In a Dec. 11 article in the Marine Corps Times, the official spokesman for the Osprey program responded to some of the findings of the new study of the V-22, “V-22 Osprey: Wonder Weapon or Widow Maker,” released by the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information. The official’s responses raise more questions than they answer.
Further comments from the author of the study will be available in a briefing for the press and any other interested parties on Jan. 18, 2007. This briefing will be at 10:00 a.m. on the first floor of the Carnegie Building at 1779 Massachusetts Ave., NW, in Washington. For now, we simply make available the Marine Corps Times story and a link to our study.
Our study, “V-22 Osprey: Wonder Weapon or Widow Maker,” is available by clicking here. The Marine Corps Times story, “Report Blasts Osprey Testing, Readiness” appears below.
"Report blasts Osprey testing, readiness," Marine Corps Times, Dec. 11, 2006
The V-22 Osprey is unfit for combat and needs to be scrapped altogether, according to a new report from a defense think tank.
The Center for Defense Information report, titled "V-22 Osprey: Wonder Weapon or Widow Maker? They warned us. But no one is listening," includes nearly 50 pages of text sharply criticizing the tilt rotor's combat capability and lack of testing.
"If deployed in combat, the price could be fatalities inflicted not just by enemy fire, but by flaws that were the result of omitted tests and basic design deficiencies pointed out but never addressed," wrote Lee Gaillard, a former Marine reservist who has published more than 100 articles and book reviews on defense issues and aviation.
A spokesman for the program said a majority of Gaillard's report deals with earlier versions of the Osprey that are no longer in service and the author has omitted important information about testing and modifications to the aircraft currently flying.
From all indications, the Corps has no plans to halt its Osprey program, and it is set to be operational next year. The hybrid aircraft that promises to fly faster, farther and longer is a common sight in the skies over eastern North Carolina around Marine Corps Air Station New River.
Commandant Gen. James Conway flew in one during a Nov. 29 visit to Camp Jejune and spoke highly of the aircraft.
"A couple of options, it could go aboard ship with the [Marine expeditionary unit], it could go into Al Assad [Air Base]," Conway said. "It could go elsewhere or not go, but our belief is it's a great airplane. We need to get it into the fight as soon as we can. It's going to give us an enhanced capability well beyond our legacy aircraft, the venerable CH-46."
The Corps is phasing out the third of six CH-46 Sea Knight squadrons at New River. The West Coast transition will likely begin around late 2009 or early 2010, followed by overseas squadrons. There are six squadrons on the West Coast and two on Okinawa, Japan.
But Gaillard wrote that the Marine Corps should replace the Osprey with modern helicopters, which he claims would be safer and cheaper. He suggests three options:
* Augusta Westland's US101 (EH-101), which has three engines, a single rotor and was recently selected as the presidential transport helicopter.
* Boeing's CH-47F Chinook, which has two engines, two rotors and carries up to 33 combat-equipped troops.
* Sikorsky's H-92 Superhawk, which has two engines, a single rotor and carries up to 22 combat-equipped troops.
Vortex-ring state
One reason he suggests the Corps turn to one of these aircraft instead of the Osprey is because of the aerodynamic phenomenon known as vortex-ring state. This condition is caused when a helicopter descends too rapidly without enough forward air speed, putting the helicopter in its own rotor wash.
"This is the primary reason why the maximum vertical descent speed of 800 feet per minute -- that's just 9.1 mph -- is mandated for this aircraft," Gaillard wrote. "It is so slow it will make the V-22 an easy target."
Osprey pilots landing in a hot zone may try to descend more quickly and encounter vortex-ring state, he said.
That's not so, said James Darcy, spokesman for the V-22 Joint Program Office for Corps and Navy aircraft acquisition and testing.
"The V-22 is less vulnerable to VRS than any other helicopter," he said.
Extensive testing following an April 2000 Osprey crash in Marana, Ariz., the third of four crashes since 1991, which killed all 19 Marines onboard, has proven the tilt rotor can descend faster than 800 feet per minute without going into vortex-ring state, Darcy said.
"We don't see the initial onset of VRS until at least 1,600 feet per minute," he said.
Testing, most of which was conducted in 2002, also proved that pilots can get out of VRS by rotating the nacelles slightly forward. Since then, the Osprey has been modified with a safety feature no other helicopter has -- a descent rate warning system in the cockpit.
"That sounds good, but it makes no mention of the altitude at which those recovery exercises were run, where the nacelle would be able to tilt forward 16 degrees over a 2-second period, resulting in probably abort of any descent profile in progress," Gaillard wrote.
He criticizes other tests, including one engine operative testing. During 17 years of evaluation, he wrote, the V-22 has never been tested to take off or land with one engine shut down. That's the kind of landing or takeoff a pilot would need to make from a small clearing or on a mountainside, Gaillard wrote.
"Basically, he's refuting a claim that nobody's making," Darcy said. "To my knowledge, at the program office level, we certainly never had a request to further explore a single-engine takeoff issue. It comes down to a question of who gets to decide whether there's been adequate testing. The users have the final say in whether or not this aircraft is ready to be fielded."
Winslow T. Wheeler
Director
Straus Military Reform Project
Center for Defense Information @ www.cdi.org/smrp
202 797-5271 in DC
301 840-8992 in MD
301 221-3897 cell
winslowwheeler@comcast.net
Full Version: Just Military News and Commentary
Common Ground Common Sense > Issues that Affect Our Lives > U.S. Military Issues > U.S. Military Issues Archive
QUOTE(Snuffysmith @ Dec 20 2006, 02:18 PM) 
In a Dec. 11 article in the Marine Corps Times, the official spokesman for the Osprey program responded to some of the findings of the new study of the V-22, “V-22 Osprey: Wonder Weapon or Widow Maker,” released by the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information. The official’s responses raise more questions than they answer.
Further comments from the author of the study will be available in a briefing for the press and any other interested parties on Jan. 18, 2007. This briefing will be at 10:00 a.m. on the first floor of the Carnegie Building at 1779 Massachusetts Ave., NW, in Washington. For now, we simply make available the Marine Corps Times story and a link to our study.
Our study, “V-22 Osprey: Wonder Weapon or Widow Maker,” is available by clicking here. The Marine Corps Times story, “Report Blasts Osprey Testing, Readiness” appears below.
"Report blasts Osprey testing, readiness," Marine Corps Times, Dec. 11, 2006
The V-22 Osprey is unfit for combat and needs to be scrapped altogether, according to a new report from a defense think tank.
The Center for Defense Information report, titled "V-22 Osprey: Wonder Weapon or Widow Maker? They warned us. But no one is listening," includes nearly 50 pages of text sharply criticizing the tilt rotor's combat capability and lack of testing.
"If deployed in combat, the price could be fatalities inflicted not just by enemy fire, but by flaws that were the result of omitted tests and basic design deficiencies pointed out but never addressed," wrote Lee Gaillard, a former Marine reservist who has published more than 100 articles and book reviews on defense issues and aviation.
A spokesman for the program said a majority of Gaillard's report deals with earlier versions of the Osprey that are no longer in service and the author has omitted important information about testing and modifications to the aircraft currently flying.
From all indications, the Corps has no plans to halt its Osprey program, and it is set to be operational next year. The hybrid aircraft that promises to fly faster, farther and longer is a common sight in the skies over eastern North Carolina around Marine Corps Air Station New River.
Commandant Gen. James Conway flew in one during a Nov. 29 visit to Camp Jejune and spoke highly of the aircraft.
"A couple of options, it could go aboard ship with the [Marine expeditionary unit], it could go into Al Assad [Air Base]," Conway said. "It could go elsewhere or not go, but our belief is it's a great airplane. We need to get it into the fight as soon as we can. It's going to give us an enhanced capability well beyond our legacy aircraft, the venerable CH-46."
The Corps is phasing out the third of six CH-46 Sea Knight squadrons at New River. The West Coast transition will likely begin around late 2009 or early 2010, followed by overseas squadrons. There are six squadrons on the West Coast and two on Okinawa, Japan.
But Gaillard wrote that the Marine Corps should replace the Osprey with modern helicopters, which he claims would be safer and cheaper. He suggests three options:
* Augusta Westland's US101 (EH-101), which has three engines, a single rotor and was recently selected as the presidential transport helicopter.
* Boeing's CH-47F Chinook, which has two engines, two rotors and carries up to 33 combat-equipped troops.
* Sikorsky's H-92 Superhawk, which has two engines, a single rotor and carries up to 22 combat-equipped troops.
Vortex-ring state
One reason he suggests the Corps turn to one of these aircraft instead of the Osprey is because of the aerodynamic phenomenon known as vortex-ring state. This condition is caused when a helicopter descends too rapidly without enough forward air speed, putting the helicopter in its own rotor wash.
"This is the primary reason why the maximum vertical descent speed of 800 feet per minute -- that's just 9.1 mph -- is mandated for this aircraft," Gaillard wrote. "It is so slow it will make the V-22 an easy target."
Osprey pilots landing in a hot zone may try to descend more quickly and encounter vortex-ring state, he said.
That's not so, said James Darcy, spokesman for the V-22 Joint Program Office for Corps and Navy aircraft acquisition and testing.
"The V-22 is less vulnerable to VRS than any other helicopter," he said.
Extensive testing following an April 2000 Osprey crash in Marana, Ariz., the third of four crashes since 1991, which killed all 19 Marines onboard, has proven the tilt rotor can descend faster than 800 feet per minute without going into vortex-ring state, Darcy said.
"We don't see the initial onset of VRS until at least 1,600 feet per minute," he said.
Testing, most of which was conducted in 2002, also proved that pilots can get out of VRS by rotating the nacelles slightly forward. Since then, the Osprey has been modified with a safety feature no other helicopter has -- a descent rate warning system in the cockpit.
"That sounds good, but it makes no mention of the altitude at which those recovery exercises were run, where the nacelle would be able to tilt forward 16 degrees over a 2-second period, resulting in probably abort of any descent profile in progress," Gaillard wrote.
He criticizes other tests, including one engine operative testing. During 17 years of evaluation, he wrote, the V-22 has never been tested to take off or land with one engine shut down. That's the kind of landing or takeoff a pilot would need to make from a small clearing or on a mountainside, Gaillard wrote.
"Basically, he's refuting a claim that nobody's making," Darcy said. "To my knowledge, at the program office level, we certainly never had a request to further explore a single-engine takeoff issue. It comes down to a question of who gets to decide whether there's been adequate testing. The users have the final say in whether or not this aircraft is ready to be fielded."
Winslow T. Wheeler
Director
Straus Military Reform Project
Center for Defense Information @ www.cdi.org/smrp
202 797-5271 in DC
301 840-8992 in MD
301 221-3897 cell
winslowwheeler@comcast.net
Further comments from the author of the study will be available in a briefing for the press and any other interested parties on Jan. 18, 2007. This briefing will be at 10:00 a.m. on the first floor of the Carnegie Building at 1779 Massachusetts Ave., NW, in Washington. For now, we simply make available the Marine Corps Times story and a link to our study.
Our study, “V-22 Osprey: Wonder Weapon or Widow Maker,” is available by clicking here. The Marine Corps Times story, “Report Blasts Osprey Testing, Readiness” appears below.
"Report blasts Osprey testing, readiness," Marine Corps Times, Dec. 11, 2006
The V-22 Osprey is unfit for combat and needs to be scrapped altogether, according to a new report from a defense think tank.
The Center for Defense Information report, titled "V-22 Osprey: Wonder Weapon or Widow Maker? They warned us. But no one is listening," includes nearly 50 pages of text sharply criticizing the tilt rotor's combat capability and lack of testing.
"If deployed in combat, the price could be fatalities inflicted not just by enemy fire, but by flaws that were the result of omitted tests and basic design deficiencies pointed out but never addressed," wrote Lee Gaillard, a former Marine reservist who has published more than 100 articles and book reviews on defense issues and aviation.
A spokesman for the program said a majority of Gaillard's report deals with earlier versions of the Osprey that are no longer in service and the author has omitted important information about testing and modifications to the aircraft currently flying.
From all indications, the Corps has no plans to halt its Osprey program, and it is set to be operational next year. The hybrid aircraft that promises to fly faster, farther and longer is a common sight in the skies over eastern North Carolina around Marine Corps Air Station New River.
Commandant Gen. James Conway flew in one during a Nov. 29 visit to Camp Jejune and spoke highly of the aircraft.
"A couple of options, it could go aboard ship with the [Marine expeditionary unit], it could go into Al Assad [Air Base]," Conway said. "It could go elsewhere or not go, but our belief is it's a great airplane. We need to get it into the fight as soon as we can. It's going to give us an enhanced capability well beyond our legacy aircraft, the venerable CH-46."
The Corps is phasing out the third of six CH-46 Sea Knight squadrons at New River. The West Coast transition will likely begin around late 2009 or early 2010, followed by overseas squadrons. There are six squadrons on the West Coast and two on Okinawa, Japan.
But Gaillard wrote that the Marine Corps should replace the Osprey with modern helicopters, which he claims would be safer and cheaper. He suggests three options:
* Augusta Westland's US101 (EH-101), which has three engines, a single rotor and was recently selected as the presidential transport helicopter.
* Boeing's CH-47F Chinook, which has two engines, two rotors and carries up to 33 combat-equipped troops.
* Sikorsky's H-92 Superhawk, which has two engines, a single rotor and carries up to 22 combat-equipped troops.
Vortex-ring state
One reason he suggests the Corps turn to one of these aircraft instead of the Osprey is because of the aerodynamic phenomenon known as vortex-ring state. This condition is caused when a helicopter descends too rapidly without enough forward air speed, putting the helicopter in its own rotor wash.
"This is the primary reason why the maximum vertical descent speed of 800 feet per minute -- that's just 9.1 mph -- is mandated for this aircraft," Gaillard wrote. "It is so slow it will make the V-22 an easy target."
Osprey pilots landing in a hot zone may try to descend more quickly and encounter vortex-ring state, he said.
That's not so, said James Darcy, spokesman for the V-22 Joint Program Office for Corps and Navy aircraft acquisition and testing.
"The V-22 is less vulnerable to VRS than any other helicopter," he said.
Extensive testing following an April 2000 Osprey crash in Marana, Ariz., the third of four crashes since 1991, which killed all 19 Marines onboard, has proven the tilt rotor can descend faster than 800 feet per minute without going into vortex-ring state, Darcy said.
"We don't see the initial onset of VRS until at least 1,600 feet per minute," he said.
Testing, most of which was conducted in 2002, also proved that pilots can get out of VRS by rotating the nacelles slightly forward. Since then, the Osprey has been modified with a safety feature no other helicopter has -- a descent rate warning system in the cockpit.
"That sounds good, but it makes no mention of the altitude at which those recovery exercises were run, where the nacelle would be able to tilt forward 16 degrees over a 2-second period, resulting in probably abort of any descent profile in progress," Gaillard wrote.
He criticizes other tests, including one engine operative testing. During 17 years of evaluation, he wrote, the V-22 has never been tested to take off or land with one engine shut down. That's the kind of landing or takeoff a pilot would need to make from a small clearing or on a mountainside, Gaillard wrote.
"Basically, he's refuting a claim that nobody's making," Darcy said. "To my knowledge, at the program office level, we certainly never had a request to further explore a single-engine takeoff issue. It comes down to a question of who gets to decide whether there's been adequate testing. The users have the final say in whether or not this aircraft is ready to be fielded."
Winslow T. Wheeler
Director
Straus Military Reform Project
Center for Defense Information @ www.cdi.org/smrp
202 797-5271 in DC
301 840-8992 in MD
301 221-3897 cell
winslowwheeler@comcast.net
I don't know about this one Snuffy, here's what the people who got to use it are saying about the V-22
"This aircraft is the single most significant transformation of Air Force Special Operations since the introduction of the helicopter...Nearly every mission we have faced in the last 20 years could have been done better and faster with the V-22."
Maj. Gen. Donald Wurster
Vice Commander, Air Force Special Operations Command, Mar. 2006
"The Osprey remains at the very soul of our Corps' ability to fight future conflicts across a widely dispersed battlefield. Battlefields where the tyranny of distance is solved with speed, and where an irregular enemy who chooses to fight at an urban marketplace or at an ambush site in a wadi is faced with the dilemma: 'Where are they? I know they are coming, I just don't know when or where.'"
Lt. Gen. Jim Amos
Commanding General, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Dec. 2005
The V-22 gives us the speed and range we need to conduct our missions in a single period of darkness, where it's safest for us and most dangerous for our enemies."
Gen. Doug Brown
U.S. Special Operations Command, Mar. 2006
"This aircraft proves that transformation is more than just a buzzword. The combination of range, speed, and operational flexibility the Osprey provides is going to change all the rules for how our Marines engage the enemy."
"The Osprey can deliver Marines to battle more safely, bring them reinforcements over greater distances in greater numbers, and evacuate wounded more quickly. That all equates to lives saved, as we continue to prosecute the global war on terrorism."
Dr. Donald C. Winter
Secretary of the Navy, Jan. 2006
I also got the unique opportunity to observe a good deal of testing of the V-22 also. My farm is in Ellis County in Texas, it's really out in the boonies. Bell Textron used their facility in Arlington Texas as the home for the testing program for the V-22. Well, they'd fly the thing out over low population areas just in case they had a problem it was less likely to hit someone on the ground. I watched from the comfort of my front porch swing that aircraft for hours every day for weeks on end performing violent maneuvering on just one or the other engine. I was impressed on what it was capable of doing.
U.S. TURNS TO TECH FOR TRANSLATORS - RICHARD WILLING (USA TODAY, DECEMBER 20): Intelligence agencies and the military are turning to technology developed for call centers, sporting events and television shopping channels to compensate for an ongoing shortage of qualified translators, interviews and public documents show. It takes about eight years to train a CIA officer to be "completely comfortable" speaking Arabic, says Robert Baer, a retired CIA agent.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-1...anslators_x.htm
WHEN THE MEDIA?S RIGHT: BIAS AT WAR - RICH LOWRY (NATIONAL REVIEW, DECEMBER 19): The media ultimately will be wrong about Iraq only if -- fully acknowledging how bad it is there -- the Bush administration takes bold steps to reverse the tide.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzM2M...zYyNzVjMjE0NDI=
OP-CHART: THE STATE OF IRAQ: AN UPDATE - NINA KAMP, MICHAEL O'HANLON AND AMY UNIKEWICZ (NEW YORK TIMES, DECEMBER 20): As 2006 winds down, two developments inside Iraq stand out: the failure of the previous year?s election to produce any sense of progress, and the commencement of Iraq?s civil war, dating back to the Feb. 22 bombing of the hallowed Shiite mosque in Samarra and escalating ever since.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/20/opinion/...agewanted=print
MISSING: A FUNCTIONAL IRAQI STATE: THE WEAK IRAQI GOVERNMENT, RIVEN BY FACTIONS, IS STILL CRUCIAL TO MOST VISIONS FOR STABILIZING THE NATION - HOWARD LAFRANCHI (CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, DECEMBER 19)
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1219/p01s02-usgn.html
BLEAK ASSESSMENT IN PENTAGON STUDY: OVER 900 INSURGENT AND SECTARIAN ATTACKS A WEEK FOR 3 MONTHS
DAVID S. CLOUD AND MICHAEL R. GORDON (SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, DECEMBER 19): There were an average of 959 insurgent and sectarian attacks against American and Iraqi targets every week in Iraq over the last three months, the highest level ever recorded, according to a Pentagon report on security trends in Iraq issued Monday.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...;type=printable
IRAQ ARMY RECRUITMENT TO HIT MARK - ROWAN SCARBOROUGH (WASHINGTON TIMES, DECEMBER 20): The general in charge of training the much-needed Iraq army and police said yesterday that the final target of 325,000 personnel will be met before the end of this month, with "dramatic improvement" in performance envisioned by July.
http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.p...20-122541-9291r
BLOOD AND MONEY: IN WHAT MIGHT BE CALLED THE MOTHER OF ALL SURPRISES, IRAQ'S ECONOMY IS GROWING STRONG, EVEN BOOMING IN PLACES - SILVIA SPRING (NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL, DECEMBER 25-JANUARY 1):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16241340/site/newsweek/
3 MORE US TROOPS KILLED; VIOLENCE IN IRAQ AT 'ALL TIME HIGH' ? JUAN COLE (INFORMED COMMENT:THOUGHTS ON THE MIDDLE EAST, HISTORY, AND RELIGION, DECEMBER 19): Newsweek misleadingly reports "a booming economy" in Iraq. Iraq's economy is different insofar as it functions in the midst of a civil war. War economies create pockets of wealth and activity.
http://www.juancole.com/2006/12/3-more-us-...iolence-in.html (scroll down link for item)
TOP GENERAL IN MIDEAST TO RETIRE: ABIZAID OPPOSED CALLS FOR MORE TROOPS IN IRAQ. HIS DEPARTURE COULD CLEAR WAY FOR A MORE AGGRESSIVE STRATEGY - PETER SPIEGEL (LOS ANGELES TIMES, DECEMBER 20)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines
U.S. NOT WINNING WAR IN IRAQ, BUSH SAYS FOR 1ST TIME: PRESIDENT PLANS TO EXPAND ARMY, MARINE CORPS TO COPE WITH STRAIN OF MULTIPLE DEPLOYMENTS - PETER BAKER (WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 20)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2000268_pf.html
ON THE WAR, [BUSH] DETERMINED TO GO HIS OWN WAY - MICHAEL ABRAMOWITZ (WASHINGTON POST, DECEMBER 20): White House aides are reported to be pushing a major "surge" of troops to Baghdad while preparing a fresh infusion of tens of billions of dollars for the war effort.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1901566_pf.html
A WHOLE NEW WAR - JOHN PODHORETZ (NEW YORK POST, DECEMBER 19): Bush wants to get all the machinery moving and all the pieces in place, at which point he can declare with a flourish that "Operation Victory" has begun. That could mean the "surge" being discussed in Washington -- the commitment of up to 50,000 more U.S. troops to secure Baghdad.
http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print....n_podhoretz.htm
'WE'RE GOING TO WIN': THE PRESIDENT FINALLY HAS A PLAN FOR VICTORY - FRED BARNES (WEEKLY STANDARD, DECEMBER 25): The plan envisions a temporary addition of 50,000 troops on the ground in Iraq.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Publ...13/095rxgyi.asp
SURGING TO DEFEAT IN IRAQ - W. PATRICK LANG AND RAY MCGOVERN (TOMPAINE.COM, DECEMBER 18/COMMON DREAMS): A ?surge? of the size possible under current constraints on U.S. forces will not turn the tide in the guerrilla war. Reinforcement of Bagdad with several thousand U.S. troops last summer simply brought on more violence.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1218-24.htm
"SURGING" IN THE WRONG DIRECTION ? JOHN NICHOLS (NATION, DECEMBER 19): Bush is entertaining the idea that the way to solve the crisis he's created in Iraq is to send more troops to the Middle East, as part of a so-called "surge" strategy, which is ridiculous on its face.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=149948
MORE TROOPS? CLEAR, HOLD, BUILD (FAIL) PART II - TREY ELLIS (HUFFINGTON POST, DECEMBER 19): A surge of troops in Baghdad will obviously be ineffective.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trey-ellis/m...html?view=print
TALKING SURGE: LET'S KILL SOME MORE BEFORE WE GO - JAMES BROOKS (COUNTERPUNCH, DECEMBER 18)
http://www.counterpunch.org/brooks12182006.html
TAKE THIS WAR AND SHOVE IT: MORE TROOPS, MORE BODY BAGS - RON JACOBS (COUNTERPUNCH, DECEMBER 18): Talk about stepping into the abyss. George Bush and his Pentagon allies are considering increasing the number of troops in Iraq by 40,000.
http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs12182006.html
THE WORST "WAY FORWARD" IN IRAQ ? EUGENE ROBINSON (SEATTLE TIMES, DECEMBER 19/COMMON DREAMS): Doubling the number of American troops in Iraq would be wrong -- we need to get out, now, before we set the whole Middle East on fire -- but at least a surge of that scale would have a purpose. The modest increase now on the table would be purposeless and wrong.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1219-29.htm
ADVICE NOT TAKEN: A TOP FORMER STATE DEPARTMENT EXPERT EXPLAINED TO THE IRAQ STUDY GROUP'S MEMBERS WHY THEIR PREFERRED PLAN WOULD MOST LIKELY FAIL. THEY IGNORED HIS WARNING - GARETH PORTER (AMERICAN PROSPECT, DECEMBER 18): The Iraq Study Group was warned by the former State Department coordinator of intelligence on Iraq that the option of sharply increasing the number of U.S. trainers in the Iraqi military -- a plan that the ISG recommended in their final report and the Pentagon has now approved -- probably would fail, even if accompanied by 50,000 additional U.S. troops and the adoption of favorable policies by the Iraqi government.
http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=12332
IF US BOOSTS TROOP LEVELS IN IRAQ, THEN FOR HOW LONG?: BEFORE DECIDING ON WHETHER TO INCREASE OR DECREASE TROOP LEVELS, US OFFICIALS DEBATE HOW HARD TO PUSH SOLDIERS ALREADY IN IRAQ - PETER GRIER (CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, DECEMBER 20)
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1220/p01s02-usmi.html
BUSH MUST EXERCISE WINNING OPTIONS IN IRAQ - TOD LINDBERG (WASHINGTON TIMES, DECEMBER 19): Bush has every incentive to try rather than to give up, because otherwise he will indeed be assenting to the view that his "freedom agenda" is a failure because Iraq was a failure, and therefore his presidency was a failure. He has not exhausted all his options, as he seems to be realizing.
http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.p...18-093211-4438r
POWELL, BAKER, HAMILTON ? THANKS FOR NOTHING - NORMAN SOLOMON (ANTIWAR.COM, DECEMBER 19): While often depicted as a rebuff to the president's Iraq policies, the ISG report was hardly a prescription for abandoning the U.S. military project in Iraq.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1218-22.htm
BUSH CAN?T KICK THE HABIT - ROBERT SCHEER (TRUTHDIG, DECEMBER 19): We have become the enablers of Iraqi madness, be it in the form of torture or the ascendancy of religious tyranny in Iraq, where daily life has been reduced to an unmitigated horror. Yet, like a junkie who needs one more hit to get his life in order, Bush is hooked on the drug of military might.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200612...kick_the_habit/
HARRY REID: MORE TROOPS TO IRAQ!: DEMOCRATS PREPARE TO FUND LONGER WAR - ALEXANDER COCKBURN (COUNTERPUNCH, DECEMBER 19): The language about Iraq is always of pleasing schedules, in which a (fictional) entity called the Iraqi Army, at the disposition of an (imaginary) power called the Iraqi government, can be welded into an (entirely fantastical) nonsectarian force by (as yet unavailable and putatively suicidal) US military trainers.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn12192006.html
THE CLOCK IS TICKING, MR. PRESIDENT - SEN. HARRY REID (HUFFINGTON POST, DECEMBER 19): The President needs to put forth a plan as soon as possible, one that reflects the reality on the ground in Iraq and that withdraws our troops from the middle of this deadly civil war.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-harry-re...mr_b_36752.html
AMERICA WAKES TO DYING DREAMS, DEAD SOLDIERS - COKIE ROBERTS AND STEVEN V. ROBERTS (AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN (TEXAS), DECEMBER 18/COMMON DREAMS): The nation is facing an enormous tragedy. Bush can't or won't leave Iraq.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1218-27.htm
A REALISTIC APPROACH TO IRAQ - DAVID IGNATIUS (WASHINGTON POST, DECEMBER 20): Rather than using the Baker-Hamilton process to rebuild consensus for a viable Iraq strategy, officials are taking potshots at the "surrender monkeys." Now, that's dangerous.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1901281_pf.html
ISG: DEFEAT WITH HONOR - CHRISTIAN PARENTI (NATION, DECEMBER 19/COMMON DREAMS): The ISG group was up-front about its goals: The authors offer a plan for defeat with honor (that is, some salvaged political credibility) and, if possible, the possibility of stability sooner rather than later. What's so wrong with all that?
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1219-32.htm
ICG: AFTER BAKER-HAMILTON ? MARC LYNCH (ABU AARDVARK, DECEMBER 19): The International Crisis Group has just released "After Baker-Hamilton: What to do in Iraq.? After the disappointing showing of the Iraq Study Group, the ICG makes for bracing reading -- and offers a much more serious attempt to find some kind of solution. [PDPBR note: Recommendation 26 is: ?Abandon the super-embassy project and move a reduced embassy to a more neutral location.?]
http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark...fter_baker.html
REPORT AT
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4580&l=1
TOP 10 THINGS NOT TO DO IN IRAQ ? IVAN ELAND (ANTIWAR.COM, DECEMBER 19): The recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and the contradictory inclinations of the Bush administration are "bridges to nowhere."
http://www.antiwar.com/eland/?articleid=10186
HOW BUSH CAN FIX HIS POLICY FAILURES - STROBE TALBOTT (FINANCIAL TIMES, DECEMBER 18): Even the most determined optimist (and such are hard to find in Washington these days) realizes that the challenge of Iraq and its region will be with us -- all of us -- for years. Whatever course the president chooses in Iraq, he will need the UN.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ed5f413a-8ec1-11db...00779e2340.html
CAN GATES SUCCEED? - WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. (NATIONAL REVIEW, DECEMBER 19): We are continuing to search for just the word that describes the U.S. mission in Iraq.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjNhN...jUxZjY0MjAxZDA=
THE REAL SUNNI TRIANGLE: THERE ARE ONLY THREE OPTIONS IN IRAQ - CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (SLATE, DECEMBER 18) It is to the credit of the United States that it has at least continued to hold up one of these options (Iraqi federalism) as a possibility -- a possibility that would not be thinkable if the field were left to the rival influences of Tehran and Riyadh.
http://www.slate.com/id/2155721/
FOR IRAQIS, A PROMISE IS IN PERIL: BAKER-HAMILTON WOULD SELL OUT DEMOCRACY - MASROUR BARZANI (WASHINGTON POST, DECEMBER 20): Should the U.S. administration adopt the recommendations of Baker-Hamilton, the Kurds will be sacrificed to protect the interests of Iraq's neighbors. (The writer is the director of the Intelligence and Security Agency of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq and a high-ranking member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1901279_pf.html
DOES IRAQ NEED MORE DEBATE?: WE'VE HAD PLENTY OF SHOUTING MATCHES ON THE WAR; WHAT WE NEED ARE BETTER LEADERS AND MORE CAPABLE MEDIA - MARTIN KAPLAN (LOS ANGELES TIMES, DECEMBER 19)
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...omment-opinions
GOD'S GIFT? - ORLANDO PATTERSON (NEW YORK TIMES, DECEMBER 19): As we now know, the war was motivated less by any real evidence of Iraqi involvement with terrorism than by the neoconservatives? belief that they could stabilize the Middle East by spreading freedom there.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/12/19/opini...agewanted=print
PAID SUSBCRIPTION
IRAQ IS VIETNAM-AND YOU'D BETTER BELIEVE IT - JOHN GRAHAM (COMMON DREAMS, DECEMBER 18): US leaders may decide, as they did 37 years ago, that we must again create a "decent interval" to mask defeat and that the PR benefits of that interval are worth the cost in lives and money.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1218-23.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-1...anslators_x.htm
WHEN THE MEDIA?S RIGHT: BIAS AT WAR - RICH LOWRY (NATIONAL REVIEW, DECEMBER 19): The media ultimately will be wrong about Iraq only if -- fully acknowledging how bad it is there -- the Bush administration takes bold steps to reverse the tide.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzM2M...zYyNzVjMjE0NDI=
OP-CHART: THE STATE OF IRAQ: AN UPDATE - NINA KAMP, MICHAEL O'HANLON AND AMY UNIKEWICZ (NEW YORK TIMES, DECEMBER 20): As 2006 winds down, two developments inside Iraq stand out: the failure of the previous year?s election to produce any sense of progress, and the commencement of Iraq?s civil war, dating back to the Feb. 22 bombing of the hallowed Shiite mosque in Samarra and escalating ever since.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/20/opinion/...agewanted=print
MISSING: A FUNCTIONAL IRAQI STATE: THE WEAK IRAQI GOVERNMENT, RIVEN BY FACTIONS, IS STILL CRUCIAL TO MOST VISIONS FOR STABILIZING THE NATION - HOWARD LAFRANCHI (CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, DECEMBER 19)
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1219/p01s02-usgn.html
BLEAK ASSESSMENT IN PENTAGON STUDY: OVER 900 INSURGENT AND SECTARIAN ATTACKS A WEEK FOR 3 MONTHS
DAVID S. CLOUD AND MICHAEL R. GORDON (SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, DECEMBER 19): There were an average of 959 insurgent and sectarian attacks against American and Iraqi targets every week in Iraq over the last three months, the highest level ever recorded, according to a Pentagon report on security trends in Iraq issued Monday.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...;type=printable
IRAQ ARMY RECRUITMENT TO HIT MARK - ROWAN SCARBOROUGH (WASHINGTON TIMES, DECEMBER 20): The general in charge of training the much-needed Iraq army and police said yesterday that the final target of 325,000 personnel will be met before the end of this month, with "dramatic improvement" in performance envisioned by July.
http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.p...20-122541-9291r
BLOOD AND MONEY: IN WHAT MIGHT BE CALLED THE MOTHER OF ALL SURPRISES, IRAQ'S ECONOMY IS GROWING STRONG, EVEN BOOMING IN PLACES - SILVIA SPRING (NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL, DECEMBER 25-JANUARY 1):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16241340/site/newsweek/
3 MORE US TROOPS KILLED; VIOLENCE IN IRAQ AT 'ALL TIME HIGH' ? JUAN COLE (INFORMED COMMENT:THOUGHTS ON THE MIDDLE EAST, HISTORY, AND RELIGION, DECEMBER 19): Newsweek misleadingly reports "a booming economy" in Iraq. Iraq's economy is different insofar as it functions in the midst of a civil war. War economies create pockets of wealth and activity.
http://www.juancole.com/2006/12/3-more-us-...iolence-in.html (scroll down link for item)
TOP GENERAL IN MIDEAST TO RETIRE: ABIZAID OPPOSED CALLS FOR MORE TROOPS IN IRAQ. HIS DEPARTURE COULD CLEAR WAY FOR A MORE AGGRESSIVE STRATEGY - PETER SPIEGEL (LOS ANGELES TIMES, DECEMBER 20)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines
U.S. NOT WINNING WAR IN IRAQ, BUSH SAYS FOR 1ST TIME: PRESIDENT PLANS TO EXPAND ARMY, MARINE CORPS TO COPE WITH STRAIN OF MULTIPLE DEPLOYMENTS - PETER BAKER (WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 20)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2000268_pf.html
ON THE WAR, [BUSH] DETERMINED TO GO HIS OWN WAY - MICHAEL ABRAMOWITZ (WASHINGTON POST, DECEMBER 20): White House aides are reported to be pushing a major "surge" of troops to Baghdad while preparing a fresh infusion of tens of billions of dollars for the war effort.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1901566_pf.html
A WHOLE NEW WAR - JOHN PODHORETZ (NEW YORK POST, DECEMBER 19): Bush wants to get all the machinery moving and all the pieces in place, at which point he can declare with a flourish that "Operation Victory" has begun. That could mean the "surge" being discussed in Washington -- the commitment of up to 50,000 more U.S. troops to secure Baghdad.
http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print....n_podhoretz.htm
'WE'RE GOING TO WIN': THE PRESIDENT FINALLY HAS A PLAN FOR VICTORY - FRED BARNES (WEEKLY STANDARD, DECEMBER 25): The plan envisions a temporary addition of 50,000 troops on the ground in Iraq.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Publ...13/095rxgyi.asp
SURGING TO DEFEAT IN IRAQ - W. PATRICK LANG AND RAY MCGOVERN (TOMPAINE.COM, DECEMBER 18/COMMON DREAMS): A ?surge? of the size possible under current constraints on U.S. forces will not turn the tide in the guerrilla war. Reinforcement of Bagdad with several thousand U.S. troops last summer simply brought on more violence.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1218-24.htm
"SURGING" IN THE WRONG DIRECTION ? JOHN NICHOLS (NATION, DECEMBER 19): Bush is entertaining the idea that the way to solve the crisis he's created in Iraq is to send more troops to the Middle East, as part of a so-called "surge" strategy, which is ridiculous on its face.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=149948
MORE TROOPS? CLEAR, HOLD, BUILD (FAIL) PART II - TREY ELLIS (HUFFINGTON POST, DECEMBER 19): A surge of troops in Baghdad will obviously be ineffective.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trey-ellis/m...html?view=print
TALKING SURGE: LET'S KILL SOME MORE BEFORE WE GO - JAMES BROOKS (COUNTERPUNCH, DECEMBER 18)
http://www.counterpunch.org/brooks12182006.html
TAKE THIS WAR AND SHOVE IT: MORE TROOPS, MORE BODY BAGS - RON JACOBS (COUNTERPUNCH, DECEMBER 18): Talk about stepping into the abyss. George Bush and his Pentagon allies are considering increasing the number of troops in Iraq by 40,000.
http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs12182006.html
THE WORST "WAY FORWARD" IN IRAQ ? EUGENE ROBINSON (SEATTLE TIMES, DECEMBER 19/COMMON DREAMS): Doubling the number of American troops in Iraq would be wrong -- we need to get out, now, before we set the whole Middle East on fire -- but at least a surge of that scale would have a purpose. The modest increase now on the table would be purposeless and wrong.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1219-29.htm
ADVICE NOT TAKEN: A TOP FORMER STATE DEPARTMENT EXPERT EXPLAINED TO THE IRAQ STUDY GROUP'S MEMBERS WHY THEIR PREFERRED PLAN WOULD MOST LIKELY FAIL. THEY IGNORED HIS WARNING - GARETH PORTER (AMERICAN PROSPECT, DECEMBER 18): The Iraq Study Group was warned by the former State Department coordinator of intelligence on Iraq that the option of sharply increasing the number of U.S. trainers in the Iraqi military -- a plan that the ISG recommended in their final report and the Pentagon has now approved -- probably would fail, even if accompanied by 50,000 additional U.S. troops and the adoption of favorable policies by the Iraqi government.
http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=12332
IF US BOOSTS TROOP LEVELS IN IRAQ, THEN FOR HOW LONG?: BEFORE DECIDING ON WHETHER TO INCREASE OR DECREASE TROOP LEVELS, US OFFICIALS DEBATE HOW HARD TO PUSH SOLDIERS ALREADY IN IRAQ - PETER GRIER (CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, DECEMBER 20)
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1220/p01s02-usmi.html
BUSH MUST EXERCISE WINNING OPTIONS IN IRAQ - TOD LINDBERG (WASHINGTON TIMES, DECEMBER 19): Bush has every incentive to try rather than to give up, because otherwise he will indeed be assenting to the view that his "freedom agenda" is a failure because Iraq was a failure, and therefore his presidency was a failure. He has not exhausted all his options, as he seems to be realizing.
http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.p...18-093211-4438r
POWELL, BAKER, HAMILTON ? THANKS FOR NOTHING - NORMAN SOLOMON (ANTIWAR.COM, DECEMBER 19): While often depicted as a rebuff to the president's Iraq policies, the ISG report was hardly a prescription for abandoning the U.S. military project in Iraq.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1218-22.htm
BUSH CAN?T KICK THE HABIT - ROBERT SCHEER (TRUTHDIG, DECEMBER 19): We have become the enablers of Iraqi madness, be it in the form of torture or the ascendancy of religious tyranny in Iraq, where daily life has been reduced to an unmitigated horror. Yet, like a junkie who needs one more hit to get his life in order, Bush is hooked on the drug of military might.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200612...kick_the_habit/
HARRY REID: MORE TROOPS TO IRAQ!: DEMOCRATS PREPARE TO FUND LONGER WAR - ALEXANDER COCKBURN (COUNTERPUNCH, DECEMBER 19): The language about Iraq is always of pleasing schedules, in which a (fictional) entity called the Iraqi Army, at the disposition of an (imaginary) power called the Iraqi government, can be welded into an (entirely fantastical) nonsectarian force by (as yet unavailable and putatively suicidal) US military trainers.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn12192006.html
THE CLOCK IS TICKING, MR. PRESIDENT - SEN. HARRY REID (HUFFINGTON POST, DECEMBER 19): The President needs to put forth a plan as soon as possible, one that reflects the reality on the ground in Iraq and that withdraws our troops from the middle of this deadly civil war.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-harry-re...mr_b_36752.html
AMERICA WAKES TO DYING DREAMS, DEAD SOLDIERS - COKIE ROBERTS AND STEVEN V. ROBERTS (AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN (TEXAS), DECEMBER 18/COMMON DREAMS): The nation is facing an enormous tragedy. Bush can't or won't leave Iraq.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1218-27.htm
A REALISTIC APPROACH TO IRAQ - DAVID IGNATIUS (WASHINGTON POST, DECEMBER 20): Rather than using the Baker-Hamilton process to rebuild consensus for a viable Iraq strategy, officials are taking potshots at the "surrender monkeys." Now, that's dangerous.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1901281_pf.html
ISG: DEFEAT WITH HONOR - CHRISTIAN PARENTI (NATION, DECEMBER 19/COMMON DREAMS): The ISG group was up-front about its goals: The authors offer a plan for defeat with honor (that is, some salvaged political credibility) and, if possible, the possibility of stability sooner rather than later. What's so wrong with all that?
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1219-32.htm
ICG: AFTER BAKER-HAMILTON ? MARC LYNCH (ABU AARDVARK, DECEMBER 19): The International Crisis Group has just released "After Baker-Hamilton: What to do in Iraq.? After the disappointing showing of the Iraq Study Group, the ICG makes for bracing reading -- and offers a much more serious attempt to find some kind of solution. [PDPBR note: Recommendation 26 is: ?Abandon the super-embassy project and move a reduced embassy to a more neutral location.?]
http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark...fter_baker.html
REPORT AT
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4580&l=1
TOP 10 THINGS NOT TO DO IN IRAQ ? IVAN ELAND (ANTIWAR.COM, DECEMBER 19): The recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and the contradictory inclinations of the Bush administration are "bridges to nowhere."
http://www.antiwar.com/eland/?articleid=10186
HOW BUSH CAN FIX HIS POLICY FAILURES - STROBE TALBOTT (FINANCIAL TIMES, DECEMBER 18): Even the most determined optimist (and such are hard to find in Washington these days) realizes that the challenge of Iraq and its region will be with us -- all of us -- for years. Whatever course the president chooses in Iraq, he will need the UN.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ed5f413a-8ec1-11db...00779e2340.html
CAN GATES SUCCEED? - WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. (NATIONAL REVIEW, DECEMBER 19): We are continuing to search for just the word that describes the U.S. mission in Iraq.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjNhN...jUxZjY0MjAxZDA=
THE REAL SUNNI TRIANGLE: THERE ARE ONLY THREE OPTIONS IN IRAQ - CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (SLATE, DECEMBER 18) It is to the credit of the United States that it has at least continued to hold up one of these options (Iraqi federalism) as a possibility -- a possibility that would not be thinkable if the field were left to the rival influences of Tehran and Riyadh.
http://www.slate.com/id/2155721/
FOR IRAQIS, A PROMISE IS IN PERIL: BAKER-HAMILTON WOULD SELL OUT DEMOCRACY - MASROUR BARZANI (WASHINGTON POST, DECEMBER 20): Should the U.S. administration adopt the recommendations of Baker-Hamilton, the Kurds will be sacrificed to protect the interests of Iraq's neighbors. (The writer is the director of the Intelligence and Security Agency of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq and a high-ranking member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1901279_pf.html
DOES IRAQ NEED MORE DEBATE?: WE'VE HAD PLENTY OF SHOUTING MATCHES ON THE WAR; WHAT WE NEED ARE BETTER LEADERS AND MORE CAPABLE MEDIA - MARTIN KAPLAN (LOS ANGELES TIMES, DECEMBER 19)
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...omment-opinions
GOD'S GIFT? - ORLANDO PATTERSON (NEW YORK TIMES, DECEMBER 19): As we now know, the war was motivated less by any real evidence of Iraqi involvement with terrorism than by the neoconservatives? belief that they could stabilize the Middle East by spreading freedom there.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/12/19/opini...agewanted=print
PAID SUSBCRIPTION
IRAQ IS VIETNAM-AND YOU'D BETTER BELIEVE IT - JOHN GRAHAM (COMMON DREAMS, DECEMBER 18): US leaders may decide, as they did 37 years ago, that we must again create a "decent interval" to mask defeat and that the PR benefits of that interval are worth the cost in lives and money.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1218-23.htm
January 4, 2007
Iraq Vets Come Home Physically, Mentally Butchered
by Aaron Glantz
On New Year's Eve, the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq passed 3,000. By Tuesday, the death toll had reached 3,004 – 31 more than died in the Sep. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
But the number of injured has far outstripped the dead, with the Veterans Administration reporting that more than 150,000 veterans of the Iraq war are receiving disability benefits.
Advances in military technology are keeping the death rate much lower than during the Vietnam War and World War Two, Dr. Col. Vito Imbascini, an urologist and state surgeon with the California Army National Guard, told IPS, but soldiers who survive attacks are often severely disabled for life.
"If you lost an arm or a leg in Vietnam, you were also tremendously injured in your chest and abdomen, which were not protected by the armor plates back then," he said. "Now, your heart and chest and lungs and heart are protected by armor, leaving only your extremities exposed."
Dr. Imbascini just returned from a four-month deployment to Germany, where he treated the worst of the U.S. war wounded. He said that an extremely high number of wounded soldiers are coming home with their arms or legs amputated. Imbascini said he amputated the genitals of one or two men every day.
"I walk into the operating room and the general surgeons are doing their work and there is the body of this Navy SEAL, which is a physical specimen to behold," he told IPS. "And his abdomen is open, they're exploring both intestines. He's missing both legs below the knee, one arm is blown off, he's got incisions on his thighs to relieve the pressure on the parts of the legs that are hopefully gonna survive and there's genital injuries, and you just want to cry."
According to documents obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, 25 percent of veterans of the "global war on terror" have filed disability compensation and pension benefit claims with the Veterans Benefits Administration.
One is a Jul. 20, 2006, document titled "Compensation and Pension Benefit Activity Among Veterans of the Global War on Terrorism," which shows that 152,669 veterans filed disability claims after fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. Of the more than 100,000 claims granted, Veterans Administration records show at least 1,502 veterans have been compensated as 100 percent disabled.
Pentagon studies show that 12 percent of soldiers who have served in Iraq suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. The group Veterans for America, formerly the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, estimates 70,000 Iraq war veterans have gone to the VA for mental health care.
New guidelines released by the Pentagon released last month allow commanders to redeploy soldiers suffering from traumatic stress disorders.
According to the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, servicemembers with "a psychiatric disorder in remission, or whose residual symptoms do not impair duty performance" may be considered for duty downrange. It lists post-traumatic stress disorder as a "treatable" problem.
"As a layman and a former soldier I think that's ridiculous," Steve Robinson, the director of Veterans Affairs for Veterans for America, told IPS.
"If I've got a soldier who's on Ambien to go to sleep and Seroquel and Qanapin and all kinds of other psychotropic meds, I don't want them to have a weapon in their hand and to be part of my team because they're a risk to themselves and to others," he said. "But apparently, the military has its own view of how well a soldier can function under those conditions and is gambling that they can be successful."
Robinson said problems with the policy are already starting to arise.
On Christmas, for example, Army Reservist James Dean barricaded himself in his father's home with several weapons and threatened to kill himself. After a 14-hour standoff with authorities, Dean was killed by a police officer after he aimed a gun at another officer, authorities told the Washington Post.
Veterans for America's Robinson told IPS that Dean, who had already served 18 months in Afghanistan, had been diagnosed with PTSD. He had just been informed that his unit would be sent to Iraq on Jan. 14.
"We call that suicide by cop," Robinson said.
After his death, Dean's friends told the Washington Post that the reservist enjoyed hunting and fishing but had lost much of his enthusiasm for life when he found out that he was being deployed to Iraq.
"When Congress comes back in session we're looking forward to accountability hearings," Robinson said. "We want to see veterans helped in the first 100 hours of the new session. We want to see the word 'veteran' somewhere in that first hundred hours."
Robinson says his organization has also documented the existence of at least 1,000 homeless veterans of the Iraq war.
"We need to get on top of the problem of homelessness," he said. "It's too soon to be seeing homelessness. I want to be seeing a commitment from the Democratic Congress to dealing with the war and the needs of the soldiers in the first hundred hours of them coming to power."
(Inter Press Service)
Iraq Vets Come Home Physically, Mentally Butchered
by Aaron Glantz
On New Year's Eve, the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq passed 3,000. By Tuesday, the death toll had reached 3,004 – 31 more than died in the Sep. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
But the number of injured has far outstripped the dead, with the Veterans Administration reporting that more than 150,000 veterans of the Iraq war are receiving disability benefits.
Advances in military technology are keeping the death rate much lower than during the Vietnam War and World War Two, Dr. Col. Vito Imbascini, an urologist and state surgeon with the California Army National Guard, told IPS, but soldiers who survive attacks are often severely disabled for life.
"If you lost an arm or a leg in Vietnam, you were also tremendously injured in your chest and abdomen, which were not protected by the armor plates back then," he said. "Now, your heart and chest and lungs and heart are protected by armor, leaving only your extremities exposed."
Dr. Imbascini just returned from a four-month deployment to Germany, where he treated the worst of the U.S. war wounded. He said that an extremely high number of wounded soldiers are coming home with their arms or legs amputated. Imbascini said he amputated the genitals of one or two men every day.
"I walk into the operating room and the general surgeons are doing their work and there is the body of this Navy SEAL, which is a physical specimen to behold," he told IPS. "And his abdomen is open, they're exploring both intestines. He's missing both legs below the knee, one arm is blown off, he's got incisions on his thighs to relieve the pressure on the parts of the legs that are hopefully gonna survive and there's genital injuries, and you just want to cry."
According to documents obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, 25 percent of veterans of the "global war on terror" have filed disability compensation and pension benefit claims with the Veterans Benefits Administration.
One is a Jul. 20, 2006, document titled "Compensation and Pension Benefit Activity Among Veterans of the Global War on Terrorism," which shows that 152,669 veterans filed disability claims after fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. Of the more than 100,000 claims granted, Veterans Administration records show at least 1,502 veterans have been compensated as 100 percent disabled.
Pentagon studies show that 12 percent of soldiers who have served in Iraq suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. The group Veterans for America, formerly the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, estimates 70,000 Iraq war veterans have gone to the VA for mental health care.
New guidelines released by the Pentagon released last month allow commanders to redeploy soldiers suffering from traumatic stress disorders.
According to the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, servicemembers with "a psychiatric disorder in remission, or whose residual symptoms do not impair duty performance" may be considered for duty downrange. It lists post-traumatic stress disorder as a "treatable" problem.
"As a layman and a former soldier I think that's ridiculous," Steve Robinson, the director of Veterans Affairs for Veterans for America, told IPS.
"If I've got a soldier who's on Ambien to go to sleep and Seroquel and Qanapin and all kinds of other psychotropic meds, I don't want them to have a weapon in their hand and to be part of my team because they're a risk to themselves and to others," he said. "But apparently, the military has its own view of how well a soldier can function under those conditions and is gambling that they can be successful."
Robinson said problems with the policy are already starting to arise.
On Christmas, for example, Army Reservist James Dean barricaded himself in his father's home with several weapons and threatened to kill himself. After a 14-hour standoff with authorities, Dean was killed by a police officer after he aimed a gun at another officer, authorities told the Washington Post.
Veterans for America's Robinson told IPS that Dean, who had already served 18 months in Afghanistan, had been diagnosed with PTSD. He had just been informed that his unit would be sent to Iraq on Jan. 14.
"We call that suicide by cop," Robinson said.
After his death, Dean's friends told the Washington Post that the reservist enjoyed hunting and fishing but had lost much of his enthusiasm for life when he found out that he was being deployed to Iraq.
"When Congress comes back in session we're looking forward to accountability hearings," Robinson said. "We want to see veterans helped in the first 100 hours of the new session. We want to see the word 'veteran' somewhere in that first hundred hours."
Robinson says his organization has also documented the existence of at least 1,000 homeless veterans of the Iraq war.
"We need to get on top of the problem of homelessness," he said. "It's too soon to be seeing homelessness. I want to be seeing a commitment from the Democratic Congress to dealing with the war and the needs of the soldiers in the first hundred hours of them coming to power."
(Inter Press Service)
SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2007, Issue No. 6
January 16, 2007
Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
Support Secrecy News:
http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp
** INTELLIGENCE SCIENCE BOARD VIEWS INTERROGATION
** ARMY ESTABLISHES PSYOPS BRANCH
INTELLIGENCE SCIENCE BOARD VIEWS INTERROGATION
The current state of scientific knowledge regarding the conduct
of interrogation and related forms of intelligence gathering
is limited by numerous gaps in theoretical and practical
understanding, according to a new book-length study from the
Intelligence Science Board, an advisory panel to the U.S.
intelligence community.
The study was prompted by "concerns about recent U.S.
interrogation activities, subsequent investigations, and the
efficacy of contemporary tactics, techniques, and procedures."
The ISB report is somewhat artfully titled "Educing
Information," a term that encompasses interrogation as well as
other forms of eliciting information.
The study notes that an accurate perception of the realities of
interrogation has been impeded by erroneous preconceptions
shaped by wish-fulfillment or popular culture.
"A major stumbling block to the study of interrogation, and
especially to the conduct of interrogation in field
operations, has been the all-too-common misunderstanding of
the nature and scope of the discipline."
"Most observers, even those within professional circles, have
unfortunately been influenced by the media's colorful (and
artificial) view of interrogation as almost always involving
hostility and the employment of force -- be it physical or
psychological -- by the interrogator against the hapless,
often slow-witted subject." (p. 95).
A detailed literature review, expert interviews and
consideration of the historical record present a more
qualified and uncertain picture.
Fundamentally, "there is little systematic knowledge available
to tell us 'what works' in interrogation. We do not know what
systems, methods, or processes of interrogation best protect
the nation's security."
"For example, we lack systematic information to guide us as to
who should perform interrogations. We do not know what
benefits would result if we changed the way we recruit, train,
and manage our interrogators." (p. 8).
Dr. Paulette Otis, a contributor to the study (though not an
ISB member), summarized her view of its practical conclusions
as follows: "(1) pain does not elicit intelligence known to
prevent greater harm; (2) the use of pain is counterproductive
both in a tactical and strategic sense; (3) chemical and
biological methods are unreliable; (4) research tends to
indicate that 'educing' information without the use of harsh
interrogation is more valuable."
And, of course, "'more' research is necessary," said Dr. Otis,
who is Outreach Coordinator at the Center for Irregular
Warfare and Operational Culture in Quantico.
The unclassified ISB study was sponsored by the Defense
Intelligence Agency and the Counterintelligence Field
Activity, among other U.S. intelligence entities.
See "Educing Information: Interrogation: Science and Art:
Foundations for the Future," Intelligence Science Board, Phase
1 Report, December 2006 (374 pages, 2.5 MB):
http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf
ARMY ESTABLISHES PSYOPS BRANCH
"Effective 16 October 2006, Psychological Operations was
established as a basic branch of the Army, pursuant to the
authority of Section 3063(a)(13), Title 10, United States
Code."
That is the substance of General Order 30 issued by Secretary
of the Army Francis J. Harvey on January 12, 2007. See:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/go30.pdf
According to the Department of Defense Dictionary (JP 1-02),
psychological operations are defined as "planned operations to
convey selected information and indicators to foreign
audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective
reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments,
organizations, groups, and individuals. The purpose of
psychological operations is to induce or reinforce foreign
attitudes and behavior favorable to the originator's
objectives. Also called PSYOP."
_
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood@fas.org
voice: (202) 454-4691
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2007, Issue No. 6
January 16, 2007
Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
Support Secrecy News:
http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp
** INTELLIGENCE SCIENCE BOARD VIEWS INTERROGATION
** ARMY ESTABLISHES PSYOPS BRANCH
INTELLIGENCE SCIENCE BOARD VIEWS INTERROGATION
The current state of scientific knowledge regarding the conduct
of interrogation and related forms of intelligence gathering
is limited by numerous gaps in theoretical and practical
understanding, according to a new book-length study from the
Intelligence Science Board, an advisory panel to the U.S.
intelligence community.
The study was prompted by "concerns about recent U.S.
interrogation activities, subsequent investigations, and the
efficacy of contemporary tactics, techniques, and procedures."
The ISB report is somewhat artfully titled "Educing
Information," a term that encompasses interrogation as well as
other forms of eliciting information.
The study notes that an accurate perception of the realities of
interrogation has been impeded by erroneous preconceptions
shaped by wish-fulfillment or popular culture.
"A major stumbling block to the study of interrogation, and
especially to the conduct of interrogation in field
operations, has been the all-too-common misunderstanding of
the nature and scope of the discipline."
"Most observers, even those within professional circles, have
unfortunately been influenced by the media's colorful (and
artificial) view of interrogation as almost always involving
hostility and the employment of force -- be it physical or
psychological -- by the interrogator against the hapless,
often slow-witted subject." (p. 95).
A detailed literature review, expert interviews and
consideration of the historical record present a more
qualified and uncertain picture.
Fundamentally, "there is little systematic knowledge available
to tell us 'what works' in interrogation. We do not know what
systems, methods, or processes of interrogation best protect
the nation's security."
"For example, we lack systematic information to guide us as to
who should perform interrogations. We do not know what
benefits would result if we changed the way we recruit, train,
and manage our interrogators." (p. 8).
Dr. Paulette Otis, a contributor to the study (though not an
ISB member), summarized her view of its practical conclusions
as follows: "(1) pain does not elicit intelligence known to
prevent greater harm; (2) the use of pain is counterproductive
both in a tactical and strategic sense; (3) chemical and
biological methods are unreliable; (4) research tends to
indicate that 'educing' information without the use of harsh
interrogation is more valuable."
And, of course, "'more' research is necessary," said Dr. Otis,
who is Outreach Coordinator at the Center for Irregular
Warfare and Operational Culture in Quantico.
The unclassified ISB study was sponsored by the Defense
Intelligence Agency and the Counterintelligence Field
Activity, among other U.S. intelligence entities.
See "Educing Information: Interrogation: Science and Art:
Foundations for the Future," Intelligence Science Board, Phase
1 Report, December 2006 (374 pages, 2.5 MB):
http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf
ARMY ESTABLISHES PSYOPS BRANCH
"Effective 16 October 2006, Psychological Operations was
established as a basic branch of the Army, pursuant to the
authority of Section 3063(a)(13), Title 10, United States
Code."
That is the substance of General Order 30 issued by Secretary
of the Army Francis J. Harvey on January 12, 2007. See:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/go30.pdf
According to the Department of Defense Dictionary (JP 1-02),
psychological operations are defined as "planned operations to
convey selected information and indicators to foreign
audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective
reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments,
organizations, groups, and individuals. The purpose of
psychological operations is to induce or reinforce foreign
attitudes and behavior favorable to the originator's
objectives. Also called PSYOP."
_
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood@fas.org
voice: (202) 454-4691
Choices Dwindle If Iraq War Plan Fails
By Calvin Woodward
The Associated Press
Saturday 13 January 2007
If the revamped Iraq war plan fails, it will be time to withdraw most U.S. troops. Or send more in. The United States is seen as having a limited number of options, all grim, if President Bush's "new way forward" hits a wall. The pressure for U.S. disengagement will be immense. Yet a further escalation, however unimaginable now, may not be out of the question.
Few expect helicopters to beat the air over Baghdad in a hasty retreat of the kind that closed the books on America's defeat in Vietnam. The Mideast and its oil are too important.
"We were able to walk away from Vietnam," said Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who was a prisoner of war there. "If we walk away on Iraq, we'll be back, possibly in the context of a wider war in the world's most volatile region."
The administration is almost certainly considering fallback options if the latest plan falls apart. Officials are loath to talk about them.
Over two days of intense hearings on Capitol Hill last week, lawmakers raised questions at the margins about a Plan B even as they probed and for the most part attacked Plan A: Bush's move to increase U.S. forces to give Iraqis more time to take control of their own security.
Administration officials, defending a war that many in the U.S. and much of the world thinks is failing already, would not discuss what options will be left if the new approach fails. "Re-evaluate our strategy," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.
Yet he hinted that the planned troop increase need not take place in its entirety if conditions change. "We are trying to construct this in a way that there are off-ramps," he said, so that "you don't necessarily have to go to the full extent of the buildup."
Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified, "You're asking a Marine who's focused on winning whether he has a plan in case he doesn't win."
"Yes," came the response from Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.
Pace would not address the question. Nor would he discuss any exit strategy - a "pejorative get-out-of-town" phrase he said he did not like.
But if the plan does not work, he said, "our flow of forces will allow us to modify what we do next."
Bush's plan to add 21,500 more U.S. troops to the 132,000 already in Iraq will add to the stress on a military already overburdened and force longer and more frequent tours of duty on combat troops. An additional escalation would intensify the problem - with no ready solutions on how it would be achieved.
Those who favor Bush's plan and many who oppose it are in striking agreement the consequences will be dire if it flops. Gates echoed the Iraq Study Group in outlining some of the likely results of failure in Iraq. He mentioned:
* Undermined U.S. credibility.
* Risk of a regional conflagration.
* An emboldened Iran.
* A "humiliating" defeat against extremism worldwide.
* A haven for terrorist networks in the heart of the Middle East.
"Should we withdraw prematurely, we could well leave chaos and the disintegration of Iraq behind us," Gates said.
Just as success in the fight against terrorism cannot be marked by a surrender on a battleship - as the administration likes to recall, the way Japan ended World War II - failure cannot be neatly defined in Iraq. Bush set benchmarks, but no timetable for the Iraqi government to meet them. Violence on the street ranges between terrible and worse.
But if a failure that no one can deny comes about, what then?
"I don't know what the administration does at that point," said Ted Galen Carpenter of the libertarian Cato Institute. Bush could propose another escalation or just pull out and take the hit on U.S. credibility, he said.
"This is the foreign policy equivalent of having invested in the stock of WorldCom or Enron," Carpenter said. "The longer you stay, the worse it gets. It's not easy to withdraw. It's just better than staying."
There is no shortage of suggestions from people who think they have a better idea. Among them are an Iraqi version of the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps; mobile fingerprinting devices to track the worst thugs on the street; accelerated reopening of abandoned factories; a greater U.S. effort against al-Qaida in Anbar province, less against the sectarian warriors.
Kevin Ryan, a retired Army brigadier general who specialized in strategy and now is at Harvard, said some U.S. troops should be engaged in training and security no matter what becomes of the bulk of the force.
He said the U.S. should be reducing forces now and settling the remaining troops in for a long haul. "We are sprinting when we should be running a long-distance race," he said, predicting there will be no further escalation.
"Any further surges would just cause more damage to our ground forces' readiness," he said. "Even if you could magically create trained soldiers ... you don't have the equipment."
Failure of the plan also would intensify pressure on the administration to enlist countries of the Middle East in what is left of Iraq's security. Bush might have to bend on his refusal to deal directly with Iran and Syria, but from a position of weakness.
By Calvin Woodward
The Associated Press
Saturday 13 January 2007
If the revamped Iraq war plan fails, it will be time to withdraw most U.S. troops. Or send more in. The United States is seen as having a limited number of options, all grim, if President Bush's "new way forward" hits a wall. The pressure for U.S. disengagement will be immense. Yet a further escalation, however unimaginable now, may not be out of the question.
Few expect helicopters to beat the air over Baghdad in a hasty retreat of the kind that closed the books on America's defeat in Vietnam. The Mideast and its oil are too important.
"We were able to walk away from Vietnam," said Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who was a prisoner of war there. "If we walk away on Iraq, we'll be back, possibly in the context of a wider war in the world's most volatile region."
The administration is almost certainly considering fallback options if the latest plan falls apart. Officials are loath to talk about them.
Over two days of intense hearings on Capitol Hill last week, lawmakers raised questions at the margins about a Plan B even as they probed and for the most part attacked Plan A: Bush's move to increase U.S. forces to give Iraqis more time to take control of their own security.
Administration officials, defending a war that many in the U.S. and much of the world thinks is failing already, would not discuss what options will be left if the new approach fails. "Re-evaluate our strategy," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.
Yet he hinted that the planned troop increase need not take place in its entirety if conditions change. "We are trying to construct this in a way that there are off-ramps," he said, so that "you don't necessarily have to go to the full extent of the buildup."
Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified, "You're asking a Marine who's focused on winning whether he has a plan in case he doesn't win."
"Yes," came the response from Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.
Pace would not address the question. Nor would he discuss any exit strategy - a "pejorative get-out-of-town" phrase he said he did not like.
But if the plan does not work, he said, "our flow of forces will allow us to modify what we do next."
Bush's plan to add 21,500 more U.S. troops to the 132,000 already in Iraq will add to the stress on a military already overburdened and force longer and more frequent tours of duty on combat troops. An additional escalation would intensify the problem - with no ready solutions on how it would be achieved.
Those who favor Bush's plan and many who oppose it are in striking agreement the consequences will be dire if it flops. Gates echoed the Iraq Study Group in outlining some of the likely results of failure in Iraq. He mentioned:
* Undermined U.S. credibility.
* Risk of a regional conflagration.
* An emboldened Iran.
* A "humiliating" defeat against extremism worldwide.
* A haven for terrorist networks in the heart of the Middle East.
"Should we withdraw prematurely, we could well leave chaos and the disintegration of Iraq behind us," Gates said.
Just as success in the fight against terrorism cannot be marked by a surrender on a battleship - as the administration likes to recall, the way Japan ended World War II - failure cannot be neatly defined in Iraq. Bush set benchmarks, but no timetable for the Iraqi government to meet them. Violence on the street ranges between terrible and worse.
But if a failure that no one can deny comes about, what then?
"I don't know what the administration does at that point," said Ted Galen Carpenter of the libertarian Cato Institute. Bush could propose another escalation or just pull out and take the hit on U.S. credibility, he said.
"This is the foreign policy equivalent of having invested in the stock of WorldCom or Enron," Carpenter said. "The longer you stay, the worse it gets. It's not easy to withdraw. It's just better than staying."
There is no shortage of suggestions from people who think they have a better idea. Among them are an Iraqi version of the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps; mobile fingerprinting devices to track the worst thugs on the street; accelerated reopening of abandoned factories; a greater U.S. effort against al-Qaida in Anbar province, less against the sectarian warriors.
Kevin Ryan, a retired Army brigadier general who specialized in strategy and now is at Harvard, said some U.S. troops should be engaged in training and security no matter what becomes of the bulk of the force.
He said the U.S. should be reducing forces now and settling the remaining troops in for a long haul. "We are sprinting when we should be running a long-distance race," he said, predicting there will be no further escalation.
"Any further surges would just cause more damage to our ground forces' readiness," he said. "Even if you could magically create trained soldiers ... you don't have the equipment."
Failure of the plan also would intensify pressure on the administration to enlist countries of the Middle East in what is left of Iraq's security. Bush might have to bend on his refusal to deal directly with Iran and Syria, but from a position of weakness.
A MILITARY 'SURGE' TO A POLITICAL NOWHERE: BUSH'S 'NEW' IRAQ POLICY IS A MILITARY PLAN DIVORCED FROM A SENSIBLE POLITICAL APPROACH - LEON HADAR (ANTIWAR.COM, JANUARY 17)
http://www.antiwar.com/hadar/?articleid=10338
NUMBERS GAMES: HOW MANY TROOPS ARE NEEDED FOR THE "SURGE"? - FREDERICK W. KAGAN (WEEKLY STANDARD, JANUARY 17): The total surge required in Baghdad would be on the order of 35,000 troops or so -- including the additional support forces.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Publ...13/177sklvr.asp
PETRAEUS TIME - REUEL MARC GERECHT (WALL STREET JOURNAL, JANUARY 17): Can one back President Bush's new strategy in Iraq? Yes. For all its serious faults, his new approach is the first one since the fall of Baghdad to offer a chance to reverse the radicalization of Iraq. But it needs revision quickly.
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB1169...5070878612.html
PAID SUBSCRIPTION
NO BETTER IDEA: BOTH SIDES' STRATEGIES IN IRAQ ARE BIG IFS WITH BIG RISKS. THE PRESIDENT'S IS WORTH A TRY - MAX BOOT (LOS ANGELES TIMES, JANUARY 17): Considering the massive investment we have already made in Iraq, and the lack of good alternatives, it seems worth one final effort to see if we can salvage something from this dire situation.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...omment-opinions
http://www.antiwar.com/hadar/?articleid=10338
NUMBERS GAMES: HOW MANY TROOPS ARE NEEDED FOR THE "SURGE"? - FREDERICK W. KAGAN (WEEKLY STANDARD, JANUARY 17): The total surge required in Baghdad would be on the order of 35,000 troops or so -- including the additional support forces.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Publ...13/177sklvr.asp
PETRAEUS TIME - REUEL MARC GERECHT (WALL STREET JOURNAL, JANUARY 17): Can one back President Bush's new strategy in Iraq? Yes. For all its serious faults, his new approach is the first one since the fall of Baghdad to offer a chance to reverse the radicalization of Iraq. But it needs revision quickly.
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB1169...5070878612.html
PAID SUBSCRIPTION
NO BETTER IDEA: BOTH SIDES' STRATEGIES IN IRAQ ARE BIG IFS WITH BIG RISKS. THE PRESIDENT'S IS WORTH A TRY - MAX BOOT (LOS ANGELES TIMES, JANUARY 17): Considering the massive investment we have already made in Iraq, and the lack of good alternatives, it seems worth one final effort to see if we can salvage something from this dire situation.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...omment-opinions
BUSH'S IRAQ PLAN RACES AGAINST TWO CLOCKS: A TROOP 'SURGE' IN BAGHDAD COULD FALTER IF CONGRESS BALKS OR IRAQIS DON'T MEET THEIR SECURITY COMMITMENTS ON TIME - PETER GRIER (CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, JANUARY 16)
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0116/p25s02-uspo.html
THE IRAQ JINX: HOW BUSH IS BLOWING OUR LAST CHANCE - CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (SLATE, JANUARY 16): A few thousand extra troops in Baghdad and in Anbar are of scant use in themselves, unless they in some way represent a commitment to stick to Iraq no matter what. And if the Iraq to which they stick is in fact symbolized by Maliki's surly confessional regime, then the United States is not baby-sitting a civil war so much as deciding to take part in it.
http://www.slate.com/id/2157663/
ANATOMY OF A WRONG APPROACH - DAVID S. BRODER (WASHINGTON POST, JANUARY 18): There is every reason to believe that Maliki will attempt to use this expanded American force as a shield for the Shiite effort to drive the Sunni minority out of their homes and far from any share of power.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1701710_pf.html
THE MISSING PARTNER IN IRAQ – EDITORIAL (NEW YORK TIMES, JANUARY 17): Mr. Maliki has demonstrated how far his own goals diverge from America’s best interests or any reasonable path for containing Iraq’s civil war.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/opinion/...agewanted=print
THE PLANNER - STEVE COLL (NEW YORKER, JANUARY 15): The skepticism among uniformed officers regarding Bush’s Iraq surge is influenced by the numerous cases in recent military history, of diverse countries and diverse armies, which indicate that a counterinsurgency plan of the type Bush has embraced is very unlikely to succeed.
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/talk/070122ta_talk_coll
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0116/p25s02-uspo.html
THE IRAQ JINX: HOW BUSH IS BLOWING OUR LAST CHANCE - CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (SLATE, JANUARY 16): A few thousand extra troops in Baghdad and in Anbar are of scant use in themselves, unless they in some way represent a commitment to stick to Iraq no matter what. And if the Iraq to which they stick is in fact symbolized by Maliki's surly confessional regime, then the United States is not baby-sitting a civil war so much as deciding to take part in it.
http://www.slate.com/id/2157663/
ANATOMY OF A WRONG APPROACH - DAVID S. BRODER (WASHINGTON POST, JANUARY 18): There is every reason to believe that Maliki will attempt to use this expanded American force as a shield for the Shiite effort to drive the Sunni minority out of their homes and far from any share of power.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1701710_pf.html
THE MISSING PARTNER IN IRAQ – EDITORIAL (NEW YORK TIMES, JANUARY 17): Mr. Maliki has demonstrated how far his own goals diverge from America’s best interests or any reasonable path for containing Iraq’s civil war.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/opinion/...agewanted=print
THE PLANNER - STEVE COLL (NEW YORKER, JANUARY 15): The skepticism among uniformed officers regarding Bush’s Iraq surge is influenced by the numerous cases in recent military history, of diverse countries and diverse armies, which indicate that a counterinsurgency plan of the type Bush has embraced is very unlikely to succeed.
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/talk/070122ta_talk_coll
Military planners in Iraq may soon be seeing 'red'
A team of skeptics has joined fellow officers to ask tough questions in a war that has seen its share of missteps.
By Julian E. Barnes
Times Staff Writer
January 19, 2007
FT. LEAVENWORTH, KAN. — While the Bush administration is reworking its overall strategy in Iraq, military leaders in Baghdad are searching for new ways to improve the decisions and choices they make closer to the ground.
The U.S. military has sent to Iraq a five-person team of dedicated skeptics, known in military jargon as a "red team." In a war known for its missteps and unanticipated results, the team will be assigned to review, and question, military operations. It will attempt to predict how enemies will react to various missions and what the unintended consequences might be.
Such teams have been used on an ad-hoc basis to critique specific battle plans. But this team is the first to work full time as devil's advocates, and is the first headed by officers trained as designated skeptics by Ft. Leavenworth's University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies.
Red teams try to predict how the enemy, known as "red" in military-speak, will react to an American operation.
"A red team is trying to get into the enemy's head," said Gregory Fontenot, director of the Ft. Leavenworth program. "What is the other side liable to do and how are they thinking about the problem?"
In Senate testimony last week, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a red team had been assigned to examine President Bush's new Iraq security plan "from the enemy's viewpoint." Bush plans to send 21,500 additional troops to Iraq, although the increase and new strategy are not expected to be fully in place for several months as the Pentagon routes units into battle.
But red teams go beyond predicting how the insurgency might react.
Team members are trained to think differently from other officers in military planning sessions, said Steven Rotkoff, one of the instructors at Ft. Leavenworth who helped create the course curriculum. Since red team officers are outside the normal staff planning process, they theoretically can look more objectively at it.
"It is very hard to tell someone your baby is ugly and they don't dress them properly," Rotkoff said. "The red team members are valued by their commanders because they do not participate in group-think."
The military's strict hierarchy allows for quick decision making. But it also can prevent insights farther down the pecking order from receiving a fair hearing. With a red team in place, someone is always taking a skeptical look at the commander's ideas, Rotkoff said.
"We struggle with getting out of the comfort zone. To do what we are asking people to do is an unnatural act for the American military," Rotkoff said.
In Iraq, the new red team has begun working for Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who recently became commander of day-to-day military operations there. The team may also get a higher profile with the arrival of Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, named the top U.S. commander in Iraq.
Petraeus, a supporter of such devil's-advocate approaches, pushed for more creative thinking while heading up key Army training programs at Ft. Leavenworth. Lt. Col. Jeff Ragland, Odierno's red team leader, said that although top officers and junior staff members are intrigued by the new group's mission, some mid-level colonels in Baghdad "seem to be less excited about our existence."
If a team's job is to argue against a particular plan, it becomes easy for other officers to dismiss its suggestions.
As a result, the red team course at Ft. Leavenworth includes instruction on how to criticize without being ignored. And in the field, Ragland's team is trying to figure out how to sugarcoat skepticism.
"At virtually every instance, we have had to present our ideas in an acceptable way, not with the 'sharp stick in the eye' approach," Ragland said.
The course examines conflicts such as the Philippine insurrection in 1899 and the post-World War II occupation of Japan.
The course covers Western and non-Western military theory and teaches anthropology so future red team members can better study other cultures.
In Iraq, for instance, it is the red team's job to think like Iraqis and figure out what might offend them.
"We are not going to make [red team members] anthropologists; we are going to make them understand how ethnocentric they are," Fontenot said. "As soon as you assume the other guy thinks like we do, you are making a mistake."
Military organizations, Fontenot said, are not always good at predicting the after-effects of an operation. Traditionally, no staff officers are specifically assigned to think about long-term consequences.
Among military staffers, there is a tendency to become wedded to a plan and reflexively defend it, rather than critique it from a distance, said Lt. Col. Mark B. Elfendahl, a student in the red team course.
Though the focus of many red teams is to predict an enemy force's reactions, in Iraq it will be just as important to predict how allies might react to a given operation.
Ragland, the red team leader in Iraq, said other staff officers have the ability to critically assess a plan, but they often do not have the time to do so.
"Red teams are a direct, and necessary, response to the current operations tempo," Ragland said, adding that because team members are not invested in military plans, "we have the latitude regarding time and the charter to take this critical look."
At Ft. Leavenworth, Fontenot wants to spread critical thinking throughout the Army.
In the long term, the University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies aims to influence how all officers think and plan.
For now, Fontenot says he is watching how the red team works in Iraq, and is adjusting the course based on feedback from the field.
"We will have to see how it goes in Iraq," he said. "I know we are doing the right thing. I don't know if we are doing it the right way."
A team of skeptics has joined fellow officers to ask tough questions in a war that has seen its share of missteps.
By Julian E. Barnes
Times Staff Writer
January 19, 2007
FT. LEAVENWORTH, KAN. — While the Bush administration is reworking its overall strategy in Iraq, military leaders in Baghdad are searching for new ways to improve the decisions and choices they make closer to the ground.
The U.S. military has sent to Iraq a five-person team of dedicated skeptics, known in military jargon as a "red team." In a war known for its missteps and unanticipated results, the team will be assigned to review, and question, military operations. It will attempt to predict how enemies will react to various missions and what the unintended consequences might be.
Such teams have been used on an ad-hoc basis to critique specific battle plans. But this team is the first to work full time as devil's advocates, and is the first headed by officers trained as designated skeptics by Ft. Leavenworth's University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies.
Red teams try to predict how the enemy, known as "red" in military-speak, will react to an American operation.
"A red team is trying to get into the enemy's head," said Gregory Fontenot, director of the Ft. Leavenworth program. "What is the other side liable to do and how are they thinking about the problem?"
In Senate testimony last week, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a red team had been assigned to examine President Bush's new Iraq security plan "from the enemy's viewpoint." Bush plans to send 21,500 additional troops to Iraq, although the increase and new strategy are not expected to be fully in place for several months as the Pentagon routes units into battle.
But red teams go beyond predicting how the insurgency might react.
Team members are trained to think differently from other officers in military planning sessions, said Steven Rotkoff, one of the instructors at Ft. Leavenworth who helped create the course curriculum. Since red team officers are outside the normal staff planning process, they theoretically can look more objectively at it.
"It is very hard to tell someone your baby is ugly and they don't dress them properly," Rotkoff said. "The red team members are valued by their commanders because they do not participate in group-think."
The military's strict hierarchy allows for quick decision making. But it also can prevent insights farther down the pecking order from receiving a fair hearing. With a red team in place, someone is always taking a skeptical look at the commander's ideas, Rotkoff said.
"We struggle with getting out of the comfort zone. To do what we are asking people to do is an unnatural act for the American military," Rotkoff said.
In Iraq, the new red team has begun working for Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who recently became commander of day-to-day military operations there. The team may also get a higher profile with the arrival of Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, named the top U.S. commander in Iraq.
Petraeus, a supporter of such devil's-advocate approaches, pushed for more creative thinking while heading up key Army training programs at Ft. Leavenworth. Lt. Col. Jeff Ragland, Odierno's red team leader, said that although top officers and junior staff members are intrigued by the new group's mission, some mid-level colonels in Baghdad "seem to be less excited about our existence."
If a team's job is to argue against a particular plan, it becomes easy for other officers to dismiss its suggestions.
As a result, the red team course at Ft. Leavenworth includes instruction on how to criticize without being ignored. And in the field, Ragland's team is trying to figure out how to sugarcoat skepticism.
"At virtually every instance, we have had to present our ideas in an acceptable way, not with the 'sharp stick in the eye' approach," Ragland said.
The course examines conflicts such as the Philippine insurrection in 1899 and the post-World War II occupation of Japan.
The course covers Western and non-Western military theory and teaches anthropology so future red team members can better study other cultures.
In Iraq, for instance, it is the red team's job to think like Iraqis and figure out what might offend them.
"We are not going to make [red team members] anthropologists; we are going to make them understand how ethnocentric they are," Fontenot said. "As soon as you assume the other guy thinks like we do, you are making a mistake."
Military organizations, Fontenot said, are not always good at predicting the after-effects of an operation. Traditionally, no staff officers are specifically assigned to think about long-term consequences.
Among military staffers, there is a tendency to become wedded to a plan and reflexively defend it, rather than critique it from a distance, said Lt. Col. Mark B. Elfendahl, a student in the red team course.
Though the focus of many red teams is to predict an enemy force's reactions, in Iraq it will be just as important to predict how allies might react to a given operation.
Ragland, the red team leader in Iraq, said other staff officers have the ability to critically assess a plan, but they often do not have the time to do so.
"Red teams are a direct, and necessary, response to the current operations tempo," Ragland said, adding that because team members are not invested in military plans, "we have the latitude regarding time and the charter to take this critical look."
At Ft. Leavenworth, Fontenot wants to spread critical thinking throughout the Army.
In the long term, the University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies aims to influence how all officers think and plan.
For now, Fontenot says he is watching how the red team works in Iraq, and is adjusting the course based on feedback from the field.
"We will have to see how it goes in Iraq," he said. "I know we are doing the right thing. I don't know if we are doing it the right way."
Marine Corps will ask thousands to come back
By Gordon Lubold - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Jan 19, 2007 22:23:02 EST
The Marine Corps plans to ask up to 100,000 former Marines released from the ranks since September 2001 whether they would like to come back.
Speaking at the Pentagon on Friday, Lt. Gen. Emerson Gardner, the Corps’ deputy commandant for programs and resources, said many of those Marines had either hinted that they’d like to have re-enlisted at the time they got out or were told outright that no slots were available in which they could re-enlist.
“In the past, we’ve had a number of people who have desired to re-enlist in a particular job specialty, and, unfortunately, there is not enough room in the Marine Corps to keep them on, so we have released them from active duty,” Gardner said.
“But anecdotally, we’re all familiar with people that have gotten out of the Marine Corps, and you talk to them a year or two later and they say, ‘You know, if I had to do it over again, I sure would like to have stayed,’ ” Gardner said.
“We’re going to offer them that opportunity. Our commandant will make a call to arms and see what number of those 100,000 would be willing to come back on active duty,” Gardner said.
He did not detail how those Marines would be notified or asked to come back, but he indicated that given the Corps’ intention to grow by more than 20,000 Marines over the next five years, the initiative could come in handy.
The Corps has about 180,000 Marines, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced last week that it would grow by about 22,000 people at a rate of about 5,000 per year to a total end strength of 202,000 by 2012.
The Army, which stands at about 507,000 soldiers, will grow to about 547,000 over the next five years, or by about 8,000 per year.
By Gordon Lubold - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Jan 19, 2007 22:23:02 EST
The Marine Corps plans to ask up to 100,000 former Marines released from the ranks since September 2001 whether they would like to come back.
Speaking at the Pentagon on Friday, Lt. Gen. Emerson Gardner, the Corps’ deputy commandant for programs and resources, said many of those Marines had either hinted that they’d like to have re-enlisted at the time they got out or were told outright that no slots were available in which they could re-enlist.
“In the past, we’ve had a number of people who have desired to re-enlist in a particular job specialty, and, unfortunately, there is not enough room in the Marine Corps to keep them on, so we have released them from active duty,” Gardner said.
“But anecdotally, we’re all familiar with people that have gotten out of the Marine Corps, and you talk to them a year or two later and they say, ‘You know, if I had to do it over again, I sure would like to have stayed,’ ” Gardner said.
“We’re going to offer them that opportunity. Our commandant will make a call to arms and see what number of those 100,000 would be willing to come back on active duty,” Gardner said.
He did not detail how those Marines would be notified or asked to come back, but he indicated that given the Corps’ intention to grow by more than 20,000 Marines over the next five years, the initiative could come in handy.
The Corps has about 180,000 Marines, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced last week that it would grow by about 22,000 people at a rate of about 5,000 per year to a total end strength of 202,000 by 2012.
The Army, which stands at about 507,000 soldiers, will grow to about 547,000 over the next five years, or by about 8,000 per year.
Postponed Sacrifices
Joe Galloway | January 20, 2007
President Bush was asked in an interview this week why our military and their families are bearing all the sacrifices of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His response was telling.
The American people are sacrificing, too, Bush said. Their peace of mind is disturbed by the images of carnage they see on their televisions.
His response was lame, but it also was infuriating, and his attempt to switch the focus to how well he thinks our economy is doing was no less galling.
The educator-in-chief said that it's been his view all along that the American people need to keep living their lives without making sacrifices while 25,000 of their sons and daughters have been killed or wounded in combat in the last five years.
He was proud that, unlike every wartime president in our history, he hasn't increased taxes to pay for a war. In fact, he, George W. Bush, not only hasn't raised taxes; he's cut them, leaving his war to be financed by going deeper into debt to China and Japan.
There's no need, he said, to revive some form of mandatory national service so the children and grandchildren of all those Americans living their comfortable lives might make both sacrifices and contributions to the defense and well-being of our country.
Our volunteer military is working just fine, Bush said. It can continue to shoulder the entire weight of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the wars that have ground the Army and the Marine Corps beyond the breaking point.
The new secretary of defense, Robert Gates, began his term by recommending that the permanent strength of the Army and the Marines be increased by nearly 100,000 soldiers, something that could be suggested only after his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, had been fired.
Rumsfeld, with the backing of Vice President Dick Cheney, was the architect of the idea that 21st-century wars could be won and soldiers replaced by high-tech weaponry. That you can do much more with much less.
Anyone in uniform who suggested otherwise was throwing his career away, as was made amply clear in late February 2003, when then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, under questioning from Sen. Carl Levin, opined that it would take "several hundred thousand" American troops to pacify and occupy Iraq.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz promptly dismissed Shinseki's analysis, which was based on the general's experience as the commander of U.S. forces in Bosnia, as "outlandish." Iraq, Wolfowitz said, would be a lot easier than Afghanistan was because there were no ethnic divisions in Iraq.
A veteran of Vietnam who lost a foot in combat there, Shinseki knew whereof he spoke, which is a lot more than one could say of Wolfowitz, who's never worn a uniform or heard a shot fired in combat. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and their bosses in the White House made Shinseki's last few months in office a living hell.
At his retirement ceremony, which none of those gentlemen had the common courtesy to attend, the soft-spoken general sounded a warning that they should have heard: Beware of giving a 12-division mission to a 10-division Army.
That, of course, is precisely what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld did, and the results, four years later, were entirely predictable. In fact, I predicted them right here in a 2003 column headlined: "How to Break a Great Army."
Our troops and our military are now in deep trouble. Many of our soldiers and Marines are now pulling their third or fourth combat tours.
Those tours are being extended beyond the normal 12 months and the troops' time at home for family and training is being reduced from the promised and badly needed 12 months, all in order to man Bush's "surge" or escalation or augmentation in Iraq. And now Defense Secretary Gates has conceded that more troops are needed in Afghanistan, too.
Under the triumvirate of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, little of the trillions spent on defense over the last six years has gone to those who are bearing 95 percent of the burden of the war of necessity in Afghanistan and the war of choice in Iraq. While those wars ground up tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles and helicopters and Humvees by the thousands, without enough money to repair or replace them, new high-tech Air Force planes and Navy ships ate up the Pentagon budget and padded the bottom lines of the big defense contractors/campaign contributors.
Even if the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ended tomorrow, the damage that's been done to our Army and Marine Corps is incalculable, and from past bitter experience after Vietnam, it's a good bet that repairing that damage will take a decade or more and cost trillions.
That means that long after Bush and his deputies have retired to their gated compounds and a $500 million presidential library, we'll be less able to defend our nation in a new era made far deadlier by their disastrous decisions.
Their war-and-peace decisions, warped by arrogance and ignorance, will haunt all of us, and the postponed sacrifices will come due with a vengeance.
Copyright 2007 Joe Galloway. All opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of Military.com.
Joe Galloway | January 20, 2007
President Bush was asked in an interview this week why our military and their families are bearing all the sacrifices of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His response was telling.
The American people are sacrificing, too, Bush said. Their peace of mind is disturbed by the images of carnage they see on their televisions.
His response was lame, but it also was infuriating, and his attempt to switch the focus to how well he thinks our economy is doing was no less galling.
The educator-in-chief said that it's been his view all along that the American people need to keep living their lives without making sacrifices while 25,000 of their sons and daughters have been killed or wounded in combat in the last five years.
He was proud that, unlike every wartime president in our history, he hasn't increased taxes to pay for a war. In fact, he, George W. Bush, not only hasn't raised taxes; he's cut them, leaving his war to be financed by going deeper into debt to China and Japan.
There's no need, he said, to revive some form of mandatory national service so the children and grandchildren of all those Americans living their comfortable lives might make both sacrifices and contributions to the defense and well-being of our country.
Our volunteer military is working just fine, Bush said. It can continue to shoulder the entire weight of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the wars that have ground the Army and the Marine Corps beyond the breaking point.
The new secretary of defense, Robert Gates, began his term by recommending that the permanent strength of the Army and the Marines be increased by nearly 100,000 soldiers, something that could be suggested only after his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, had been fired.
Rumsfeld, with the backing of Vice President Dick Cheney, was the architect of the idea that 21st-century wars could be won and soldiers replaced by high-tech weaponry. That you can do much more with much less.
Anyone in uniform who suggested otherwise was throwing his career away, as was made amply clear in late February 2003, when then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, under questioning from Sen. Carl Levin, opined that it would take "several hundred thousand" American troops to pacify and occupy Iraq.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz promptly dismissed Shinseki's analysis, which was based on the general's experience as the commander of U.S. forces in Bosnia, as "outlandish." Iraq, Wolfowitz said, would be a lot easier than Afghanistan was because there were no ethnic divisions in Iraq.
A veteran of Vietnam who lost a foot in combat there, Shinseki knew whereof he spoke, which is a lot more than one could say of Wolfowitz, who's never worn a uniform or heard a shot fired in combat. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and their bosses in the White House made Shinseki's last few months in office a living hell.
At his retirement ceremony, which none of those gentlemen had the common courtesy to attend, the soft-spoken general sounded a warning that they should have heard: Beware of giving a 12-division mission to a 10-division Army.
That, of course, is precisely what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld did, and the results, four years later, were entirely predictable. In fact, I predicted them right here in a 2003 column headlined: "How to Break a Great Army."
Our troops and our military are now in deep trouble. Many of our soldiers and Marines are now pulling their third or fourth combat tours.
Those tours are being extended beyond the normal 12 months and the troops' time at home for family and training is being reduced from the promised and badly needed 12 months, all in order to man Bush's "surge" or escalation or augmentation in Iraq. And now Defense Secretary Gates has conceded that more troops are needed in Afghanistan, too.
Under the triumvirate of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, little of the trillions spent on defense over the last six years has gone to those who are bearing 95 percent of the burden of the war of necessity in Afghanistan and the war of choice in Iraq. While those wars ground up tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles and helicopters and Humvees by the thousands, without enough money to repair or replace them, new high-tech Air Force planes and Navy ships ate up the Pentagon budget and padded the bottom lines of the big defense contractors/campaign contributors.
Even if the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ended tomorrow, the damage that's been done to our Army and Marine Corps is incalculable, and from past bitter experience after Vietnam, it's a good bet that repairing that damage will take a decade or more and cost trillions.
That means that long after Bush and his deputies have retired to their gated compounds and a $500 million presidential library, we'll be less able to defend our nation in a new era made far deadlier by their disastrous decisions.
Their war-and-peace decisions, warped by arrogance and ignorance, will haunt all of us, and the postponed sacrifices will come due with a vengeance.
Copyright 2007 Joe Galloway. All opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of Military.com.
Strategic Errors of Monumental Proportions
What Can Be Done in Iraq?
By Lt. General WILLIAM E. ODOM (US Army Ret.)
Text of testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,18 January 2007
Good afternoon, Senator Biden, and members of the committee. It is a grave responsibility to testify before you today because the issue, the war in Iraq, is of such monumental importance.
You have asked me to address primarily the military aspects of the war. Although I shall comply, I must emphasize that it makes no sense to separate them from the political aspects. Military actions are merely the most extreme form of politics. If politics is the business of deciding "who gets what, when, how," as Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall in New York City once said, then the military aspects of war are the most extreme form of politics. The war in Iraq will answer that question there.
Strategic Overview
The role that US military forces can play in that conflict is seriously limited by all the political decisions the US government has already taken. The most fundamental decision was setting as its larger strategic purpose the stabilization of the region by building a democracy in Iraq and encouraging its spread. This, of course, was to risk destabilizing the region by starting a war.
Military operations must be judged by whether and how they contribute to accomplishing war aims. No clear view is possible of where we are today and where we are headed without constant focus on war aims and how they affect US interests. The interaction of interests, war aims, and military operations defines the strategic context in which we find ourselves. We cannot have the slightest understanding of the likely consequences of proposed changes in our war policy without relating them to the strategic context. Here are the four major realities that define that context:
1. Confusion about war aims and US interests. The president stated three war aims clearly and repeatedly:
* the destruction of Iraqi WMD;
* the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; and
* the creation of a liberal democratic Iraq.
The first war aim is moot because Iraq had no WMD. The second was achieved by late Spring 2003. Today, people are waking up to what was obvious before the war -- the third aim has no real prospects of being achieved even in ten or twenty years, much less in the short time anticipated by the war planners. Implicit in that aim was the belief that a pro-American, post-Saddam regime could be established. This too, it should now be clear, is most unlikely. Finally, is it in the US interest to have launched a war in pursuit of any of these aims? And is it in the US interest to continue pursuing the third? Or is it time to redefine our aims? And, concomitantly, to redefine what constitutes victory?
2. The war has served primarily the interests of Iran and al Qaeda, not American interests.
We cannot reverse this outcome by more use of military force in Iraq. To try to do so would require siding with Sunni leaders and the Baathist insurgents against pro-Iranian Shiite groups. The Baathist insurgents constitute the forces most strongly opposed to Iraqi cooperation with Iran. At the same time, our democratization policy has installed Shiite majorities and pro-Iranians groups in power in Baghdad, especially in the ministries of interior and defense. Moreover, our counterinsurgency operations are, as unintended (but easily foreseeable) consequences, first, greater Shiite openness to Iranian influence and second, al Qaeda's entry into Iraq and rooting itself in some elements of Iraqi society.
3. On the international level, the war has effectively paralyzed the United States militarily and strategically, denying it any prospect of revising its strategy toward an attainable goal.
As long as US forces remained engaged Iraq, not only will the military costs go up, but also the incentives will decline for other states to cooperate with Washington to find a constructive outcome. This includes not only countries contiguous to Iraq but also Russia and key American allies in Europe. In their view, we deserve the pain we are suffering for our arrogance and unilateralism.
4. Overthrowing the Iraqi regime in 2003 insured that the country would fragment into at least three groups; Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. In other words, the invasion made it inevitable that a civil war would be required to create a new central government able to control all of Iraq. Yet a civil war does not insure it. No faction may win the struggle. A lengthy stalemate, or a permanent breakup of the country is possible. The invasion also insured that outside countries and groups would become involve. Al Qaeda and Iran are the most conspicuous participants so far, Turkey and Syria less so. If some of the wealthy oil-producing countries on the Arabian Peninsula are not already involved, they are most likely to support with resources any force in Iraq that opposes Iranian influence.
Many critics argue that, had the invasion been done "right," such as sending in much larger forces for re-establishing security and government services, the war would have been a success. This argument is not convincing. Such actions might have delayed a civil war but could not have prevented it. Therefore, any military programs or operations having the aim of trying to reverse this reality, insisting that we can now "do it right," need to be treated with the deepest of suspicion. That includes the proposal to sponsor the breakup by creating three successor states. To do so would be to preside over the massive ethnic cleansing operations required for the successor states to be reasonably stable. Ethnic cleansing is happening in spite of the US military in Iraq, but I see no political or moral advantage for the United States to become its advocate. We are already being blamed as its facilitator.
Let me now turn to key aspects of the president's revised approach to the war, as well as several other proposals.
In addition to the president, a number of people and groups have supported increased US force levels. As General Colin Powell has said, before we consider sending additional US troops, we must examine what missions they will have. I would add that we ask precisely what those troops must do to reverse any of these four present realities created by the invasion. I cannot conceive of any achievable missions they could be given to cause a reversal.
Just for purposes of analysis, let us suppose we had unlimited numbers of US troops to deploy in Iraq. Would that change my assessment? In principle, if two or three million troops were deployed there with the latitude to annihilate all resistance without much attention to collateral civilian casualties and human rights, order might well be temporarily reestablished under a reign of US terror. The problem we would then face is that we would be opposed not only by 26 million Iraqis but also by millions of Arabs and Iranians surrounding Iraq, peoples angered by our treatment of Muslims and Arabs. These outsiders are already involved to some degree in the internal war in Iraq, and any increase of US forces is likely to be exceeded by additional outside support for insurgents.
I never cease to be amazed at our military commanders' apparent belief that the "order of battle" of the opposition forces they face are limited to Iraq. I say "apparent" because those commanders may be constrained by the administration's policies from correcting this mistaken view. Once the invasion began, Muslims in general and Arabs in particular could be expected to take sides against the United States. In other words, we went to war not just against the Iraqi forces and insurgent groups but also against a large part of the Arab world, scores and scores of millions. Most Arab governments, of course, are neutral or somewhat supportive, but their publics in growing numbers are against us.
It is a strategic error of monumental proportions to view the war as confined to Iraq. Yet this is the implicit assumption on which the president's new strategy is based. We have turned it into two wars that vastly exceed the borders of Iraq. First, there is the war against the US occupation that draws both sympathy and material support from other Arab countries. Second, there is the Shiite-Sunni war, a sectarian conflict heretofore sublimated within the Arab world but that now has opened the door to Iranian influence in Iraq. In turn, it foreordains an expanding Iranian-Arab regional conflict.
Any military proposals today that do not account for both larger wars, as well as the Iranian threat to the Arab states on the Persian Gulf, must be judged wholly inadequate if not counterproductive. Let me now turn to some specific proposals, those advocated by independent voices and the Iraq Study Group as well as the administration.
Specific Proposals
Standing up Iraqi security forces to replace US forces. Training the Iraqi military and police force has been proposed repeatedly as a way to bring stability to Iraq and allow US forces to withdraw. Recently, new variants, such as embedding US troops within Iraqi units, have been offered. The Iraq Study Group made much of this technique.
I know of no historical precedent to suggest that any of them will succeed. The problem is not the competency of Iraqi forces. It is political consolidation and gaining the troops' loyalties to the government and their commanders as opposed to their loyalties to sectarian leaders, clans, families, and relatives. For what political authority are Iraqi soldiers and police willing to risk their lives? To the American command? What if American forces depart? Won't they be called traitors for supporting the invaders and occupiers? Will they trust in a Shiite-dominated government and ministry of interior, which is engaged in assassinations of Sunnis? Sunni Arabs and Kurds would be foolish to do so, although financial desperation has driven many to risk it. What about to the leaders of independent militias? Here soldiers can find strong reasons for loyal service: to defend their fellow sectarians, families, and relatives. And that is why the government cannot disband them. It has insufficient loyal troops to do so.
As a military planner working on the pacification programs in 1970-71 in Vietnam, I had the chance to judge the results of training both regular South Vietnamese forces and so-called "regional" and "popular" forces. Some were technically proficient, but that did not ensure that they would always fight for the government in Saigon. Nor were they always loyal to their commanders. And they occasionally fought each other when bribed by Viet Cong agents to do so. The "popular forces" at the village level often failed to protect their villages. The reasons varied, but in several cases it was the result of how their salaries were funded. Local tax money was not the source of their pay; rather it was US-supplied funds. Thus these troops, as well as "regional forces," had little sense of obligation to protect villagers in their areas of responsibility. For anyone who doubts that the Vietnam case is instructive for understanding the Iraqi case, I recommend Ahmed S. Hashim's recent book, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq. A fluent Arab linguist and a reserve US Army colonel, who has served a year in Iraq and visited it several other times, Hashim offers a textured study that struck me again and again as a re-run of an old movie, especially where it concerned US training of Iraqi forces.
US military assistance training in El Salvador is often cited as a successful case. In fact, this effort amounted to letting the old elites, who used death squads to impose order, come back to power in different guises. And death squads are again active there. The real cause of the defeat of the Salvadoran insurgency was Gorbachev's decision to cut off supplies to it, as he promised President George H. Bush at the Malta summit meeting. Thus denied their resource base, and having failed to create a self-supporting tax regime in the countryside as the Viet Cong did in Vietnam, they could not survive for long. Does the administration's new plan for Iraq promise to eliminate all outside support to the warring factions? Is it even remotely possible? Hardly.
The oft-cited British success in Malaysia is only superficially relevant to the Iraq case. British officials actually ruled the country. Thus they had decades of firsthand knowledge of the local politics. They made such a mess of it, however, that an insurgency emerged in opposition. A new military commander and a clean-up of the colonial administration provided political consolidation and the isolation of the communist insurgents, mostly members of an ethnic minority group. This pattern would be impossible to duplicate in Iraq.
An infusion of new funds for reconstruction. A shortage of funds has not been the cause of failed reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Administrative capacity to use funds effectively was and remains the primary obstacle. Even support programs carried out by American contractors for US forces have yielded mixed results. Insurgent attacks on the projects have provoked transfers of construction funds to security measures, which have also failed.
A weak or non-existent government administrative capacity allows most of the money to be squandered. Putting another billion or so dollars into public works in Iraq today before a government is in place with an effective administrative capacity to penetrate to the neighborhood and village level is like trying to build a roof on a house before its walls have been erected. Moreover, a large part of that money will find its way into the hands of insurgents and sectarian militias. That is exactly what happened in Vietnam, and it has been happening in Iraq.
New and innovative counterinsurgency tactics. The cottage industry of counterinsurgency tactics is old and deceptive. When the US military has been periodically tasked to reinvent them the last great surge in that industry was at the JFK School in Fort Bragg in the 1960's it has no choice but to pretend that counterinsurgency tactics can succeed where no political consolidation in the government has yet been achieved. New counterinsurgency tactics cannot save Iraq today because they are designed without account for the essence of any "internal war," whether an insurgency or a civil war.
Such wars are about "who will rule," and who will rule depends on "who can tax" and build an effective state apparatus down to the village level.
The taxation issue is not even on the agenda of US programs for Iraq. Nor was it a central focus in Vietnam, El Salvador, the Philippines, and most other cases of US-backed governments embroiled in internal wars. Where US funding has been amply provided to those governments, the recipient regime has treated those monies as its tax base while failing to create an indigenous tax base. In my own study of three counterinsurgency cases, and from my experience in Vietnam, I discovered that the regimes that received the least US direct fiscal support had the most success against the insurgents. Providing funding and forces to give an embattled regime more "time" to gain adequate strength is like asking a drunk to drink more whiskey in order to sober up.
Saddam's regime lived mostly on revenues from oil exports. Thus it never had to create an effective apparatus to collect direct taxes. Were US forces and counterinsurgency efforts to succeed in imposing order for a time, the issue of who will control the oil in Iraq would become the focus of conflict for competing factions. The time would not be spent creating the administrative capacity to keep order and to collect sufficient taxes to administer the country. At best, the war over who will eventually rule country would only be postponed.
This is the crux of the dilemma facing all such internal wars. I make this assertion not only based on my own study, but also in light of considerable literature that demonstrates that the single best index of the strength of any state is its ability to collect direct taxes, not export-import tax or indirect taxes. The latter two are relatively easy to collect by comparison, requiring much weaker state institutions.
The Iraq Study Group. The report of this group should not be taken as offering a new or promising strategy for dealing with Iraq. Its virtue lies in its candid assessment of the realities in Iraq. Its great service has been to undercut the misleading assessments, claims, and judgment by the administration. It allows the several skeptical Republican members of the Congress to speak out more candidly on the war, and it makes it less easy for those Democrats who were heretofore supporters of the administration's war to refuse to reconsider.
If one reads the ISG report in light of the four points in the strategic overview above, one sees the key weakness of its proposals. It does not concede that the war, as it was conceived and continues to be fought, is not "winnable." It rejects the rapid withdrawal of US forces as unacceptable. No doubt a withdrawal will leave a terrible aftermath in Iraq, but we cannot avoid that. We can only make it worse by waiting until we are forced to withdraw. In the meantime, we prevent ourselves from escaping the paralysis imposed on us by the war, unable to redefine our war aims, which have served Iranian and al Qaeda interests instead of our own.
I do not criticize the report for this failure. As constructed, the group could not advance a fundamental revision of our strategy. Its Republican and Democrat members could not be said to represent all members of their own parties. Thus the most it could do was to make it politically easier for the administration to begin a fundamental revision of its strategy instead of offering a list of tactical changes for the same old war aim of creating a liberal democracy with a pro-American orientation in Iraq.
What Would a Revised Strategy Look Like?
How can the United States recover from this strategic blunder?
It cannot as long as fails to revise its war aims. Wise leaders in war have many times admitted that their war aims are misguided and then revised them to deal with realities beyond their control. Such leaders make tactical withdrawals, regroup, and revise their aims, and design new strategies to pursue them. Those who cannot make such adjustments eventually face defeat.
What war aim today is genuinely in the US interest and offers realistic prospects of success? And not just in Iraq but in the larger region?
Since the 1950's, the US aim in this region has been "regional stability" above all others. The strategy for achieving this aim of every administration until the present one has been maintaining a regional balance of power among three regional forces Arabs, Israelis, and Iranians. The Arab-Persian conflict is older than the Arab-Israeli conflict. The United States kept a diplomatic foothold in all three camps until the fall of the shah's regime in Iran. Losing its footing in Tehran, it began under President Carter's leadership to compensate by building what he called the Persian Gulf Security Framework. The US Central Command with enhanced military power was born as one of the main means for this purpose, but the long-term goal was a rapprochement. Until that time, the military costs for maintaining the regional power balance would be much higher.
The Reagan Administration, although it condemned Carter's Persian Gulf Security Framework, the so-called "Carter Doctrine," continued Carter's policies, even to the point of supporting Iraq when Iran was close to overrunning it. Some of its efforts to improve relations with Iran were feckless and counterproductive, but it maintained the proper strategic aim regional stability.
The Bush Administration has broken with this strategy by invading Iraq and also by threatening the existence of the regime in Iran. It presumed that establishing a liberal democracy in Iraq would lead to regional stability. In fact, the policy of spreading democracy by forces of arms has become the main source of regional instability.
This not only postponed any near-term chance of better relations with Iran, but also has moved the United States closer to losing its footing in the Arab camp as well. That, of course, increases greatly the threats to Israel's security, the very thing it was supposed to improve, not to mention that it makes the military costs rise dramatically, exceeding what we can prudently bear, especially without the support of our European allies and others.
Several critics of the administration show an appreciation of the requirement to regain our allies and others' support, but they do not recognize that withdrawal of US forces from Iraq is the sine qua non for achieving their cooperation. It will be forthcoming once that withdrawal begins and looks irreversible. They will then realize that they can no longer sit on the sidelines. The aftermath will be worse for them than for the United States, and they know that without US participation and leadership, they alone cannot restore regional stability. Until we understand this critical point, we cannot design a strategy that can achieve what we can legitimately call a victory.
Any new strategy that does realistically promise to achieve regional stability at a cost we can prudently bear, and does not regain the confidence and support of our allies, is doomed to failure. To date, I have seen no awareness that any political leader in this country has gone beyond tactical proposals to offer a different strategic approach to limiting the damage in a war that is turning out to be the greatest strategic disaster in our history.
What Can Be Done in Iraq?
By Lt. General WILLIAM E. ODOM (US Army Ret.)
Text of testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,18 January 2007
Good afternoon, Senator Biden, and members of the committee. It is a grave responsibility to testify before you today because the issue, the war in Iraq, is of such monumental importance.
You have asked me to address primarily the military aspects of the war. Although I shall comply, I must emphasize that it makes no sense to separate them from the political aspects. Military actions are merely the most extreme form of politics. If politics is the business of deciding "who gets what, when, how," as Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall in New York City once said, then the military aspects of war are the most extreme form of politics. The war in Iraq will answer that question there.
Strategic Overview
The role that US military forces can play in that conflict is seriously limited by all the political decisions the US government has already taken. The most fundamental decision was setting as its larger strategic purpose the stabilization of the region by building a democracy in Iraq and encouraging its spread. This, of course, was to risk destabilizing the region by starting a war.
Military operations must be judged by whether and how they contribute to accomplishing war aims. No clear view is possible of where we are today and where we are headed without constant focus on war aims and how they affect US interests. The interaction of interests, war aims, and military operations defines the strategic context in which we find ourselves. We cannot have the slightest understanding of the likely consequences of proposed changes in our war policy without relating them to the strategic context. Here are the four major realities that define that context:
1. Confusion about war aims and US interests. The president stated three war aims clearly and repeatedly:
* the destruction of Iraqi WMD;
* the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; and
* the creation of a liberal democratic Iraq.
The first war aim is moot because Iraq had no WMD. The second was achieved by late Spring 2003. Today, people are waking up to what was obvious before the war -- the third aim has no real prospects of being achieved even in ten or twenty years, much less in the short time anticipated by the war planners. Implicit in that aim was the belief that a pro-American, post-Saddam regime could be established. This too, it should now be clear, is most unlikely. Finally, is it in the US interest to have launched a war in pursuit of any of these aims? And is it in the US interest to continue pursuing the third? Or is it time to redefine our aims? And, concomitantly, to redefine what constitutes victory?
2. The war has served primarily the interests of Iran and al Qaeda, not American interests.
We cannot reverse this outcome by more use of military force in Iraq. To try to do so would require siding with Sunni leaders and the Baathist insurgents against pro-Iranian Shiite groups. The Baathist insurgents constitute the forces most strongly opposed to Iraqi cooperation with Iran. At the same time, our democratization policy has installed Shiite majorities and pro-Iranians groups in power in Baghdad, especially in the ministries of interior and defense. Moreover, our counterinsurgency operations are, as unintended (but easily foreseeable) consequences, first, greater Shiite openness to Iranian influence and second, al Qaeda's entry into Iraq and rooting itself in some elements of Iraqi society.
3. On the international level, the war has effectively paralyzed the United States militarily and strategically, denying it any prospect of revising its strategy toward an attainable goal.
As long as US forces remained engaged Iraq, not only will the military costs go up, but also the incentives will decline for other states to cooperate with Washington to find a constructive outcome. This includes not only countries contiguous to Iraq but also Russia and key American allies in Europe. In their view, we deserve the pain we are suffering for our arrogance and unilateralism.
4. Overthrowing the Iraqi regime in 2003 insured that the country would fragment into at least three groups; Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. In other words, the invasion made it inevitable that a civil war would be required to create a new central government able to control all of Iraq. Yet a civil war does not insure it. No faction may win the struggle. A lengthy stalemate, or a permanent breakup of the country is possible. The invasion also insured that outside countries and groups would become involve. Al Qaeda and Iran are the most conspicuous participants so far, Turkey and Syria less so. If some of the wealthy oil-producing countries on the Arabian Peninsula are not already involved, they are most likely to support with resources any force in Iraq that opposes Iranian influence.
Many critics argue that, had the invasion been done "right," such as sending in much larger forces for re-establishing security and government services, the war would have been a success. This argument is not convincing. Such actions might have delayed a civil war but could not have prevented it. Therefore, any military programs or operations having the aim of trying to reverse this reality, insisting that we can now "do it right," need to be treated with the deepest of suspicion. That includes the proposal to sponsor the breakup by creating three successor states. To do so would be to preside over the massive ethnic cleansing operations required for the successor states to be reasonably stable. Ethnic cleansing is happening in spite of the US military in Iraq, but I see no political or moral advantage for the United States to become its advocate. We are already being blamed as its facilitator.
Let me now turn to key aspects of the president's revised approach to the war, as well as several other proposals.
In addition to the president, a number of people and groups have supported increased US force levels. As General Colin Powell has said, before we consider sending additional US troops, we must examine what missions they will have. I would add that we ask precisely what those troops must do to reverse any of these four present realities created by the invasion. I cannot conceive of any achievable missions they could be given to cause a reversal.
Just for purposes of analysis, let us suppose we had unlimited numbers of US troops to deploy in Iraq. Would that change my assessment? In principle, if two or three million troops were deployed there with the latitude to annihilate all resistance without much attention to collateral civilian casualties and human rights, order might well be temporarily reestablished under a reign of US terror. The problem we would then face is that we would be opposed not only by 26 million Iraqis but also by millions of Arabs and Iranians surrounding Iraq, peoples angered by our treatment of Muslims and Arabs. These outsiders are already involved to some degree in the internal war in Iraq, and any increase of US forces is likely to be exceeded by additional outside support for insurgents.
I never cease to be amazed at our military commanders' apparent belief that the "order of battle" of the opposition forces they face are limited to Iraq. I say "apparent" because those commanders may be constrained by the administration's policies from correcting this mistaken view. Once the invasion began, Muslims in general and Arabs in particular could be expected to take sides against the United States. In other words, we went to war not just against the Iraqi forces and insurgent groups but also against a large part of the Arab world, scores and scores of millions. Most Arab governments, of course, are neutral or somewhat supportive, but their publics in growing numbers are against us.
It is a strategic error of monumental proportions to view the war as confined to Iraq. Yet this is the implicit assumption on which the president's new strategy is based. We have turned it into two wars that vastly exceed the borders of Iraq. First, there is the war against the US occupation that draws both sympathy and material support from other Arab countries. Second, there is the Shiite-Sunni war, a sectarian conflict heretofore sublimated within the Arab world but that now has opened the door to Iranian influence in Iraq. In turn, it foreordains an expanding Iranian-Arab regional conflict.
Any military proposals today that do not account for both larger wars, as well as the Iranian threat to the Arab states on the Persian Gulf, must be judged wholly inadequate if not counterproductive. Let me now turn to some specific proposals, those advocated by independent voices and the Iraq Study Group as well as the administration.
Specific Proposals
Standing up Iraqi security forces to replace US forces. Training the Iraqi military and police force has been proposed repeatedly as a way to bring stability to Iraq and allow US forces to withdraw. Recently, new variants, such as embedding US troops within Iraqi units, have been offered. The Iraq Study Group made much of this technique.
I know of no historical precedent to suggest that any of them will succeed. The problem is not the competency of Iraqi forces. It is political consolidation and gaining the troops' loyalties to the government and their commanders as opposed to their loyalties to sectarian leaders, clans, families, and relatives. For what political authority are Iraqi soldiers and police willing to risk their lives? To the American command? What if American forces depart? Won't they be called traitors for supporting the invaders and occupiers? Will they trust in a Shiite-dominated government and ministry of interior, which is engaged in assassinations of Sunnis? Sunni Arabs and Kurds would be foolish to do so, although financial desperation has driven many to risk it. What about to the leaders of independent militias? Here soldiers can find strong reasons for loyal service: to defend their fellow sectarians, families, and relatives. And that is why the government cannot disband them. It has insufficient loyal troops to do so.
As a military planner working on the pacification programs in 1970-71 in Vietnam, I had the chance to judge the results of training both regular South Vietnamese forces and so-called "regional" and "popular" forces. Some were technically proficient, but that did not ensure that they would always fight for the government in Saigon. Nor were they always loyal to their commanders. And they occasionally fought each other when bribed by Viet Cong agents to do so. The "popular forces" at the village level often failed to protect their villages. The reasons varied, but in several cases it was the result of how their salaries were funded. Local tax money was not the source of their pay; rather it was US-supplied funds. Thus these troops, as well as "regional forces," had little sense of obligation to protect villagers in their areas of responsibility. For anyone who doubts that the Vietnam case is instructive for understanding the Iraqi case, I recommend Ahmed S. Hashim's recent book, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq. A fluent Arab linguist and a reserve US Army colonel, who has served a year in Iraq and visited it several other times, Hashim offers a textured study that struck me again and again as a re-run of an old movie, especially where it concerned US training of Iraqi forces.
US military assistance training in El Salvador is often cited as a successful case. In fact, this effort amounted to letting the old elites, who used death squads to impose order, come back to power in different guises. And death squads are again active there. The real cause of the defeat of the Salvadoran insurgency was Gorbachev's decision to cut off supplies to it, as he promised President George H. Bush at the Malta summit meeting. Thus denied their resource base, and having failed to create a self-supporting tax regime in the countryside as the Viet Cong did in Vietnam, they could not survive for long. Does the administration's new plan for Iraq promise to eliminate all outside support to the warring factions? Is it even remotely possible? Hardly.
The oft-cited British success in Malaysia is only superficially relevant to the Iraq case. British officials actually ruled the country. Thus they had decades of firsthand knowledge of the local politics. They made such a mess of it, however, that an insurgency emerged in opposition. A new military commander and a clean-up of the colonial administration provided political consolidation and the isolation of the communist insurgents, mostly members of an ethnic minority group. This pattern would be impossible to duplicate in Iraq.
An infusion of new funds for reconstruction. A shortage of funds has not been the cause of failed reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Administrative capacity to use funds effectively was and remains the primary obstacle. Even support programs carried out by American contractors for US forces have yielded mixed results. Insurgent attacks on the projects have provoked transfers of construction funds to security measures, which have also failed.
A weak or non-existent government administrative capacity allows most of the money to be squandered. Putting another billion or so dollars into public works in Iraq today before a government is in place with an effective administrative capacity to penetrate to the neighborhood and village level is like trying to build a roof on a house before its walls have been erected. Moreover, a large part of that money will find its way into the hands of insurgents and sectarian militias. That is exactly what happened in Vietnam, and it has been happening in Iraq.
New and innovative counterinsurgency tactics. The cottage industry of counterinsurgency tactics is old and deceptive. When the US military has been periodically tasked to reinvent them the last great surge in that industry was at the JFK School in Fort Bragg in the 1960's it has no choice but to pretend that counterinsurgency tactics can succeed where no political consolidation in the government has yet been achieved. New counterinsurgency tactics cannot save Iraq today because they are designed without account for the essence of any "internal war," whether an insurgency or a civil war.
Such wars are about "who will rule," and who will rule depends on "who can tax" and build an effective state apparatus down to the village level.
The taxation issue is not even on the agenda of US programs for Iraq. Nor was it a central focus in Vietnam, El Salvador, the Philippines, and most other cases of US-backed governments embroiled in internal wars. Where US funding has been amply provided to those governments, the recipient regime has treated those monies as its tax base while failing to create an indigenous tax base. In my own study of three counterinsurgency cases, and from my experience in Vietnam, I discovered that the regimes that received the least US direct fiscal support had the most success against the insurgents. Providing funding and forces to give an embattled regime more "time" to gain adequate strength is like asking a drunk to drink more whiskey in order to sober up.
Saddam's regime lived mostly on revenues from oil exports. Thus it never had to create an effective apparatus to collect direct taxes. Were US forces and counterinsurgency efforts to succeed in imposing order for a time, the issue of who will control the oil in Iraq would become the focus of conflict for competing factions. The time would not be spent creating the administrative capacity to keep order and to collect sufficient taxes to administer the country. At best, the war over who will eventually rule country would only be postponed.
This is the crux of the dilemma facing all such internal wars. I make this assertion not only based on my own study, but also in light of considerable literature that demonstrates that the single best index of the strength of any state is its ability to collect direct taxes, not export-import tax or indirect taxes. The latter two are relatively easy to collect by comparison, requiring much weaker state institutions.
The Iraq Study Group. The report of this group should not be taken as offering a new or promising strategy for dealing with Iraq. Its virtue lies in its candid assessment of the realities in Iraq. Its great service has been to undercut the misleading assessments, claims, and judgment by the administration. It allows the several skeptical Republican members of the Congress to speak out more candidly on the war, and it makes it less easy for those Democrats who were heretofore supporters of the administration's war to refuse to reconsider.
If one reads the ISG report in light of the four points in the strategic overview above, one sees the key weakness of its proposals. It does not concede that the war, as it was conceived and continues to be fought, is not "winnable." It rejects the rapid withdrawal of US forces as unacceptable. No doubt a withdrawal will leave a terrible aftermath in Iraq, but we cannot avoid that. We can only make it worse by waiting until we are forced to withdraw. In the meantime, we prevent ourselves from escaping the paralysis imposed on us by the war, unable to redefine our war aims, which have served Iranian and al Qaeda interests instead of our own.
I do not criticize the report for this failure. As constructed, the group could not advance a fundamental revision of our strategy. Its Republican and Democrat members could not be said to represent all members of their own parties. Thus the most it could do was to make it politically easier for the administration to begin a fundamental revision of its strategy instead of offering a list of tactical changes for the same old war aim of creating a liberal democracy with a pro-American orientation in Iraq.
What Would a Revised Strategy Look Like?
How can the United States recover from this strategic blunder?
It cannot as long as fails to revise its war aims. Wise leaders in war have many times admitted that their war aims are misguided and then revised them to deal with realities beyond their control. Such leaders make tactical withdrawals, regroup, and revise their aims, and design new strategies to pursue them. Those who cannot make such adjustments eventually face defeat.
What war aim today is genuinely in the US interest and offers realistic prospects of success? And not just in Iraq but in the larger region?
Since the 1950's, the US aim in this region has been "regional stability" above all others. The strategy for achieving this aim of every administration until the present one has been maintaining a regional balance of power among three regional forces Arabs, Israelis, and Iranians. The Arab-Persian conflict is older than the Arab-Israeli conflict. The United States kept a diplomatic foothold in all three camps until the fall of the shah's regime in Iran. Losing its footing in Tehran, it began under President Carter's leadership to compensate by building what he called the Persian Gulf Security Framework. The US Central Command with enhanced military power was born as one of the main means for this purpose, but the long-term goal was a rapprochement. Until that time, the military costs for maintaining the regional power balance would be much higher.
The Reagan Administration, although it condemned Carter's Persian Gulf Security Framework, the so-called "Carter Doctrine," continued Carter's policies, even to the point of supporting Iraq when Iran was close to overrunning it. Some of its efforts to improve relations with Iran were feckless and counterproductive, but it maintained the proper strategic aim regional stability.
The Bush Administration has broken with this strategy by invading Iraq and also by threatening the existence of the regime in Iran. It presumed that establishing a liberal democracy in Iraq would lead to regional stability. In fact, the policy of spreading democracy by forces of arms has become the main source of regional instability.
This not only postponed any near-term chance of better relations with Iran, but also has moved the United States closer to losing its footing in the Arab camp as well. That, of course, increases greatly the threats to Israel's security, the very thing it was supposed to improve, not to mention that it makes the military costs rise dramatically, exceeding what we can prudently bear, especially without the support of our European allies and others.
Several critics of the administration show an appreciation of the requirement to regain our allies and others' support, but they do not recognize that withdrawal of US forces from Iraq is the sine qua non for achieving their cooperation. It will be forthcoming once that withdrawal begins and looks irreversible. They will then realize that they can no longer sit on the sidelines. The aftermath will be worse for them than for the United States, and they know that without US participation and leadership, they alone cannot restore regional stability. Until we understand this critical point, we cannot design a strategy that can achieve what we can legitimately call a victory.
Any new strategy that does realistically promise to achieve regional stability at a cost we can prudently bear, and does not regain the confidence and support of our allies, is doomed to failure. To date, I have seen no awareness that any political leader in this country has gone beyond tactical proposals to offer a different strategic approach to limiting the damage in a war that is turning out to be the greatest strategic disaster in our history.
More divel from General Odom. He's been retired about 10 years longer than I have. If he knew anything about the Middle East he might say something worth paying attention to.
William E. Odom
Senior Fellow
Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. Headquarters
Areas of Expertise
Military and strategic issues
Intelligence issues
Asian economic and security issues
Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian studies
European politics and military issues
http://www.hudson.org/learn/index.cfm?fuse...mp;eid=OdomWill
William E. Odom
Senior Fellow
Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. Headquarters
Areas of Expertise
Military and strategic issues
Intelligence issues
Asian economic and security issues
Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian studies
European politics and military issues
http://www.hudson.org/learn/index.cfm?fuse...mp;eid=OdomWill
SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2007, Issue No. 10
January 29, 2007
Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
Support Secrecy News:
http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp
** FY 2007 INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION BILL ADVANCES
** SPECIAL FORCES FREE FALL OPERATIONS
** ARMY CIVIL AFFAIRS OPERATIONS
** VARIOUS RESOURCES
FY 2007 INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION BILL ADVANCES
After two years without an annual intelligence authorization and
more than three months into Fiscal Year 2007, the FY 2007
intelligence authorization bill (S. 372) has been reintroduced in
the Senate and reported out of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
See the January 24 Committee report here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_rpt/srpt110-2.html
"This is a critically important piece of national security
legislation, and the fact that our intelligence agencies have
operated without authorizing legislation for two years represents
an unfortunate failure of Congressional oversight," wrote
Senators Ron Wyden and Russ Feingold, who noted that they
nevertheless had concerns about some of its provisions.
Among its positive features, the Senate bill would require
disclosure of the amounts requested, authorized and appropriated
for the National Intelligence Program (Section 107). It would
further mandate consideration of disclosure of the agency budgets
of each of the 16 elements of the intelligence community, as
recommended by the 9-11 Commission.
Declassification of the intelligence budget is the sine qua non
for establishing a sensible national security classification
system.
Some other provisions of the Senate bill are controversial, and
should require referral of the bill to the Senate Judiciary
Committee for further deliberation, argued Kate Martin and
Brittany Benowitz of the Center for National Security Studies in
a January 11, 2007 assessment.
The bill, they wrote, "would permit the Intelligence Community to
access vast troves of personal information on Americans collected
by the FBI or other agencies while limiting application of the
Privacy Act to that information (section 310); it would limit
application of the Privacy Act to records maintained by the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence (section 416); it
would exempt enormous numbers of files of the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence from even the search and review
requirements of the FOIA (section 411); [and] it would permit NSA
and CIA protective personnel to make warrantless arrests for
offenses not committed in their presence (section 424 and 432)."
Last week the bill was referred to the Senate Armed Services
Committee for a ten-day period.
SPECIAL FORCES FREE FALL OPERATIONS
The safe performance of parachute entries into hostile territory
by Special Forces personnel is addressed in a U.S. Army manual.
Military free-fall (MFF) parachute operations "are used when enemy
air defense systems, terrain restrictions, or politically
sensitive environments prevent low altitude penetration or when
mission needs require a clandestine insertion."
"This field manual presents a series of concise, proven techniques
and guidelines that are essential to safe, successful MFF
operations."
See "Special Forces Military Free-Fall Operations," Field Manual
FM 3-05.211, April 2005 (295 pages, 14 MB):
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-211.pdf
The unclassified Special Forces manual has not been approved for
public release, but a copy was obtained by Secrecy News.
Before posting the document on the Federation of American
Scientists web site, we turned to M, a friendly parachutist who
is attuned to national security classification concerns, and
asked whether there was any reason not to do so.
"I reviewed the manual carefully and consulted with a couple of
people and I didn't see anything that would suggest that any
portion of the report requires special protection," he said.
ARMY CIVIL AFFAIRS OPERATIONS
"Civil Affairs" has recently been elevated to a branch of the U.S.
Army by order of Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey on January 12,
2007.
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/go29.pdf
The role of civil affairs is to support "the interaction of
military forces with the civilian populace [in or around the
battlefield] to facilitate military operations and consolidate
operational objectives."
According to an Army manual on civil affairs operations (pdf), "A
supportive civilian population can provide resources and
information that facilitate friendly operations. It can also
provide a positive climate for the military and diplomatic
activity a nation pursues to achieve foreign policy objectives."
Conversely, "A hostile civilian population threatens the immediate
operations of deployed friendly forces and can often undermine
public support at home for the policy objectives of the United
States and its allies. When executed properly, civil-military
operations can reduce friction between the civilian population
and the military force."
The Army manual has not been approved for public release, but a
copy was obtained by Secrecy News.
See "Civil Affairs Operations," U.S. Army Field Manual FM 3-05.40,
September 2006 (184 pages, 4 MB PDF).
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-40.pdf
VARIOUS RESOURCES
In the latest ruling in the prosecution of two former officials of
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for allegedly
mishandling classified information, Judge T.S. Ellis III said
that press leaks regarding the case did not constitute a
violation of court rules because the leaks apparently derived
from law enforcement sources and not from a sealed grand jury
proceeding. On January 26, he rejected a defense motion for a
hearing on the leaks. See:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/rosen012607.pdf
Legal aspects of the conflicts between freedom of the press and
national security secrecy are freshly examined in a study by
University of Chicago Professor Geoffrey R. Stone and colleagues
for the First Amendment Center. See "Government Secrecy vs.
Freedom of the Press," December 2006:
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/PDF/Go...crecy.Stone.pdf
And some recent scraps from the Congressional Research Service
include "Unmanned Vehicles for U.S. Naval Forces: Background and
Issues for Congress," updated October 25, 2006:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RS21294.pdf
and "Privatization and the Federal Government: An Introduction,"
December 28, 2006:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33777.pdf
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood@fas.org
voice: (202) 454-4691
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2007, Issue No. 10
January 29, 2007
Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
Support Secrecy News:
http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp
** FY 2007 INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION BILL ADVANCES
** SPECIAL FORCES FREE FALL OPERATIONS
** ARMY CIVIL AFFAIRS OPERATIONS
** VARIOUS RESOURCES
FY 2007 INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION BILL ADVANCES
After two years without an annual intelligence authorization and
more than three months into Fiscal Year 2007, the FY 2007
intelligence authorization bill (S. 372) has been reintroduced in
the Senate and reported out of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
See the January 24 Committee report here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_rpt/srpt110-2.html
"This is a critically important piece of national security
legislation, and the fact that our intelligence agencies have
operated without authorizing legislation for two years represents
an unfortunate failure of Congressional oversight," wrote
Senators Ron Wyden and Russ Feingold, who noted that they
nevertheless had concerns about some of its provisions.
Among its positive features, the Senate bill would require
disclosure of the amounts requested, authorized and appropriated
for the National Intelligence Program (Section 107). It would
further mandate consideration of disclosure of the agency budgets
of each of the 16 elements of the intelligence community, as
recommended by the 9-11 Commission.
Declassification of the intelligence budget is the sine qua non
for establishing a sensible national security classification
system.
Some other provisions of the Senate bill are controversial, and
should require referral of the bill to the Senate Judiciary
Committee for further deliberation, argued Kate Martin and
Brittany Benowitz of the Center for National Security Studies in
a January 11, 2007 assessment.
The bill, they wrote, "would permit the Intelligence Community to
access vast troves of personal information on Americans collected
by the FBI or other agencies while limiting application of the
Privacy Act to that information (section 310); it would limit
application of the Privacy Act to records maintained by the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence (section 416); it
would exempt enormous numbers of files of the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence from even the search and review
requirements of the FOIA (section 411); [and] it would permit NSA
and CIA protective personnel to make warrantless arrests for
offenses not committed in their presence (section 424 and 432)."
Last week the bill was referred to the Senate Armed Services
Committee for a ten-day period.
SPECIAL FORCES FREE FALL OPERATIONS
The safe performance of parachute entries into hostile territory
by Special Forces personnel is addressed in a U.S. Army manual.
Military free-fall (MFF) parachute operations "are used when enemy
air defense systems, terrain restrictions, or politically
sensitive environments prevent low altitude penetration or when
mission needs require a clandestine insertion."
"This field manual presents a series of concise, proven techniques
and guidelines that are essential to safe, successful MFF
operations."
See "Special Forces Military Free-Fall Operations," Field Manual
FM 3-05.211, April 2005 (295 pages, 14 MB):
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-211.pdf
The unclassified Special Forces manual has not been approved for
public release, but a copy was obtained by Secrecy News.
Before posting the document on the Federation of American
Scientists web site, we turned to M, a friendly parachutist who
is attuned to national security classification concerns, and
asked whether there was any reason not to do so.
"I reviewed the manual carefully and consulted with a couple of
people and I didn't see anything that would suggest that any
portion of the report requires special protection," he said.
ARMY CIVIL AFFAIRS OPERATIONS
"Civil Affairs" has recently been elevated to a branch of the U.S.
Army by order of Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey on January 12,
2007.
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/go29.pdf
The role of civil affairs is to support "the interaction of
military forces with the civilian populace [in or around the
battlefield] to facilitate military operations and consolidate
operational objectives."
According to an Army manual on civil affairs operations (pdf), "A
supportive civilian population can provide resources and
information that facilitate friendly operations. It can also
provide a positive climate for the military and diplomatic
activity a nation pursues to achieve foreign policy objectives."
Conversely, "A hostile civilian population threatens the immediate
operations of deployed friendly forces and can often undermine
public support at home for the policy objectives of the United
States and its allies. When executed properly, civil-military
operations can reduce friction between the civilian population
and the military force."
The Army manual has not been approved for public release, but a
copy was obtained by Secrecy News.
See "Civil Affairs Operations," U.S. Army Field Manual FM 3-05.40,
September 2006 (184 pages, 4 MB PDF).
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-40.pdf
VARIOUS RESOURCES
In the latest ruling in the prosecution of two former officials of
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for allegedly
mishandling classified information, Judge T.S. Ellis III said
that press leaks regarding the case did not constitute a
violation of court rules because the leaks apparently derived
from law enforcement sources and not from a sealed grand jury
proceeding. On January 26, he rejected a defense motion for a
hearing on the leaks. See:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/rosen012607.pdf
Legal aspects of the conflicts between freedom of the press and
national security secrecy are freshly examined in a study by
University of Chicago Professor Geoffrey R. Stone and colleagues
for the First Amendment Center. See "Government Secrecy vs.
Freedom of the Press," December 2006:
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/PDF/Go...crecy.Stone.pdf
And some recent scraps from the Congressional Research Service
include "Unmanned Vehicles for U.S. Naval Forces: Background and
Issues for Congress," updated October 25, 2006:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RS21294.pdf
and "Privatization and the Federal Government: An Introduction,"
December 28, 2006:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33777.pdf
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood@fas.org
voice: (202) 454-4691
RELIABLE REPLACEMENT WARHEAD TO BE ADOPTED AS US STRATEGY
The interagency Nuclear Weapons Council (NWC) has formally
decided to endorse the proposed Reliable Replacement Warhead
(RRW) concept as the basis of the future U.S. nuclear arsenal,
a new report from the Congressional Research Service revealed.
In November 2006, "the NWC determined that the RRW is to be
adopted as the strategy for maintaining a long term safe,
secure and reliable nuclear deterrent," the CRS report stated,
quoting from new Department of Energy budget documents (at
page CRS-26).
It is a momentous decision on which Congress might be expected
to weigh in.
Not only that, but RRW development will be funded at the
expense of existing nuclear weapons programs, budget documents
say, "through reductions in resources required to support
legacy weapons" (at page CRS-27)
Defunding work to extend the functional lifetime of existing
weapons would tend to foreclose efforts to avoid new nuclear
weapons development.
According to a CRS calculation (and subject to future
adjustments), the projected budget for the RRW program from FY
2008-2012 would be $725.1 million, including NNSA and Navy
funds.
The Congressional Research Service does not release its
publications directly to the public. A copy of the new report
was obtained by Secrecy News and posted on the Federation of
American Scientists web site.
See "Nuclear Weapons: The Reliable Replacement Warhead
Program," updated February 8, 2007
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL32929.pdf
The interagency Nuclear Weapons Council (NWC) has formally
decided to endorse the proposed Reliable Replacement Warhead
(RRW) concept as the basis of the future U.S. nuclear arsenal,
a new report from the Congressional Research Service revealed.
In November 2006, "the NWC determined that the RRW is to be
adopted as the strategy for maintaining a long term safe,
secure and reliable nuclear deterrent," the CRS report stated,
quoting from new Department of Energy budget documents (at
page CRS-26).
It is a momentous decision on which Congress might be expected
to weigh in.
Not only that, but RRW development will be funded at the
expense of existing nuclear weapons programs, budget documents
say, "through reductions in resources required to support
legacy weapons" (at page CRS-27)
Defunding work to extend the functional lifetime of existing
weapons would tend to foreclose efforts to avoid new nuclear
weapons development.
According to a CRS calculation (and subject to future
adjustments), the projected budget for the RRW program from FY
2008-2012 would be $725.1 million, including NNSA and Navy
funds.
The Congressional Research Service does not release its
publications directly to the public. A copy of the new report
was obtained by Secrecy News and posted on the Federation of
American Scientists web site.
See "Nuclear Weapons: The Reliable Replacement Warhead
Program," updated February 8, 2007
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL32929.pdf
Be all that you can be!
"Out at 10,000 feet of fall, always remember that the last half inch
hurts the most. If you keep this in mind, it will give you the necessary
nonchalance for a successful jump." - Captain Charles W. Purcell 1932
"Out at 10,000 feet of fall, always remember that the last half inch
hurts the most. If you keep this in mind, it will give you the necessary
nonchalance for a successful jump." - Captain Charles W. Purcell 1932
Artist impression of the new "USS New York (LPD-21)"
USS New York (LPD-21), a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock, is the sixth ship of the United States Navy to be named for the state of New York.
Shortly after 11 September 2001, Governor of New York George E. Pataki wrote a letter to Secretary of the Navy Gordon England requesting that the Navy bestow the name USS New York on a surface warship involved in the War on Terror in honor of September 11's victims. In his letter, the Governor said he understood state names are currently reserved for submarines, but asked for special consideration so the name could be given to a surface ship. The request was approved 28 August 2002.
Oddly enough, a previous holder of the name, USS New York (BB-34), had its keel laid on September 11th, 1911, exactly 90 years to the day before the WTC was attacked.
24 tons of the steel used in its construction came from the rubble of the World Trade Center, with seven tons melted down and cast to form the ship's "stem bar" — part of the ship's bow. The construction workers reportedly treated it with "reverence usually accorded to religious relics," touching it as they walked by.
On 9 September 2004, the Secretary of the Navy announced that two of her sister ships will be named Arlington and Somerset, also to commemorate the attacks.
Casting the Bow Stem
Steel salvaged from the World Trade Center wreckage has been used in the construction of New York. The shipyard and Navy inspected the steel and found that it was of sufficient material strength so that it could be incorporated into the bow stem of New York.
"We're very proud that the twisted steel from the WTC towers will soon be used to forge an even strong national defense," said New York Gov. George Pataki. "The USS New York will soon be defending freedom and combating terrorism around the globe, while also ensuring that the world never forgets the evil attacks of September 11, 2001 and the courage and strength New Yorkers showed in response to terror."
On 4 August 2005, the LPD 21's bow stem with its World Trade Center steel was erected into the main hull and will forever lead the future USS New York. The complete bow was erected into place in March 2006.
Keel Laying
The keel was laid for New York on September 10, 2004.
Christening Ceremony
The ship's sponsor is Mrs. Dotty England, the wife of Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England. She will "christen thee New York" in a ceremony in 2007.
Commissioning Ceremony
Commissioning is the ceremony in which New York will become a unit of the operating forces of the United States Navy. It is the occasion when the ship will "Come Alive" and New York becomes USS New York. USS New York's commissioning ceremony will occur in 2009 in New York City.
SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2007, Issue No. 18
February 14, 2007
Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
Support Secrecy News:
http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp
** TEMPO OF CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT INCREASES
** COUNTERING AIR AND MISSILE THREATS
TEMPO OF CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT INCREASES
Though it is still too early to identify concrete results, the
pace of Congressional oversight activity on secrecy and
intelligence matters has already increased markedly in the new
Congress.
The House Intelligence Subcommittee on Intelligence Community
Management said it "will monitor trends in classification of
executive branch material, the costs of over-classification, the
practice of selective declassification, and the exclusive
reliance on a variety of 'sensitive but unclassified'
designations by U.S. government agencies and departments,"
according to a new Committee work plan. "The Subcommittee will
also examine the issue of unauthorized disclosure of classified
information."
See "Oversight Plan for the 110th Congress," House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence, February 7:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/hpsci2007.pdf
Rep. Henry Waxman's House Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform held a February 13 hearing on the Whistleblower
Protection Enhancement Act that would extend protections to
whistleblowers in intelligence and national security agencies.
Prepared testimony from that hearing, including several
informative statements on current issues in whistleblower
protection policy, may be found here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2007/index.html
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) introduced the Intelligence Community
Audit Act (H.R. 978), a bill that would "reaffirm the authority
of the [Government Accountability Office] to audit and evaluate
the programs, activities, and financial transactions of the
intelligence community." It is a companion measure to S. 82,
introduced by Sen. Akaka last month. See:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/hr978.html
Senator Christopher Dodd introduced the Restoring the
Constitution Act (S. 576) that would amend the much-criticized
Military Commissions Act of 2006, which curtailed habeas corpus
claims by suspected enemy combatants. Co-sponsor Sen. Russ
Feingold said the new bill would "restore basic due process
rights and ensure that no person is subject to indefinite
detention without charge based on the sole discretion of the
President." See:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/s576.html
COUNTERING AIR AND MISSILE THREATS
Military doctrine on maintaining air superiority against enemy
aircraft and missiles is presented in a newly updated
publication from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Counterair operations include both offensive counterair (OCA) to
destroy enemy aircraft, missiles or other weapons before they
can be used, and defensive counterair (DCA) to detect, intercept
and destroy enemy weapons in use.
Military planners "should expect MANPADS [shoulder-fired
missiles] and AAA [anti-aircraft artillery] coverage wherever
enemy forces are encountered," the new doctrine states.
Seven U.S. helicopters have been shot down in Iraq in the last
month, the Associated Press noted today.
See "Countering Air and Missile Threats," Joint Publication JP
3-01, February 5, 2007:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/jp3_01.pdf
_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.
To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, send email to
secrecy_news-request@lists.fas.org
with "subscribe" in the body of the message.
To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a blank email message to
secrecy_news-remove@lists.fas.org
OR email your request to saftergood@fas.org
Secrecy News is archived at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html
Secrecy News is available in blog format at:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
SUPPORT Secrecy News with a donation here:
http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp
_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood@fas.org
voice: (202) 454-4691
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2007, Issue No. 18
February 14, 2007
Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
Support Secrecy News:
http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp
** TEMPO OF CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT INCREASES
** COUNTERING AIR AND MISSILE THREATS
TEMPO OF CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT INCREASES
Though it is still too early to identify concrete results, the
pace of Congressional oversight activity on secrecy and
intelligence matters has already increased markedly in the new
Congress.
The House Intelligence Subcommittee on Intelligence Community
Management said it "will monitor trends in classification of
executive branch material, the costs of over-classification, the
practice of selective declassification, and the exclusive
reliance on a variety of 'sensitive but unclassified'
designations by U.S. government agencies and departments,"
according to a new Committee work plan. "The Subcommittee will
also examine the issue of unauthorized disclosure of classified
information."
See "Oversight Plan for the 110th Congress," House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence, February 7:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/hpsci2007.pdf
Rep. Henry Waxman's House Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform held a February 13 hearing on the Whistleblower
Protection Enhancement Act that would extend protections to
whistleblowers in intelligence and national security agencies.
Prepared testimony from that hearing, including several
informative statements on current issues in whistleblower
protection policy, may be found here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2007/index.html
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) introduced the Intelligence Community
Audit Act (H.R. 978), a bill that would "reaffirm the authority
of the [Government Accountability Office] to audit and evaluate
the programs, activities, and financial transactions of the
intelligence community." It is a companion measure to S. 82,
introduced by Sen. Akaka last month. See:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/hr978.html
Senator Christopher Dodd introduced the Restoring the
Constitution Act (S. 576) that would amend the much-criticized
Military Commissions Act of 2006, which curtailed habeas corpus
claims by suspected enemy combatants. Co-sponsor Sen. Russ
Feingold said the new bill would "restore basic due process
rights and ensure that no person is subject to indefinite
detention without charge based on the sole discretion of the
President." See:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/s576.html
COUNTERING AIR AND MISSILE THREATS
Military doctrine on maintaining air superiority against enemy
aircraft and missiles is presented in a newly updated
publication from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Counterair operations include both offensive counterair (OCA) to
destroy enemy aircraft, missiles or other weapons before they
can be used, and defensive counterair (DCA) to detect, intercept
and destroy enemy weapons in use.
Military planners "should expect MANPADS [shoulder-fired
missiles] and AAA [anti-aircraft artillery] coverage wherever
enemy forces are encountered," the new doctrine states.
Seven U.S. helicopters have been shot down in Iraq in the last
month, the Associated Press noted today.
See "Countering Air and Missile Threats," Joint Publication JP
3-01, February 5, 2007:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/jp3_01.pdf
_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.
To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, send email to
secrecy_news-request@lists.fas.org
with "subscribe" in the body of the message.
To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a blank email message to
secrecy_news-remove@lists.fas.org
OR email your request to saftergood@fas.org
Secrecy News is archived at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html
Secrecy News is available in blog format at:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
SUPPORT Secrecy News with a donation here:
http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp
_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood@fas.org
voice: (202) 454-4691
QUOTE(Snuffysmith @ Feb 14 2007, 03:24 PM)
SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2007, Issue No. 18
February 14, 2007
Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
Support Secrecy News:
http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp
** TEMPO OF CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT INCREASES
** COUNTERING AIR AND MISSILE THREATS
TEMPO OF CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT INCREASES
Though it is still too early to identify concrete results, the
pace of Congressional oversight activity on secrecy and
intelligence matters has already increased markedly in the new
Congress.
The House Intelligence Subcommittee on Intelligence Community
Management said it "will monitor trends in classification of
executive branch material, the costs of over-classification, the
practice of selective declassification, and the exclusive
reliance on a variety of 'sensitive but unclassified'
designations by U.S. government agencies and departments,"
according to a new Committee work plan. "The Subcommittee will
also examine the issue of unauthorized disclosure of classified
information."
See "Oversight Plan for the 110th Congress," House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence, February 7:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/hpsci2007.pdf
Rep. Henry Waxman's House Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform held a February 13 hearing on the Whistleblower
Protection Enhancement Act that would extend protections to
whistleblowers in intelligence and national security agencies.
Prepared testimony from that hearing, including several
informative statements on current issues in whistleblower
protection policy, may be found here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2007/index.html
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) introduced the Intelligence Community
Audit Act (H.R. 978), a bill that would "reaffirm the authority
of the [Government Accountability Office] to audit and evaluate
the programs, activities, and financial transactions of the
intelligence community." It is a companion measure to S. 82,
introduced by Sen. Akaka last month. See:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/hr978.html
Senator Christopher Dodd introduced the Restoring the
Constitution Act (S. 576) that would amend the much-criticized
Military Commissions Act of 2006, which curtailed habeas corpus
claims by suspected enemy combatants. Co-sponsor Sen. Russ
Feingold said the new bill would "restore basic due process
rights and ensure that no person is subject to indefinite
detention without charge based on the sole discretion of the
President." See:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/s576.html
COUNTERING AIR AND MISSILE THREATS
Military doctrine on maintaining air superiority against enemy
aircraft and missiles is presented in a newly updated
publication from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Counterair operations include both offensive counterair (OCA) to
destroy enemy aircraft, missiles or other weapons before they
can be used, and defensive counterair (DCA) to detect, intercept
and destroy enemy weapons in use.
Military planners "should expect MANPADS [shoulder-fired
missiles] and AAA [anti-aircraft artillery] coverage wherever
enemy forces are encountered," the new doctrine states.
Seven U.S. helicopters have been shot down in Iraq in the last
month, the Associated Press noted today.
See "Countering Air and Missile Threats," Joint Publication JP
3-01, February 5, 2007:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/jp3_01.pdf
_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.
To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, send email to
secrecy_news-request@lists.fas.org
with "subscribe" in the body of the message.
To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a blank email message to
secrecy_news-remove@lists.fas.org
OR email your request to saftergood@fas.org
Secrecy News is archived at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html
Secrecy News is available in blog format at:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
SUPPORT Secrecy News with a donation here:
http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp
_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood@fas.org
voice: (202) 454-4691
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2007, Issue No. 18
February 14, 2007
Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
Support Secrecy News:
http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp
** TEMPO OF CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT INCREASES
** COUNTERING AIR AND MISSILE THREATS
TEMPO OF CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT INCREASES
Though it is still too early to identify concrete results, the
pace of Congressional oversight activity on secrecy and
intelligence matters has already increased markedly in the new
Congress.
The House Intelligence Subcommittee on Intelligence Community
Management said it "will monitor trends in classification of
executive branch material, the costs of over-classification, the
practice of selective declassification, and the exclusive
reliance on a variety of 'sensitive but unclassified'
designations by U.S. government agencies and departments,"
according to a new Committee work plan. "The Subcommittee will
also examine the issue of unauthorized disclosure of classified
information."
See "Oversight Plan for the 110th Congress," House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence, February 7:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/hpsci2007.pdf
Rep. Henry Waxman's House Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform held a February 13 hearing on the Whistleblower
Protection Enhancement Act that would extend protections to
whistleblowers in intelligence and national security agencies.
Prepared testimony from that hearing, including several
informative statements on current issues in whistleblower
protection policy, may be found here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2007/index.html
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) introduced the Intelligence Community
Audit Act (H.R. 978), a bill that would "reaffirm the authority
of the [Government Accountability Office] to audit and evaluate
the programs, activities, and financial transactions of the
intelligence community." It is a companion measure to S. 82,
introduced by Sen. Akaka last month. See:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/hr978.html
Senator Christopher Dodd introduced the Restoring the
Constitution Act (S. 576) that would amend the much-criticized
Military Commissions Act of 2006, which curtailed habeas corpus
claims by suspected enemy combatants. Co-sponsor Sen. Russ
Feingold said the new bill would "restore basic due process
rights and ensure that no person is subject to indefinite
detention without charge based on the sole discretion of the
President." See:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/s576.html
COUNTERING AIR AND MISSILE THREATS
Military doctrine on maintaining air superiority against enemy
aircraft and missiles is presented in a newly updated
publication from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Counterair operations include both offensive counterair (OCA) to
destroy enemy aircraft, missiles or other weapons before they
can be used, and defensive counterair (DCA) to detect, intercept
and destroy enemy weapons in use.
Military planners "should expect MANPADS [shoulder-fired
missiles] and AAA [anti-aircraft artillery] coverage wherever
enemy forces are encountered," the new doctrine states.
Seven U.S. helicopters have been shot down in Iraq in the last
month, the Associated Press noted today.
See "Countering Air and Missile Threats," Joint Publication JP
3-01, February 5, 2007:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/jp3_01.pdf
_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.
To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, send email to
secrecy_news-request@lists.fas.org
with "subscribe" in the body of the message.
To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a blank email message to
secrecy_news-remove@lists.fas.org
OR email your request to saftergood@fas.org
Secrecy News is archived at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html
Secrecy News is available in blog format at:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
SUPPORT Secrecy News with a donation here:
http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp
_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood@fas.org
voice: (202) 454-4691
You know Snuffy, some of this stuff is so pro-terrorist it defies comment.
Just a quick post from one our unit's vets from the 196th LIB Association Guestbook...
no matter what your politics are, duty and honor should be cherished. Hell, if ya do it
right you may even eventually make friends of enemies.
Bob Delzell D/4/31 196th (69-70). Have been living in Vietnam for 5 years now, teaching English,a class on the stockmarket at the university level (used to be a broker with Morgan Stanley), and take vets back to Hiep Duc. Really hope to make the reunion but have a 4 month old baby girl, a wonderful, educated, Vietnamese wife, so aforementioned commitments might prohibit it. After experiencing Vietnam at peace and prosperity, getting to know the people, and working with them extensively, I want you all to know that they honor and thank us for what we tried to do. They set Americans apart from the others who have came here and waged war. They have told me that we are different from the French, Japanese, Chinese, and Russians. I have had Vietnamese soldiers who fought for the South and spent years in their prisons, tearfully thank me for my service. I have had former VC and NVA tell me that we were formidible on the battlefield and in peace helpful to their country and it's people. Never feel that what we did here was not respected by the people who on both sides fought the war. Don't believe me, come and see it for yourselves. I will welcome you all and be your gide and host. Take care, brothers, Ranger Bob, Saigon ps you can read a story from Claremont Graduate University at: www.alumni.cgu.edu/alumniprofiles/delzell.asp
Bob Delzell <bobinsigon"at"gmail.com>
Saigon, Vietnam - Monday, February 19, 2007 at 00:59:21 (EST)
(BTW: other posts point out this guy ain't your average liberal...being the linch-pin of a stand that turned back a sapper attack on LZ Siberia in '69)
no matter what your politics are, duty and honor should be cherished. Hell, if ya do it
right you may even eventually make friends of enemies.
Bob Delzell D/4/31 196th (69-70). Have been living in Vietnam for 5 years now, teaching English,a class on the stockmarket at the university level (used to be a broker with Morgan Stanley), and take vets back to Hiep Duc. Really hope to make the reunion but have a 4 month old baby girl, a wonderful, educated, Vietnamese wife, so aforementioned commitments might prohibit it. After experiencing Vietnam at peace and prosperity, getting to know the people, and working with them extensively, I want you all to know that they honor and thank us for what we tried to do. They set Americans apart from the others who have came here and waged war. They have told me that we are different from the French, Japanese, Chinese, and Russians. I have had Vietnamese soldiers who fought for the South and spent years in their prisons, tearfully thank me for my service. I have had former VC and NVA tell me that we were formidible on the battlefield and in peace helpful to their country and it's people. Never feel that what we did here was not respected by the people who on both sides fought the war. Don't believe me, come and see it for yourselves. I will welcome you all and be your gide and host. Take care, brothers, Ranger Bob, Saigon ps you can read a story from Claremont Graduate University at: www.alumni.cgu.edu/alumniprofiles/delzell.asp
Bob Delzell <bobinsigon"at"gmail.com>
Saigon, Vietnam - Monday, February 19, 2007 at 00:59:21 (EST)
(BTW: other posts point out this guy ain't your average liberal...being the linch-pin of a stand that turned back a sapper attack on LZ Siberia in '69)
Cheney Lines up Middle East Arab Allies for US Iraq Pull-out and Possible Iran Attack
DEBKAfile Special Report
May 12, 2007, 12:28 PM (GMT+02:00)
USS Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike group sails into Gulf
USS Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike group sails into Gulf
US Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in Riyadh Sat. May 12, with a full caseload for his talks with Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz . He is seeking coordination with the Saudis in good time for the approaching winding-down of US military forces in Iraq. Cheney will also clinch the Bush administration’s offer to double the Saudi air force in size, boosting its capability for contending with Iranian air might and the Revolutionary Guards’ naval and marine strength.
The USS offer of advanced warplanes was first revealed by DEBKAfile when it was presented in Riyadh by visiting US defense secretary Robert Gates last month.
The vice president’s regional presence from Wednesday, May 8, set up a whirlwind of activity. In Baghdad, he had a tough message for Iraqi leaders that time was running out and the country’s security crisis had reached a critical point.
"We've got to get this work done. It's game time. ... Everybody's got to sit down, raise their game, redouble their efforts," he is quoted as saying.
He then flew to Abu Dhabi for talks with the deputy chief of UAR armed forces, Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahayan.
Friday, aboard the USS John Stennis, one of two US air carrier strike groups deployed in Gulf waters, the vice president pledged the US would “stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region.”
This statement was not taken in the Gulf as a military threat, but rather a message that Washington is not looking for a military showdown with Iran, at this sensitive juncture ahead of a US troop withdrawal from Iraq, but rather bidding for strategic understandings to hold in check Iran’s nuclear weapons plans, on the lines of the accommodation with North Korea, while conditionally allowing enrichment of uranium to go forward.
In the last two weeks, Washington has marginally trimmed down the US buildup opposite Iran’s shores. Shortly before Cheney arrived, the Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike group reached the Gulf with 6,000 men - not to augment the US naval presence, but to relieve the USS Boxer Strike group which is returning to base.
While no Bush administration official has publicly admitted to a timeline for the US pull-out from Iraq - and has in fact fought one tooth and nail through Congress - DEBKAfile’s sources in Washington, the Gulf and Baghdad report that Cheney is bringing the news to the Middle East rulers that Washington will make its decision in the second half of August and an evacuation will begin shortly thereafter.
In parallel with preparations for a partial US exit from Iraq, DEBKAfile discloses that Washington and Iran will embark on negotiations, which could lead to the Bush administration accepting parts of Tehran’s civilian nuclear activities, including uranium enrichment in agreed quantities.
In the meantime, as part of US preparations for this event - and a possible Iranian threat - American military st
DEBKAfile Special Report
May 12, 2007, 12:28 PM (GMT+02:00)
USS Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike group sails into Gulf
USS Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike group sails into Gulf
US Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in Riyadh Sat. May 12, with a full caseload for his talks with Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz . He is seeking coordination with the Saudis in good time for the approaching winding-down of US military forces in Iraq. Cheney will also clinch the Bush administration’s offer to double the Saudi air force in size, boosting its capability for contending with Iranian air might and the Revolutionary Guards’ naval and marine strength.
The USS offer of advanced warplanes was first revealed by DEBKAfile when it was presented in Riyadh by visiting US defense secretary Robert Gates last month.
The vice president’s regional presence from Wednesday, May 8, set up a whirlwind of activity. In Baghdad, he had a tough message for Iraqi leaders that time was running out and the country’s security crisis had reached a critical point.
"We've got to get this work done. It's game time. ... Everybody's got to sit down, raise their game, redouble their efforts," he is quoted as saying.
He then flew to Abu Dhabi for talks with the deputy chief of UAR armed forces, Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahayan.
Friday, aboard the USS John Stennis, one of two US air carrier strike groups deployed in Gulf waters, the vice president pledged the US would “stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region.”
This statement was not taken in the Gulf as a military threat, but rather a message that Washington is not looking for a military showdown with Iran, at this sensitive juncture ahead of a US troop withdrawal from Iraq, but rather bidding for strategic understandings to hold in check Iran’s nuclear weapons plans, on the lines of the accommodation with North Korea, while conditionally allowing enrichment of uranium to go forward.
In the last two weeks, Washington has marginally trimmed down the US buildup opposite Iran’s shores. Shortly before Cheney arrived, the Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike group reached the Gulf with 6,000 men - not to augment the US naval presence, but to relieve the USS Boxer Strike group which is returning to base.
While no Bush administration official has publicly admitted to a timeline for the US pull-out from Iraq - and has in fact fought one tooth and nail through Congress - DEBKAfile’s sources in Washington, the Gulf and Baghdad report that Cheney is bringing the news to the Middle East rulers that Washington will make its decision in the second half of August and an evacuation will begin shortly thereafter.
In parallel with preparations for a partial US exit from Iraq, DEBKAfile discloses that Washington and Iran will embark on negotiations, which could lead to the Bush administration accepting parts of Tehran’s civilian nuclear activities, including uranium enrichment in agreed quantities.
In the meantime, as part of US preparations for this event - and a possible Iranian threat - American military st