics in the next election, they could profoundly shift the structural underpinnings of the current nearly 50-50 American split. This country has 1.4 million active duty soldiers, and 1.2 million reserves. It also has 26.4 million veterans, nearly 13 percent of the nation's adult population. Politicians and activists involved in veterans affairs take it as a truism that a defining feature of veterans' politics is their perception of how the active military is being treated, and used. Subtle shifts in the way that massive population votes could obviously have far-reaching impacts in national politics.

A reassignment of less than two-hundredths of 1 percent in the military vote to the Democrats from the Republicans in Florida in 2000 would have moved that state to the Democratic column, and a similar shift of less than 5 percent in the veteran vote alone would have given Arkansas, Nevada, and New Hampshire's electoral votes to Gore, not Bush. And Pennsylvania and Ohio, expected to be crucial swing states in the next presidential election, each have more than a million veteran voters.

But the military and veterans' communities don't simply deliver their own votes. All over America, voters look to the military as a sort of weathervane--an institution whose values civilians trust and want politicians to support. This is particularly true of working-class white swing voters, many of whom have a soldier in their family or know someone who does. The attachment to the military is even more potent among certain occupations-police, firefighters, engineers--whose ranks are heavily represented in the reserves. The policemen, firemen, and engineers who stay at home look across the room each day at the empty desks of their colleagues fighting in the Iraqi theater. They check email each day for personal dispatches from the front lines. They drop off food for the left-behind families.

Then there are those who are not personally connected to the military, but for whom honor of the military and the military's opinion acts as a moral barometer, revealing which politicians have the right values and which don't. The military is a deeply trusted and honored institution in American life-far more important than the media, politicians, or teachers. To respect the military doesn't simply require the sort of offhand pieties that liberal politicians frequently toss at it, but a deeply felt sense of belonging, a sense that the military embodies values which most of the country believes in. Treatment of the military consequently acts as an indicator for tens of millions of Americans who aren't enlisted of how seriously a party, administration, or politician takes the nation's security, and how competent he is to defend it. Political scientists call these people national security voters. "[They] are not so minutely interested in issues like health care for the military or how many reserves are in Iraq at one time," said Feaver. "These people rely heavily on general impressions of whether a particular politician or administration is good for the military or bad for the military. What should really worry the Republicans is the potential for all of these problems you hear about to add up to an impression for the national security voter that the Republicans may not be so good for the military."

Analysis: I've never thought the military really lived up to its stereotype when it came to politics. The conventional wisdom is that America's military is one of the last bastions of American conservatism. I do think that America's military officer corps is somewhat more conservative than society at large, but I think that it's largely become a professional class that is too diverse to effectively be pigeonholed that way. Moreover, the enlisted corps of the military is most certainly not conservative -- it's far too diverse in race and socio-economic terms. On balance, I'd say that the military leans slightly to the right of center, but it's no John Birch society. Military voters could vote for John McCain or George Bush -- or they could vote for Wes Clark or Bill Clinton.

(Quick personal vignette: I went into the military as a conservative and came out as a moderate/liberal. I attribute this change to the experience of living and working with such a diverse group of soldiers, especially the ones I was privileged to lead. Most of my enlisted soldiers came from working-class backgrounds, and their perspective was one that I had nto been exposed to while growing up in Southern California. Charlie Moskos and others have written that one of the best things about the draft was their exposure to other American kids, and social interaction and educatin that flowed from that. I think the same dynamic occurs in an all-volunteer force, except that only the volunteers are lucky enough to take advantage of it.)

In 2004, there are lots of issues in play which matter to national security voters. I divide these issues into two main categories:
1. Issues of national security per se, such as how to best fight the war on terrorism.
2. Issues which affect national security voters personally, such as how to equip the military and whether to give them a pay raise or certain benefits.

The Bush White House is vulnerable on both sets of military issues. The criticisms for the first set of issues are widely known. It will not be hard for the eventual Democratic nominee to make an argument against the White House on Iraq, on progress against terrorism, or any other front. The truth is that this is a very difficult war, and that smart people can disagree both over our progress and our direction in this war. That leaves a lot of room for disagreement. My hope is that the Democratic candidate offers a positive vision instead of merely attacking the President on this issue.

The second set of issues -- those which affect military voters personally -- will also be viable issues in the 2004 election. Some of these will flow directly from Iraq, and will include criticism over the administration's decision to put Americans in harm's way there in the first place, as well as criticism over specific problems in Iraq like the failure to equip all soldiers with the latest body armor. So too will the overstretching of America's reserves, which will probably result in a large exodus of reservists as they redeploy in 2004 from a year in Iraq. The Democrats will also hammer the White House over the "concurrent receipt" issue which affects veterans benefits, as well as military pay issues. The recent incident at Fort Stewart may also provide grist for the Democratic machine. All of these issues can (and probably will) be used by the Democrats to pull away military voters to the Democratic party.

Who stands to gain the most here? That should be obvious -- Wesley K. Clark. Of all the Democratic candidates, Wes Clark stands in a league all his own for his ability to exploit these issues. Moreover, I think he even stands above President Bush for his personal credibility on these issues. John Kerry may also be able to run with these issues, but not as well as Mr. Clark. It's still too early to handicap the Democratic race, and I'd be a fool to bet now on Dean or Clark or Kerry. Of course, lots can happen between now and Nov. 2004; these issues may not have the same resonance then as they do now. More to follow...
posted by Phillip Carter at 20:13

 
Army announces plans to retain, expand Peacekeeping Institute

After almost eliminating its Peacekeeping Institute at the Army War College several months ago, the Army announced today that it would retain and expand the center, which has become something of an policy-oriented think tank within the Army on operations other than war. The decision to close came as part of a larger headquarters realignment proposal for the Army, but was quickly criticized as short-sighted by many inside and outside the Army. In hindsight, the move appears particularly daft, given the Army's extensive commitment to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The institute will be renamed the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) to encompass the revised charter.

The original PKI charter and structure are being adjusted to meet the future needs of the U.S. Army and the U.S. military across a broad range of peacekeeping and stability operations. Current planning calls for the new organization to have 13 Army positions and a distinguished visiting professor. The PKSOI will have an operating budget of between $1.3 to 1.5 million.

The PKSOI mission will be to study the strategic implications of stability operations; support senior Army leaders in understanding and dealing with the implications of stability operations; and study the impact of international organizations and nongovernmental organizations on the Army's conduct of peacekeeping and stability operations. PKSOI will also be required to understand current foreign militaries' objectives and doctrine on stability operations; contribute to evolving stability operations doctrine; and to help educate the next generation of Army strategic leaders on stability operations.

Analysis: This is good news for at least two reasons. First, this institute does a great job of collecting knowledge on peacekeeping and educating the military about that knowledge. In a profession where mistakes cost lives, the effort to spread 'lessons learned' from previous missions is incredibly important, and the PKI did a good job of this. Second, this is good news because it shows that the Defense Department is willing to listen to criticism and react to it. I'm sure there were some egos bruised in the process, but at the end of the day, the Pentagon came around and kept the PKI open. It's amazing what can get done when you emphasize solving problems over winning bureaucratic battles.
posted by Phillip Carter at 18:42

 
A bloody view of the war

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has a superb article on its front page today by Yaroslav Trofimov on the 21st Combat Support Hospital, and how that organization's personnel see the war. The Army's medical community has historically been less hooah about combat operations. Medical personnel tend to see themselves as healers first and warriors second, and they are the ones who must deal with the human cost of war. This article tells their story, and shares their perspective of the war.

While attention focuses on the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq -- 115 by enemy fire since Mr. Bush announced the end of major combat on May 1 -- the military doesn't generally publicize the more-frequent incidents in which soldiers are wounded. According to a tally kept by the U.S. Central Command, as of 7 p.m. on Oct. 27, the U.S. military had sustained a total of 1,737 nonlethal casualties from hostile action in Iraq, including 1,186 since May 1.

The toll includes American casualties in the rocket attack on Baghdad's Al Rasheed hotel on Sunday, and U.S. military police killed and wounded in suicide bombings that devastated four Iraqi police stations across Baghdad the following day. October has been the bloodiest month for U.S. troops in Iraq since the occupation began.

Advances in medical care and bulletproof vests allow more soldiers to survive the kind of injuries that would have killed them in past conflicts. But the recent switch by Iraqi insurgents to powerful roadside bombs as their main offensive weapon has raised the number and severity of wounds even for those with high-tech protection. These bombs are usually rigged artillery shells that, hidden in vegetable crates, bicycle baskets or simple debris, can be detonated close to their target and shower it with shrapnel.

"Since May, the number and the rate of casualties has increased," says Col. Doug Liening, commander of the 21st Combat Support Hospital, which also operates a facility in the northern city of Mosul. "People in the United States do not appreciate what's going on here." In peacetime, the 21st Combat Support Hospital is based at Fort Hood, Texas, as are many of its personnel currently in Balad.

For many doctors and nurses, the daily gore makes it hard to sleep at night. "It's like a horror movie," says Capt. Nancy Emma, 49, a nurse for 16 years who worked on Sgt. Bartels in the emergency room. "I served in a trauma unit, I saw death in the face -- but nothing like here. And those who live, you've got to wonder how they are going to make it back in the States."

After the emergency room, Sgt. Bartels was wheeled into the operating room. His buddy Sgt. Myers, who received shrapnel wounds in his right arm and face, called his family back in Kansas as he waited to be treated. The two sergeants, reservists attached to the Fourth Infantry Division, were driving from a meeting at the town of Baqouba's agriculture ministry office. They accompanied a civil-affairs officer, Capt. John Teal, who was filling in for their usual captain, on leave in the U.S.

Sgt. Myers asked nurses what happened to Capt. Teal. No one could muster the courage to tell the sergeant the captain was dead, instantly killed by the roadside bomb that went through their unarmored Humvee.

Analysis: I have two reactions to this story, and they're at odds with each other. The first is to wonder whether reporting on casualties is really a good idea. Such reporting tends to demoralize the American public, and to embolden our adversaries as a result. Also, an emphasis on casualty reporting translates through the democratic process into public pressure to reduce casualties, which translates through the chain of command to pressure on commanders to minimize risk in their operations. That pressure reduces operational effectiveness, because commanders alter their plans to maximize force protection instead of mission accomplishment. I think that's a very dangerous thing, and that ultimately, it can lead to mission failure.

On the other hand, I think it's important to recognize the cost of war and to weight that cost against our raison d'etre. This cost has been quite high. As a vignette, a friend of mine told me that she has sent replacement uniforms to her physician friends in the 4th Infantry Division to replace blood-soaked uniforms that they could no longer wear. I can't even imagine such carnage, and I've worked in a Los Angeles-area emergency room before. These medical personnel see the cost every day, and I think they bear a difficult burden in explaning the "why" behind the injuries to soldiers when they come out of anesthesia. I support the mission in Iraq, however, I think I'd be hard-pressed to explain that every day to wounded soldiers the way these doctors have to.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:26

 
Army battalion commander faces assault charges in Iraq

The Washington Times reports this morning on an interesting legal vignette from the 4th Infantry Division, where LTC Allen B. West stands charged of assaulting an Iraqi prisoner in order to gain information in connection with an attack on his unit. These charges are remarkable because LTC West was an artillery battalion commander at the time of the incident. It's rare that a senior officer would take such a direct role in prisoner interrogation, and that the Army would prosecute such a senior officer. But in this case, the 4th Infantry Division's Staff Judge Advocate has recommended that LTC West either be allowed to "RILO" (Resign In Lieu Of court martial) or be court-martialed for his conduct.

An informant reported that there was an assassination plot against Col. West, an artillery officer working with the local governing council in Saba al Boor. On Aug. 16, guerrillas attacked members of the colonel's unit who were on their way to Saba al Boor.

An informant told the soldiers that one person involved in the attack was a town policeman. Col. West sent two sergeants to detain the policeman, who was placed in a detention center near the Taji air base. The interrogators had no luck at first, so Col. West decided to take over the questioning.

"I asked for soldiers to accompany me and told them we had to gather information and that it could get ugly," Col. West said in his e-mail.

He said his soldiers "physically aggress[ed]" the prisoner. A subsequent investigation resulted in nonjudicial punishment for them in the form of fines.

After the physical "aggress" failed, Col. West says he brandished his pistol.

"I did use my 9 mm weapon to threaten him and fired it twice. Once I fired into the weapons clearing barrel outside the facility alone, and the next time I did it while having his head close to the barrel. I fired away from him. I stood in between the firing and his person.

"I admit that what I did was not right but it was done with the concern of the safety of my soldiers and myself."

Col. West said he informed his superior of his actions. The incident lay dormant until the Army conducted an overall command-climate investigation of the brigade. The investigation turned up the interrogation technique, and Col. West was charged with one count of aggravated assault.

Col. West said the gunshots spurred the Iraqi to provide the location of the planned sniper attack and the names of three guerrilla fighters.

Col. West says the 4th Infantry's staff judge advocate, the unit's prosecutor, is offering him two choices: resign short of gaining retirement benefits or face court-martial.

Analysis: This story is interesting on a lot of levels. First, there's the question of effectiveness, and whether LTC West's use of his M9 pistol was effective in interrogating this prisoner. It appers that it was. Second, I think we have to balance that short-term effectiveness against any long-term consequences that flow from these kinds of interrogation tactics. In this case, the firing of two 9mm rounds near the prisoner was clearly coercion in a psychological sense, but I'm not sure whether it really crossed the line into torture. Remember, this is combat, not police work, and the rules are different. I'm not sure whether this incident will really have the kind of long-term consequences the Army is concerned about. Indeed, this kind of interrogation may be necessary to get information that can save American and Iraqi lives.

On another level, this story is interesting because it reveals American attitudes towards misconduct in the ranks. Generally speaking, the Army takes a dim view of this stuff, whether it's done by an Army MP private or an artillery colonel. Indeed, the colonel will usually be treated more harshly, both because of his experience and the command responsibility he bears. Truly, the buck stops in this case with LTC West, and he will be held responsible for anything done in his command. If one of his lieutenants had done this, LTC West probably wouldn't be facing charges now. But he surely would face some administrative action -- possibly the end of his career -- for the incident.

Finally, this story is interesting because it reveals the kind of stress our soldiers and commanders are under in Iraq. I bet that if you asked LTC West last year whether he'd do this, he'd have responded "no". Senior officers in the American Army tend to be very well educated about the laws of war, at least in comparison to our NATO allies and our enemies. If you gave him a hypothetical like this, he probably would have said he'd call in the brigade's counter-intel/HUMINT teams to do the interrogation. But the exigencies of the situation often make people do things they wouldn't ordinarily do. Clearly, LTC West and his unit are under a great deal of stress right now, or else this incident would not have happened.

I'm conflicted about whether these charges are justified or not. LTC West has the ultimate responsibility as commander to protect his unit, and a little bit of "smacky face" (to borrow Jess Bravin's quote from the WSJ) may be justified in this kind of situation. The line between coercion and torture is a very difficult one to draw, and I'm not sure this was the wrong thing to do in this situation. If this case goes to a court martial, LTC West may be able to make that case to a military jury of his peers.

Coda: Want to know how the Washington Times got this story? Easy. Guy Taylor, the writer, was embedded with 4th Infantry Division for some time during their ramp-up at Fort Hood and their subsequent deployment to Iraq. I imagine he made a number of contacts during that time, and built relationships among the officers in the division. I think this will be an unintended payoff of the embedding program for both the media and the public over the next several years. These bonds will probably continue over the years, especially as journalists cultivate relationships with officers on their way up.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:14